Technical preferences
Set your melanger capacity, the default batch size, and the weight and volume units the app uses when designing recipes.
The Preferences tab stores your workshop defaults: your machine's capacity, the default batch size, the units you prefer to work in, and which ingredients the search in your recipes offers you. The app uses these values when designing recipes and showing quantities. It lives at https://app.areacacao.com/configurations, on the Preferences tab.
How to get there
Avatar in the sidebar → Settings → Preferences tab. Under the Technical preferences heading, it says: "Defaults the app uses when designing recipes and showing quantities."
Melanger / refiner capacity
The maximum volume, in kilograms, your main machine can process. Adjust it with a slider or by typing the number on the right. It's used to size batches in the chocolate formulator, so the recipes you design don't exceed what your equipment can refine in one pass.
Default batch size
The initial total weight, in grams, the app assumes when you create a new recipe without specifying a size. It saves you from typing it every time.
Preferred units
| Setting | Options |
|---|---|
| Preferred weight unit | Grams (g) · Ounces (oz) |
| Preferred volume unit | Milliliters (ml) · Fluid ounces (fl oz) |
Click Save preferences to apply your changes; while it processes, the button shows "Saving…", and once done you'll see "Preferences saved".
Ingredients when adding components
Below the Save preferences button, the Ingredients when adding components card decides what the Add components search offers you when you add ingredients to a recipe. Its Show selector has the same three options as the one on the editor's Ingredients tab:
| Option | What the search offers you |
|---|---|
| Whole catalog | The full catalog plus your own ingredients. This is the default. |
| No base ingredients | The catalog without these generic entries: water (mineral, filtered, distilled or tap), salt (fine, sea, fine sea, common, table or coarse), sugar (white, refined or granulated) and sucrose, cocoa butter, milk (whole, semi-skimmed, skimmed, liquid or cow's) and lecithin (soy or sunflower). Anything else, such as “Brown sugar”, “Maldon salt” or “Milk powder”, still shows up, and so do your own ingredients. |
| Only my ingredients | Only the ingredients you created; the whole catalog is hidden. |
Below the selector, the card explains the option you picked.
Your choice is saved to your account as soon as you pick an option, with no need for Save preferences, and the card confirms "Preference saved". It's the same preference as the Show selector in the recipe's search: change it here or there and it changes in both places and on all your devices. If the app can't load it, it shows you the whole catalog and a Retry button.
How the selector works inside a recipe is explained in Ingredients tab.
Exchange rates
On this same tab, further down, you'll find the Exchange rates panel: the conversion rates the app uses to show costs in different currencies. They're applied when you work with ingredients invoiced in a currency other than your own.
Rates are set against your base currency (the one you chose on the Regional tab). For each foreign currency you enter how much it's worth: the table shows a 1 [base currency] = X row, where you type the value by hand.
Add a currency. Click Add another currency and pick one from the list of common currencies: US dollar (USD), euro (EUR), pound sterling (GBP), Mexican peso (MXN), Colombian peso (COP), Argentine peso (ARS), Brazilian real (BRL), Chilean peso (CLP), Peruvian sol (PEN), or Venezuelan bolívar (VES).
Edit the rate. In the 1 [base currency] = X column, type the conversion value of each currency against your base currency.
Remove what you don't need. Use Remove currency to drop a currency you no longer need.
Save. Click Save rates; while it processes you'll see "Saving…", and once done "Rates saved".
Rates are manual: you enter and update them yourself. A future version will add automatic updates from the European Central Bank (ECB).
Looking for country, currency, or language? Those settings live on the Regional tab, not here. See Region and language.