Recipe development: From ingredients to perfect kitchen instructions

Recipe development: From ingredients to perfect kitchen instructions

Every product is unique – in taste and smell, in appearance, in stability or shelf life. But what exactly makes a product stand out is most evident when it is used in the professional or home kitchen.

Individual recipes that are attractive for the respective target group are a key to establishing a product permanently in the market. Because new ideas support the professional in the restaurant or canteen just as much as the amateur or family cook in the most important question: What is there to eat today?

As individual as your product: good recipes

The essential prerequisites for this are: interesting ingredients, easy-to-understand steps and, of course, certainty of success. Meat cooked to perfection, vegetables with bite, finely seasoned sauces, juicy cakes, creamy desserts – the result on the plate has to be right. And that requires experience.

Creativity needs competence

Anyone who develops recipes must understand food and be able to handle it. A well-founded training as a chef, together with versatile kitchen experience, creates the ideal basic prerequisites. However, since learned cooking skills are not everything, we proceed systematically from the first idea to the final customer recipe.

We ask the most important questions in advance: Which product is the focus? For which target group? Cooking or baking, hot or cold, food or drink, classic or modern? And does the whole thing even have to come together in one campaign?

As soon as the framework conditions have been established, we get down to the actual work. We draw on many years of experience in top gastronomy, the exchange of ideas within the team, specific customer specifications, the internet, print media, impressions gathered during travels and even spontaneous inspirations on the way home.

Why don't you make a recipe for a delicious tomato soup? One that doesn't exist yet!

Recipe development likes to mean reinventing the wheel – even though, in today’s networked world, everything somehow already exists. But with competence and creativity, we still find the way to new, versatile and custom-fit results that work.

Knowing how or learning from experience?

In our agency’s own test kitchen, ideas are turned into real dishes. Ingredients, quantities, preparation methods, temperatures and duration or even the potential standing time in the buffet – all this has to be tried out. The wealth of experience at the cooker is extremely helpful here. Depending on the complexity, 1-2 tests are usually enough to create a recipe that is sure to succeed. Each one is critically tested and fine-tuned in the team until we are really satisfied. And with the final nutritional calculation, we hand over the new recipes to the customer.

Christmas in August

Because of the lead times in sales and communication, recipe development very often takes place anti-cyclically: so we often enjoy the first Christmas round in high summer. And if desired, we can also stage the new creations in a well-air-conditioned photo studio. Because together with a professional photo, recipes really whet the appetite to try them out.