Yield and batch size

Simmer a sauce and water leaves. You put 3 000 g in the pot and bottle 2 400 g. Yield is that ratio: 80% of the input mass became product.

Expected yield

Each formula version carries an Expected yield: the share of what goes into the batch that comes out as product, 100% if nothing is lost. It lets the cost panel and the recipe sheet do their math before you have weighed anything. A raw sauce might sit at 98%; a long reduction at 65%.

A part you discard never goes into the batch, so it is not a loss. Crack ten eggs into a recipe and the shells sit outside this figure entirely: they are bought and binned, and the yield is about what the process did to what went in. See ingredient parts.

Observed yield on the bench

Once you make the recipe for real, the bench does better than an estimate. It adds up your weigh-ins (“Total in”) and compares them with the Finished batch you weighed at the end: 3 210 g in → 2 480 g out reads back as a 77% yield. “Total in” is what goes into the pot. For an ingredient you break down, that is the parts you use, not the whole thing you bought; see ingredients you break down. Watch that number across batches. A slide from 80% to 72% means the process changed, whether or not anyone noticed at the stove.

A line carrying a scaling rule does not move this figure. Yield is what the process lost, so it is read from what the scale said; the rule sizes the next batch instead.

Yield moves the unit cost

You pay for input and sell output. Say the pot’s ingredients cost €14.40 for 3 000 g in. At 80% yield you bottle 2 400 g: €0.60 per 100 g. At 100% the same money would spread over 3 000 g: €0.48 per 100 g. Same recipe, same prices, 25% dearer per gram, all from yield. The panel handles this for you; see cost breakdown. For the concept on its own, read yield.

Batch size and portions

Give the recipe a Portion size (250 ml, named “jar”) and batches become countable. The bench shows the cost per jar, and the recipe sheet lets you size a batch as “48 jars” as easily as “12 L”. Lines dosed per jar follow along through their scaling rules.

Recipes that come in whole batches

Some recipes cannot be made at any size at all. A quiche is baked in a crust that holds 8 portions, so 8, 16 and 24 are makeable and 10 is not. Say so on the crust’s scaling rule (This ingredient sets the batch size) and the run form offers the two whole batches either side of whatever you type, without ever refusing the number you meant.