# Why do cooking ingedients always seem to scale linearly with the number of portions? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 20, 2013, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-cooking-ingedients-always-seem-to-scale-linearly-with-the-number-of-portions/671764 "2013-10-20T23:34:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-cooking-ingedients-always-seem-to-scale-linearly-with-the-number-of-portions/671764/21 "2013-10-21T09:21:39Z")
Some cakes don’t scale up or down well during baking - a double batch of sponge cake in a larger tin (i.e. therefore deeper and wider) may come out uncooked in the middle and crumbly at the edges - and a fruit cake divided into muffins may burn before it’s cooked long enough. In yet other cases, doubling the amount may just mean going beyond the reasonable capacity of the oven or hob to add heat to a thing. If you want to cook ten times the amount of boiled potatoes, you can put them in a pan that’s ten times the size, and although it will eventually come to the boil on a standard hotplate, the timing is vastly altered and it’s likely that some potatoes will be cooked to mush, whilst others are underdone. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-cooking-ingedients-always-seem-to-scale-linearly-with-the-number-of-portions/671764/22 "2013-10-21T12:14:21Z")
> [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > Too late. I baked it. I baked it before I saw your note to not attempt. Now it is in the pan, smelling of the charred remains of a thousand guilty witches and pulsating with the steady, labored rhythm of a cancer riddled black lung. What do I do with it? Go to the nearest bus stop, there should be a box marked “Pandora”. **Don’t open it**. Place the product on top of the box and never look back. ---
**Author:** ![sylmar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b782af/32.png) [@sylmar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sylmar)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-cooking-ingedients-always-seem-to-scale-linearly-with-the-number-of-portions/671764/23 "2013-10-21T21:50:53Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Do you have a cite for this in terms of leavening agents in baked goods? All the bakers percentage recipes I’ve seen don’t have any note about scaling up or down based on size. You can get away with less yeast, of course, but at the expense of longer rise time. Not in depth cites for chemical leaveners, but this [one](http://www.joepastry.com/2013/when-baking-recipes-dont-scale/) lists a few simple rationales, and [this](https://www.inkling.com/read/cooking-for-geeks-jeff-potter-1st/chapter-5/chemical-leaveners) points out the chemistry problem with the volumetric approach used in most home kitchens as opposed to weight. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-cooking-ingedients-always-seem-to-scale-linearly-with-the-number-of-portions/671764/24 "2013-10-21T21:55:45Z")
> [@sylmar](#): > > Not in depth cites for chemical leaveners, but this [one](http://www.joepastry.com/2013/when-baking-recipes-dont-scale/) lists a few simple rationales, and [this](https://www.inkling.com/read/cooking-for-geeks-jeff-potter-1st/chapter-5/chemical-leaveners) points out the chemistry problem with the volumetric approach used in most home kitchens as opposed to weight. Ah, well, that’s an important caveat. I pointed out the problem with volumetric measurements. For me, proportional is by weight, not volume, but I can see where others would interpret that differently. ---
**Author:** ![sylmar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b782af/32.png) [@sylmar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sylmar)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-cooking-ingedients-always-seem-to-scale-linearly-with-the-number-of-portions/671764/25 "2013-10-21T21:56:58Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > That makes absolutely no sense to me. Like I said, my sausage recipes are all based on weight, and to get them to taste right, salt has to be about 2% by weight-to-mean, no matter the size of the batch. I’ve made small batches, I’ve made big batches. The salt levels have always scaled exactly, and when you find sausage recipes, you’ll often see them expressed in these sorts of proportions. > > As to why that makes no sense, think about it. If you make 5 batches of stew with all the same proportions and mix them together, why would the salinity be any different than one big batch of stew made with 5x the salt? The only possibility I see is evaporation of liquid, but that should make the smaller batch saltier, not less salty, than the bigger batch. (And in something like big batches of sausage, it would make no difference whatsoever.) I think that’s a weight vs volumetric issue again. Precision is for scientist, kitchen diva’s are _artiste_… ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-cooking-ingedients-always-seem-to-scale-linearly-with-the-number-of-portions/671764/26 "2013-10-21T22:10:30Z")
> [@sylmar](#): > > I think that’s a weight vs volumetric issue again. It is, which is why for scalability, I keep certain recipes by weight instead of volume. Like, for example, my Hungarian stew recipe, my important ratio is 2:1 by weight of meat to onions, but the other stuff you can fudge a little by taste. It also makes shopping a hell of a lot easier, because you don’t have to worry about what exactly a “large” onion is. You buy a certain weight of meat, you throw half as many by weight onions on the scale, and you’re good to go. Or with something like lecsó, which is 2:1:1 by weight of paprika to onions to tomatoes. Consistent and reproducible results every time, no fuss, no muss, no matter the scale. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-cooking-ingedients-always-seem-to-scale-linearly-with-the-number-of-portions/671764/27 "2013-10-21T22:28:36Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > Go to the nearest bus stop, there should be a box marked “Pandora”. **Don’t open it**. Place the product on top of the box and never look back. I opened it. I opened it before I got to the part of your post that said, “Don’t open it.” ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-cooking-ingedients-always-seem-to-scale-linearly-with-the-number-of-portions/671764/28 "2013-10-21T22:33:29Z")
You might want to check out this book: [http://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cooking/dp/1416571728](http://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cooking/dp/1416571728) It goes into the ratios between key ingredients–flour, liquid, fat, sugar, egg–make different products. Some of it is method, but ratios between ingredients determine whether you end up with bread dough, sponge cake batter, pound cake batter, pie dough, pasta dough, biscuit dough, pancake batter, and so on. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-cooking-ingedients-always-seem-to-scale-linearly-with-the-number-of-portions/671764/29 "2013-10-21T22:40:20Z")
> [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > I opened it. I opened it before I got to the part of your post that said, “Don’t open it.” Then there’s no hope. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2013, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-cooking-ingedients-always-seem-to-scale-linearly-with-the-number-of-portions/671764/30 "2013-10-22T00:15:56Z")
I can categorically state that if you are making cyser, and one batch calls for 1 tbsp whole cloves, if you are doubling the batch DO NOT double the amount of cloves … you can actually use the same amount od whole cloves for up to a triple batch. If you double the cloves with the rest f the ingredients, you will end up with a cyser that might as well be used to dab on toothaches :eek: I was making cyser for a competition and decided I might as well double the batch so I could have some for the camp to drink as well. When it came time to taste to correct any deficiencies, it about knocked our socks off with the amazing cloviness of it all. We had to restart with all new ingredients. The single amount of cloves for 5 gallons of cyser flavored the same for the 10 gallon batch, and later for the 15 gallon batch. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2013, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-cooking-ingedients-always-seem-to-scale-linearly-with-the-number-of-portions/671764/31 "2013-10-22T00:20:17Z")
> [@Tabby\_Cat](#): > > Is this chemist speak for “blew up half the lab”? 😃 😃 There are reasons why I work in an office now. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2013, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-cooking-ingedients-always-seem-to-scale-linearly-with-the-number-of-portions/671764/32 "2013-10-22T01:18:57Z")
Proust’s Law of Definite Proportions? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-cooking-ingedients-always-seem-to-scale-linearly-with-the-number-of-portions/671764.md?page=1)