Whole-Dinner Planner: Scale, Convert, Set the Oven, Cost and Count Back

Home › Calculators › Whole-Dinner Planner

Opens on Chapter 22’s example: Tamsin’s birthday dinner for 10 at 7:30: an Australian pumpkin soup, an American cornbread and a British cake.

The party

Guests

Serve at

My oven runs hot by (°F)

Dial steps (°F)

Recipes, one a line: name | serves | oven temperature (°F or °C, or none) | minutes in the oven | rest after

Recipes

Oven: cold to the first temperature (min)

Climb (°F a minute)

Buffer

Convert a foreign measure

Amount

Unit

× the soup’s factor?

Pan check

Recipe’s round pan (in)

My round pan (in)

Batter scaled by

Shopping: item | cost

Costs of what each dish uses

Enter your numbers, then press Work it out.

How it works

Each recipe’s factor is guests ÷ what it serves (a recipe that already serves more needs none; the extra are spares). Australian tablespoons are 20 mL and metric cups 250 mL, so convert by milliliters, not by name. The oven dial is the temperature you want minus what your oven runs hot by, rounded to the dial’s steps. A batter moved to a bigger round pan is thinner by the area ratio, (d₂ ÷ d₁)², unless you scale it up. With one oven, the cooler bake goes first, then the oven climbs to the hotter one; count everything back from the serving time and put the buffer at the start.

From the book, Chapter 22. Ten guests: the soup × 2 1/2, the cornbread × 1 1/4, the cake as is (2 slices spare). 180°C wants 340°F on Tamsin’s dial, 200°C 375°F, 400°F 385°F. Five Australian tablespoons of oil are 100 mL, 6.8 US tablespoons (five US ones are only 74 mL, 26% short). The 9-in pans are 1.27 times the 8-in: the cake keeps 79% of its depth, 98.8% if scaled by 1 1/4. Cake in at 6:31 pm, out 7:01 pm; cornbread in at 7:05 pm after a 4-minute climb; oven on at 6:20 pm (6:13 pm with the 7-minute buffer). The dinner costs $29.33, $2.93 a guest. Every chapter and its calculator →

Amounts can be typed as 3, 0.75, 3/4, 1 1/2 or 1½. They’re worked as exact fractions and written as a cook measures them: cups in quarters or thirds, then tablespoons, then teaspoons to the nearest eighth. Everything stays in your browser: no sign-up, nothing stored or sent.