By now you may be wondering how to turn your recipe into a formula. You are in luck! This article is a step by step tutorial for turning a food recipe to a food formula starting with a standard sugar cookie recipe.

Lets’ begin! The sugar cookie recipe below is like all the other recipes out there. It is written using a combination of volume measurements, and whole units (cups, teaspoons, whole eggs).

Standard Sugar Cookie Recipe (volume, whole units)
2.5 cups Flour
2 cups Sugar
1 cup Butter
2 Whole Eggs
2 teaspoons Baking Powder
2 teaspoons Vanilla

Notice, the different units of measure in this recipe makes for sloppy math. So, our first step is to convert all units into weight. Converting volume to weight is done using density estimates with the following equation:

Density = Volume / Mass
Mass = Volume / Density

For this example, I did an internet search for each ingredient density to convert from volume to mass. Notice that this volume to mass conversion has a large range of error. The error comes from ingredients that change volume. Ingredients like flour and sugar can be fluffed up or compacted down to change how much mass fits into a measuring cup. To make things simple, I will be using density conversions from google.

How do we convert whole units (Eggs) to weight using average weights? This causes a problem when we notice the many different sizes of eggs available. When this sugar cookie recipe was written asking for “2 eggs” did they mean “2 jumbo eggs” or “2 peewee eggs”. As you can see in the table below, the egg size makes a difference.

Egg Size Minimum mass per egg
Jumbo 70 g
Extra-Large (XL) 63 g
Large (L) 56 g
Medium (M) 49g
Small (S) 42 g
Peewee 35 g

To convert 2 Whole Egg units into weight, I will assume that the recipe creator was referring to 2 large eggs which are 56g each for a sum total of 112g. Now, let’s apply these unit conversions to the standard Sugar cookie recipe:

Recipe (Volume, whole units)	Recipe (Weight)
2.5 cups flour	300 grams flour
2 cup sugar	400 grams sugar
1 cup butter	227 grams butter
2 eggs	112 grams eggs
2 teaspoons baking powder	8 grams baking powder
2 teaspoons vanilla	8 grams vanilla

Convert to weight (convert from volume to weight and unit to weight)

Already this recipe is looking better with a defined amount of eggs, sugar, and flour. If you asked a friend to make this Weight Recipe you would not need to worry about them packing sugar into measuring cups the right way or selecting Jumbo vers Peewee sized eggs. The weight amounts are clear and exact. Now, why should we go on to convert this Weight Recipe into a Formula?

Recipes show absolute amounts and Formulas show proportions which are used to keep track of ingredient amounts relative to other ingredients. Baking formulas are traditionally written in bakers percent to keep track of ingredients proportional to the amount of flour. In this Sugar Cookie Recipe, a good proportion to keep track of is the amount of sugar relative to the amount of flour. This Sugar-greater-than-Flour proportion is important to keep high if we want to make the Sugar Cookie we know and love. To make this sugar/flour proportion easier to view, we can rewrite the recipe as a Bakers Percent Formula. This is how.

A Bakers Percent Formula is written with all ingredients relative to the amount of flour in the formula. The example below demonstrates the conversion of a standard sugar cookie weight recipe to a bakers percentage formula.

Convert to Bakers percent (percentage relative to the amount of flour)

Recipe in weight	Formula in bakers percent
300g Flour	300g flour/300g flour= 100%
400g Sugar	400g sugar/300g flour= 133%
227g butter	227g butter/300g flour= 76%
112g egg	112g egg/ 300g flour= 37%
8g baking powder	8g baking powder/300g flour= 3%
8g vanilla	8g vanilla/300g flour= 3%

Thinking of recipe ingredients in proportion to each other is just the beginning of food formulation. What if there is no flour in your recipe like in Keto Recipes? What proportions do we need to keep track of, what should we set the proportions relative to, and how do we start developing without knowing the proportions? This is why we need the universal language of True Percent Formulas. True Percent Formulas show individual ingredient weights relative to the total weight of the formula.

Convert to True percent (percent relative to the total weight)

Recipe in weight	Formula in True percent
300g Flour	300g flour/1055g total weight= 28%
400g Sugar	400g sugar/1055g total weight= 38%
227g butter	227g butter/1055g total weight= 21%
112g egg	112g egg/ 1055g total weight= 11%
8g baking powder	8g baking powder/1055g total weight= 1%
8g vanilla	8g vanilla/1055g total weight= 1%
1055g Total Weight	100% Total Percent

True percent, weight percent or mass fraction; what is the difference? In short, all three terms refer to the same approach with different prospectives. Mass fraction is used by chemists and physicists for theoretical settings while weight percent is the more common term used in commerce. The term True percent is used specifically in the food industry to refer to a food formula that uses weight as its base measure and the proportions are relative to the sum of the whole weight. In True percent, the individual ingredient percents always sum to 100% as shown in the True Percent Formula above.

Why do we use True Percent Formulas? True percent formulas are accepted in the food industry as a universal language. It can be used to design every type of food from dog food, to alcohol, to baked goods. Unlike a volume recipe, true percent formulas are accurate, precise, and relative. Now that you understand the Formula basics, we can start to get into the interesting stuff.