Adapt a recipe: servings, simple swaps

✅ The essentials

A recipe is not set in stone. You can change the number of people, and you can replace an ingredient with a cousin, as long as you know which one. The only recipes that dislike this are the ones where chemistry matters: cakes, risen doughs, custards.

📏 The landmarks

• To change servings: multiply every ingredient by the same number. Salt and spices a little less than the rest, and you taste.
• Swaps that work: a vegetable for one of the same family (zucchini and eggplant, leek and onion, spinach and chard), one fresh herb for another, cream for yogurt or fromage blanc in a cold sauce, butter for oil in a frying pan, white wine for stock or water with a squeeze of lemon, parmesan for any grated cheese.
• The ones that do not: the baking powder, sugar and eggs of a cake, the flour of a dough, gelatin. There, follow the recipe.
• A dish that divides badly, like a quiche, a tart or a gratin: make the whole dish and keep the rest, rather than scaling down.

⏱️ How long it takes

The time to read the ingredient list.

🩹 If it goes wrong

A swap that changed the taste is not a failure, it is a variation. A cake batter that did not rise, though, is almost always a changed quantity or ingredient: next time, follow the recipe.

🍽️ Make it tonight

The build-your-own marinated chicken: the recipe is made for this, you choose the marinade and the quantities follow.