Parts and sub-recipes
Organize compound recipes into parts and reuse other recipes as an ingredient, with their cost cascading up.
What it is
When a recipe has several components with their own composition (for example, a bonbon with a filling and a couverture), you can structure it in two ways: by splitting it into parts or by inserting other recipes as sub-recipes. Both actions live in the Ingredients tab of the editor.
Parts
Parts group ingredients within the same recipe, each group with its own table and its own weight.
Split the recipe
In the Ingredients tab, click Add part. The recipe now has Part 1 (with the ingredients you already had) and Part 2 (empty).
Manage each part
Each part lets you rename it, move it up or down, delete it, and has its own Add components button to add ingredients to it.
If any ingredients remain unassigned to a part, the editor shows the notice N components without an assigned part with the option to assign them to one of the parts.
Parts print as separate sections on the A4 technical sheet (see Print recipe).
Sub-recipes
A sub-recipe is another one of your recipes inserted as a compound ingredient. Useful for reusing a base you prepare often (for example, a base ganache).
Open the selector
In the Ingredients tab, click Sub-recipe. The Add a sub-recipe as an ingredient modal opens.
Search and insert
Use the Search recipe by name... field and select the recipe you want to insert. It appears as another row in the table, with the sub-recipe badge.
Cost cascade
When you insert a sub-recipe as a component, its cost is not recomputed from scratch inside the parent recipe. AreaCacao works out the sub-recipe's cost per gram once and then cascades it upward:
Component cost = the sub-recipe's cost per gram × the weight (g) you used of it.
That cost per gram comes from the sub-recipe's full composition (ingredients, labor, equipment, and overhead) and is recorded. If the same sub-recipe shows up several times in the tree, the already-computed value is reused instead of being recalculated for every row.
Because the cost lives in a single source, one sub-recipe can chain into another: a base feeds a ganache, and that ganache feeds the final bonbon. The cost rolls up level by level all the way to the parent recipe.
What happens when you change a base ingredient
If you update an ingredient or its purchase price, every recipe that depends on the affected sub-recipe reflects the new cost when you recalculate or reopen it. You don't have to edit each parent recipe by hand: the cost is re-evaluated following the sub-recipe chain.
The cost cascade is guarded against two edge cases. If a sub-recipe ends up referencing itself (a cycle), AreaCacao breaks the loop: that component counts as cost 0 and a sub-recipe cycle detected notice is shown. The same happens when the nesting goes too deep: once the maximum depth of chained sub-recipes is exceeded, the cascade stops with a notice. When a sub-recipe's cost per gram is unavailable (for example, a recipe with no total weight), that component also counts as cost 0 and you'll see a sub-recipe cost unavailable notice.
To understand how this cost is combined with labor, equipment, and fixed costs, see Cost Management.
Next steps
Scale recipe
Adjust a recipe to a different weight, factor, or number of servings, with a preview before applying.
Version history & duplicate
Recipe versioning with a timeline: complete capture of every change (ingredients, supplies, costs, validation, nutrition), navigate your history, restore without losing new work, and duplicate to experiment.