Most people's best recipes aren't online. They're on an index card in a drawer, in a cookbook with a cracked spine, on a clipping that's been folded so many times the middle has worn through. Photographing them feels like solving the problem, and it half does — but a camera roll isn't searchable by ingredient, and you can't build a shopping list out of it.
Turning the photo into an actual recipe is the part that makes it useful. Here's how, and how to get a clean result the first time.
What you can photograph
- Cookbook pages — including tightly set two-column layouts
- Handwritten recipe cards, if the handwriting is reasonably legible
- Magazine and newspaper clippings
- Screenshots — a recipe in a comment, a text from your mum, a slide from a story
- Printouts from a website you can no longer find
How to do it
- Open Masterplan and start a new recipe.
- Choose From a photo.
- Take the picture, or pick one from your camera roll.
- Check the result and save. Ingredients, steps, times and yield are filled in for you, and everything stays editable.
Masterplan is free for 20 imports a month, and a photo counts as one import. Nutrition information is part of the paid Edition tier.
Getting a clean read
The quality of what comes back depends almost entirely on the photo. Five things make most of the difference:
- Get the whole recipe in frame. If the method runs onto a second page, that's a second photo — a half-captured recipe reads as a finished one, which is worse than an obvious failure.
- Flatten the page. Press the book open or lay the card down. Curved paper distorts the lines of text nearest the spine.
- Use indirect light. Overhead kitchen light casts your own shadow across the page. A window works better than a flash, which tends to blow out glossy cookbook paper.
- Shoot straight down. A steep angle compresses the lines furthest away and makes fractions especially hard to read.
- One recipe per photo. Cookbook pages often carry the end of the previous recipe at the top. Crop it out.
What to double-check afterwards
Reading a photo is genuinely harder than reading a web page, so give the result a quick once-over before you rely on it. The things most worth checking:
- Fractions. ½ and ⅓ are the usual casualties, especially in handwriting.
- Oven temperatures, and whether the original was in °C or °F.
- Anything in the margin. Handwritten notes up the side of a card — "double the vanilla" — are exactly the part worth keeping, and the part most likely to be missed.
Preserving family recipes
There's a practical reason to do this beyond convenience. Index cards fade, get splashed, and eventually get thrown out by someone who doesn't recognise them. A recipe that exists in exactly one physical copy is one kitchen flood away from being gone.
Digitising it means it's backed up, searchable and shareable — you can send your grandmother's cake to your sister with a link instead of a photocopy. Keep the original photo attached to the recipe when you save it. The handwriting is part of what you're keeping, not just the instructions.
Common questions
Does it read handwriting?
Usually, if it's reasonably legible. Neat print is close to flawless, ordinary cursive is generally fine, and a hurried scrawl in faded biro is where it struggles — the same order a person would find them.
What about a recipe spread across two pages?
Photograph the page with the ingredients and method on it. If the recipe genuinely continues overleaf, import the first part and paste or type the remainder in — everything stays editable after import.
Can I import a screenshot?
Yes, and it's one of the most useful cases. A recipe in a TikTok comment or an Instagram story isn't reachable by a link, but a screenshot of it works exactly like a cookbook page.
Is my photo kept?
Photos you import are processed to extract the recipe, and our providers aren't permitted to use your content for their own purposes. See the Privacy Policy for the detail.
Get the recipe box out of the drawer
Photograph it once and stop worrying about losing it. Free on iPhone.
