Turning a recipe into a product

The blend that works in your kitchen is not yet a product. The gap between the two is mostly documentation, and crossing it is the step that turns a cook into a manufacturer.

A recipe and a formula are different documents

A recipe says what goes in and roughly how much. A formula says what goes in as percentages by weight, at what grind, in what order, mixed for how long, at what batch size, from which supplier where the supplier matters.

The recipe reproduces the dish when you make it. The formula reproduces the product when anybody makes it, including you in six months.

What has to be pinned down

Components as percentages of total weight, so scaling is arithmetic rather than memory. Grind for each component, because particle size decides how a blend behaves and whether it stays mixed. Order of addition, because a small-quantity component has to be pre-diluted into a portion of a large one rather than scattered into the whole.

And mixing time, which has an optimum: over-mixing puts in more energy than uniformity needs and breaks the material down.

The first scale-up

Do it deliberately and treat it as a new product. Mixing does not scale linearly, so the time that worked at half a kilogram will not simply double.

Draw samples from the top, middle and bottom of the finished batch and compare them. Taste blind against a retained sample of the kitchen version. Only then fill jars.

When it is actually a product

When somebody else can make it from the written formula and you cannot tell which batch is theirs. That is the test, and it is a high one.

Until then you have a recipe you happen to sell, which works until the week you are ill.

References