Scan Any Recipe — From Photo to Editable Recipe
Photograph a handwritten recipe card, a cookbook page, or a screenshot, and KitchenConvert turns it into a structured, editable recipe — ingredients parsed, measurements converted, steps numbered. Nana’s card stays in the drawer; the recipe lives forever.
From shoebox card to usable recipe
The photo you take
Nana’s banana bread
2 c flour, 1 c sugar, ½ c butter,
3 ripe bananas, 2 eggs, 1 tsp bi-carb,
pinch salt, splash of vanilla
Cream butter & sugar. Beat in eggs and banana. Fold in dry. Loaf tin, moderate oven 350°, about an hour or till a skewer comes out clean.
What KitchenConvert gives back
Nana’s Banana Bread
Makes 1 loaf · 10 slices
- 2 cupsplain flour→ 250 g
- 1 cupsugar→ 200 g
- ½ cupbutter, softened→ 113 g
- 3ripe bananas, mashed
- 2eggs
- 1 tspbicarbonate of soda
- 1 tspvanilla extractwas “a splash”
- ¼ tspsaltwas “pinch”
- Cream the butter and sugar until pale.
- Beat in the eggs and mashed banana.
- Fold in the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt.
- Pour into a loaf tin. Bake at 180 °C (350 °F, gas 4) for 55–60 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.
What the scanner did with that card
- Read the cursive handwriting, including abbreviations — “2 c flour” became 2 cups of plain flour, “bi-carb” became bicarbonate of soda.
- Converted volumes to weight with ingredient-specific densities: flour at 125 g per cup, sugar at 200 g — not one generic number for both.
- “Moderate oven, 350°” became 180 °C (gas mark 4, or 160 °C fan-forced).
- Vague amounts — “a splash”, “a pinch” — became editable estimates you can adjust.
Cards, cookbooks, clippings, screenshots
The scanner reads handwritten recipe cards (cursive included), printed cookbook pages, magazine clippings, and screenshots of recipes from anywhere. It doesn’t just transcribe the text — it understands recipe structure, so ingredients, amounts, steps and servings come back as separate, editable fields rather than one wall of text.
It reads other languages, too. Photograph a page from a French or Japanese cookbook and it’s translated to English in the same scan, with the measurements converted for your region — the recipe translator shows real before-and-after examples. And every scanned recipe plugs straight into the recipe converter — cups to grams, °F to °C, scaled to any serving count.
How it works
1. Snap a photo
Take a photo with your phone or upload one — recipe card, cookbook page, clipping or screenshot. Straight-on and well-lit reads best.
2. AI reads the recipe
Ingredients, amounts, steps and servings are extracted into structured fields. Foreign languages are translated in the same pass.
3. Edit, convert, keep
Fix anything the photo obscured, convert the units, scale the servings, and save it to your recipe box — digitised for good.
Common questions
Is the recipe scanner free?
Yes — a free account includes 10 photo scans a day, plus unlimited unit conversion and recipe scaling. Pro ($9/month) and Premium ($19/month) remove the daily limit. No credit card needed to start.
Can it read handwritten recipes?
Yes. Handwritten recipe cards are exactly what the scanner was built for — cursive, abbreviations like “1 c flour” or “bi-carb”, and vague amounts like “a splash of vanilla” all come through as structured, editable ingredients. Old family recipe cards are the most common thing people scan.
What kinds of photos work?
Handwritten cards, printed cookbook pages, magazine clippings, and screenshots of recipes all work. Clear, well-lit, straight-on photos read best. If a photo is too blurry to read, you get a clear error rather than a garbled recipe — just retake and rescan.
Does it work on recipes in other languages?
Yes. Photograph a French cookbook page or a Japanese magazine recipe and the scanner reads it and translates it to English in the same step — with the measurements converted too, since a Japanese cup is 200 ml, not 240 ml. See the recipe translator page for real translation examples.
What happens after a recipe is scanned?
It lands in your recipe box as fully editable text — fix anything the photo obscured, then convert cups to grams, scale the servings, get a nutrition estimate, or generate a shopping list. Measurements convert using ingredient-specific densities, so a cup of flour (125 g) is never treated like a cup of sugar (200 g).
Digitise the recipes worth keeping
A free account includes 10 photo scans a day, plus unlimited conversion and scaling. The handwritten cards fade — the recipes don’t have to.