Ingredient catalog

The ingredient catalog is Mirepoix’s built-in list of ingredients. This page explains how it matches and names what you cook and shop for, and how your kitchen’s settings stay with an ingredient under every name it goes by.

Other names for an ingredient

Many ingredients in the catalog answer to more than one name. Green onions also answers to scallions and spring onions, and Bananas to banana and overripe bananas. A recipe line or a grocery item written with any of those names finds that ingredient.

These names come with the catalog, and your kitchen can’t add its own. When a recipe uses a word that Mirepoix matches to the wrong ingredient, or to none, choose the ingredient for that line in the recipe editor — see Check ingredients. The choice belongs to that one line.

Parts you don’t buy on their own

A few built-in ingredients name a part of something you buy whole — lemon zest, lime juice, egg yolk, cooked rice. Each is an ingredient of its own in the catalog, with its own nutrition, because a recipe measures the part: two tablespoons of zest, not two lemons. That’s the figure a recipe’s nutrition panel counts. Juice you buy in a bottle or carton is a different ingredient — Lemon juice (from concentrate), Lime juice (bottled), Orange juice — and it never folds.

Your shopping is the other half. On Pantry and Groceries those parts fold into the thing you buy, so a recipe calling for lemon zest puts Lemon on the list. The aisle, the reminder, and everything else on that row belong to the ingredient you buy. See Parts you don’t buy on their own.

How a name is capitalized

Two spellings that differ only in capitalization or accents are the same ingredient. jalapeno, Jalapeño, and JALAPEÑO share one row on the Pantry and the grocery list. What’s left is which spelling that row shows.

A built-in catalog ingredient’s row shows the catalog’s own name, whatever word you used. Your jalapeno shows as Jalapeño, and your scallions as Green onions. See What a row is called.

An ingredient the catalog doesn’t know shows your kitchen’s spelling:

In a recipe — the recipe’s spelling is what shows. If two recipes spell it differently, the oldest recipe wins: every recipe counts first, oldest to newest, then your QuickBites. To change it, edit the recipe so it’s spelled the way you want.
In no recipe or QuickBite — say you added it straight to your grocery list in the wrong case. Add it again with the capitalization you want, and the new spelling replaces the old one on the same item. See How custom items behave for the one exception, a re-add typed without accents.

A recipe page always shows each line in the recipe’s own words.

When two spellings become one ingredient

An update to the built-in catalog can teach Mirepoix that two names your kitchen keeps separate settings for are the same ingredient — say you’d set an aisle on scallions and another on Green onions before the catalog knew they were one. The next time you change the ingredient on the Pantry or on Groceries, the two fold into one, without asking.

If one of them is spelled the way the catalog spells the ingredient, that one stays. What you set on the other spelling carries over:

Aisle, reminder length, and pantry history fill in wherever the surviving one has nothing of its own. Where both have a value, the survivor keeps its own. The later “last bought” date wins.
The item stays on your grocery list if either one was, and stays set to Don’t ask on the Pantry if either one was.
Store aisles move over. At a store where both had an aisle, the survivor’s stays. If either one was set aside at a store, under Not Available Here, it stays set aside there.
Your recipes aren’t rewritten.

Your changes apply under every name the ingredient answers to

A built-in ingredient answers to more than one name: its own, the other names the catalog carries for it, and its singular and plural. What your kitchen sets on it applies under all of them. Move Bananas to an aisle and a recipe line reading banana — or overripe bananas — lands in that aisle too. The reminder length and your store aisles reach every spelling the same way.

A name your kitchen keeps its own settings under still answers with them. What you set explicitly wins over what a spelling would otherwise inherit.

If a built-in ingredient is renamed

Built-in ingredients are sometimes renamed between releases — a name gets more specific, or a wording is corrected. Your settings follow the ingredient: its aisle, reminder length, and store aisles stay attached under the new name.

The old name usually keeps working too. It stays on the ingredient as one of its other names, so recipes that use it still find it. The exception is when the catalog has given that name to a different built-in ingredient. Then a line using the old name finds that one instead.

Rarely, a rename drops the old name on purpose. That happens when the old name is a bare word that means different products in different cuisines. Vermicelli is the one case so far: it’s now Vermicelli (wheat) and Vermicelli (rice). The plain word “vermicelli” is a name for neither, so a line that says only that may show ? for you to choose. Lines that say “rice vermicelli” or “wheat vermicelli noodles” still match. See Check ingredients.