Self-hosted recipe manager with true sub-recipe composition that auto-scales nested components
Home cooks who self-host want to define reusable component recipes (a dough, a bechamel, a bolognese, a stock) once and compose them into larger dishes as a graph, so editing the component updates every dish that uses it AND the component's quantities scale automatically when the parent recipe's servings change. Mealie has no recipe composition at all (the suggested workaround is pasting a hyperlink into the ingredient list, which neither composes nor scales), and Tandoor lets you embed a recipe as a step but does not scale the nested recipe's quantities. Auto-scaling, reusable sub-recipes are the recurring missing primitive across both leading FOSS recipe apps.
The trap is the scaling math, not the linking. Embedding a recipe is easy; the value is unit-aware quantity propagation through a DAG (component yields '1 batch = 500g dough'; parent needs 750g -> 1.5x, and the whole tree re-scales when parent servings change). Get the yield/unit model wrong and you ship the same useless hyperlink everyone already rejects. Best built as a Mealie/Tandoor contribution or a thin layer over their APIs — the audience is already committed to those tools.
landscape (2 existing solutions)
Mealie and Tandoor are the two dominant self-hosted recipe managers. Both handle within-recipe organization (sections/steps), but neither offers reusable component recipes that scale: Mealie has no composition, Tandoor has composition without scaling. The demand is specifically DRY, auto-scaling sub-recipes for cooks who batch shared bases.