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MasterMath

Recipe Calorie Calculator

The calories in a home-cooked dish, adding up what each ingredient contributes and splitting it across the servings.

Calories per serving

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Calories per serving—
Calories in the recipe—
Energy density—
Total weight—
Weight of one serving—
Ingredients counted—

Where the calories come from

IngredientGramsCaloriesShare

How this was worked out

    Indicative result. This is an estimate from the figures you enter, not a nutritional analysis. There is no food table here: the calories per 100 g come off the packet, which is where the figures for that particular product are.

    The formula

    kcal of an ingredient = grams × kcal per 100 g ÷ 100

    Where it comes from

    There is no food table here, and that is deliberate. Nutrition tables vary by country, by variety and by year, and an unsourced figure on a page people use to decide what to eat is worse than no page at all. The per-100-gram figures are printed on the packet of what you actually bought, and they are that product: brown rice and white rice do not match, and two olive oils need not either.

    How to work it out by hand

    1. Weigh each ingredient raw, before cooking it
    2. Copy the calories per hundred grams off the packet
    3. Multiply the grams by the calories and divide by a hundred
    4. Add it all up and divide by the servings it makes

    What is worth knowing

    Two details change the answer. First: ingredients are weighed raw, because the per-100-gram figure on the packet is for the raw product; cooked rice weighs almost three times as much and its calories per hundred grams are a third. Second: what weighs most is almost never what contributes most. Thirty grams of oil hold more calories than three hundred of courgette, which is why energy density — calories per hundred grams of the finished dish — tells you more about a dish than its total.

    Frequently asked questions

    How do I work out the calories in a recipe?

    Multiply each ingredient grams by its kcal per 100 g, add them up and divide by the servings.

    Do I weigh ingredients raw or cooked?

    Raw. The packet figures are for the raw product, and cooking changes the weight but not the energy.

    Why is there no food table?

    Because it varies by country, variety and year. The packet you bought has the right figures for your dish.

    What is energy density?

    Calories per hundred grams of the finished dish. It says more than the total, because it compares dishes of different sizes.