Ingredients Library

Build a pantry library of the ingredients you cook with, each carrying a cost per unit so it can be costed wherever it’s used in a recipe.

What Is the Ingredient Library?

An ingredient is anything you buy to cook with — double cream, 00 flour, free-range eggs, Maldon salt. The library is your master list of these, each with a cost per unit and the unit it’s measured in (per kg, per litre, per each). Once an ingredient is costed, any recipe that uses it knows exactly what that quantity costs.

Adding Ingredients

Go to Logistics → Ingredients and click New Ingredient (or add rows inline). For each one, set:

• A name — what you call the ingredient in the kitchen.
• A cost per unit and the unit it’s measured in (kg, g, litre, ml, each).
• An optional category (dairy, dry goods, produce, meat & fish…) to keep a long pantry navigable.
• Optional supplier and brand so you remember where you usually buy it.

That is all it takes to add ingredients by hand, and for a small pantry it is a fine way to start. For anything bigger, let Puree AI do the typing. Importing a recipe (see Importing Your Recipes) creates every ingredient it names in one go, and the cost estimator prices all the blanks on a recipe in a single click. Each of those runs uses one AI credit, about 50 NZ cents, which is a great deal less than an afternoon of entering flour, butter and eggs one line at a time. What every AI feature does and costs is on Using AI to Help.

Importing a Spreadsheet

Already have your pantry in a spreadsheet? Click Import at the top of the Ingredients page. Download the template first: it is a CSV with the right column headers and one example row. Fill it in Excel or Google Sheets, save it as CSV and upload it with Choose File, then click Import.

Rows are matched by name, so an existing ingredient is updated and a new name is created. The columns are:

• name, required.
• category, plain text. A category that does not exist yet is created for you.
• supplier, which must exactly match a supplier you already have set up. Anything else is left blank.
• brand and notes, optional.
• cost, a decimal in your account currency, such as 4.50.
• cost_unit, one of g, kg, oz, lb, ml, l, tsp, tbsp, cup, fl_oz, each or dozen.
• is_active, true or false. Blank means true.

Export beside it downloads your whole library in the same layout, so you can bulk-edit costs in a spreadsheet and import the file straight back. The import uses no AI credits.

Ingredient Categories

Click Categories at the top of the Ingredients page to manage the list. Puree starts you with the usual kitchen groupings (Baking, Dairy & Eggs, Fresh Produce, Meat, Oils & Vinegars and so on). Type in the Add category box to create your own, rename one by editing its name in place, and untick Active to hide a category from the pickers without losing the ingredients filed under it. The Used by count shows how many ingredients each category holds, so you can see what a change will touch before you make it.

The Ingredient Panel

Click the green magnifier beside an ingredient’s cost to open its panel. Alongside the name, cost and supplier it holds three things the main table does not show:

• Density (g/ml) lets a recipe measure the ingredient by volume when it is priced by weight, or the other way round. Give oil a density and “60 ml” can be costed against a per-kilogram price.
• Each weight (g) does the same for ingredients priced per kilogram but used by the piece, such as onions or lemons.
• Stock rechecks control how long an “in stock” tick on the shopping list stays valid. Fresh items lapse after two days, so you are asked to check them again before the next event. Bulk staple items you always hold, like salt or flour, recheck on the interval you choose, or never.

The panel is also where the AI helps with a single ingredient: Detect with AI tags its allergens, and Research price looks up current trade pricing. See Using AI to Help.

Estimated Costs

Don’t want to cost every line by hand to get started? On the Recipes page, a recipe with uncosted ingredients offers Use AI to estimate them. Puree fills each blank with a sensible trade price, marked ≈ with a confidence level so you know it is an estimate. It is a starting number you can refine later, rather than a blank field that stalls your whole library, and costs you enter yourself always take priority. When an estimate turns out to be right, Confirm cost as correct in the ingredient’s panel accepts it as yours. One run prices every blank on the recipe for one AI credit. For a single ingredient you want priced properly, the green magnifier beside its cost runs a price research that looks up real trade pricing with sources. Both are described on Using AI to Help.

Finding and Merging Duplicates

Real pantries accumulate duplicates — “cream”, “Cream”, “double cream”. The duplicates tool spots likely matches and lets you merge them into a single ingredient, so costs stay consistent everywhere they’re referenced. If a suggested pair isn’t actually a duplicate, you can dismiss it and Puree won’t raise it again.

Keeping Costs Current

Ingredient prices never sit still. Rather than re-typing them, you can upload a supplier’s price list and let Puree update the costs for you — see Supplier Price Lists in this section. When an ingredient’s cost changes, every recipe and dish that uses it re-costs automatically.

For the bigger picture of how ingredients, recipes and food cost fit together, see our article Recipes, Ingredients & Food Cost: Know Exactly What Every Dish Costs You.