What a recipe costs

A cost on every recipe#

With Saucery Pass and a store chosen, each recipe in the iPhone and Android apps says about what a serving costs at your store, such as about $3.20 a serving. It's on the recipe's card and under its title. A recipe that doesn't say how many it serves gives the whole recipe instead, such as about $12.80 all up.

It counts what goes in the pot, not the packs it comes in. A teaspoon of salt costs a teaspoon's worth, and 300 g from a 1 kg bag of flour costs 300 g of it. That's why it's usually less than the shopping list says the same meal costs: the list prices the packs you carry home.

The prices are today's shelf prices at your store, so a recipe gets cheaper the week its ingredients go on special.

When too little is priced#

A recipe needs at least four in five of its measured ingredients priced before it has a cost. Below that it says how many are, such as 7 of 11 priced, rather than a total that reads as cheap because a third of it is missing. Lines with no amount, like salt to taste or oil for frying, aren't counted either way.

What each ingredient comes to#

Tap the price on a recipe to see the breakdown. It has the cost a serving and for the whole recipe, how many ingredients are priced, and a stamp saying Priced or Partly priced. Under What goes in the pot, each ingredient shows the product it's priced from, how much of it the recipe uses, and what that comes to, such as 480 g at $2.50/kg.

Under each line it says where the product came from: Best value match when The Saucery picked it, Chosen for this recipe, Chosen for every recipe, or Your staple when it's priced from one of your staples. A line with no price says why: nothing at your store matches it, it's sold in a way the amount doesn't convert to, or the store's products are still being matched, which takes a few minutes after you pick a store.

Choosing another product#

Tap Change on a line, or Choose a product on one with no price, and pick what you buy. Then choose:

• Choose for this recipe: only this recipe uses it. Handy when one dish wants the good parmesan.
• Choose for every recipe: every recipe with that ingredient uses it, and so does your shopping list.

Go back to the best value match undoes it. Choosing is for your family's editors and admins; everyone sees the cost.

Finding cheap recipes#

• In search: the Price chip sorts by Cheapest first, or caps what a serving costs at Under $3, Under $5 or Under $8. Cheap dinners shows the dinners that come to $5 a serving or less, cheapest first. A recipe with too little priced is left out of a cap. See Finding recipes.
• On the home screen: Cheap Dinners is a strip of those same dinners. If you've arranged your home screen yourself, it doesn't appear until you add it: scroll to the foot of the home screen, tap Customise your home screen, then Add a section. See Your home screen.
• With Whisp: ask for "three cheap dinners from the specials", and it sets each special's pack size against what your household needs.