# Alternative needed for Venn diagrams for recipes I

#### WinklePicker

Hello All,

Greetings from the UK. I have a problem for which I need advice on the best way to solve it.

I have a smoothie recipe book that I want to work out the most efficient way to buy the ingredients. I thought of using a Venn diagram to show me what ingredients are used in many recipes with the few extra I need to add. I have found software to do this, but there would be too many sets, so I wonder whether there is a better way to do it.

I work in IT, so could use software or write code to do it, but I need to know the best way to approach it.

Any help would be appreciated.

Regards,

Chris

#### romsek

Math Team
You're going to have to define efficient in this context. Do you mean what is the best combo of ingredients to buy such that every smoothie in your book can be made once with minimal leftover ingredients?

#### WinklePicker

Yes - I am after ingredients that are used in many recipes with the additional ones needed. Do you think this is possible?

#### romsek

Math Team
Yes - I am after ingredients that are used in many recipes with the additional ones needed. Do you think this is possible?
In general sure it's possible. It all depends on how many recipes there are and the intersection of the ingredients among them.
Then you have to take into account how the ingredients are packaged. Some ingredients you may be able to buy exactly how much you want.
Others are going to come in some selection of sizes.

This sort of problem is solved all the time.

#### WinklePicker

Sounds great. What mathematical way should I look at to achieve this? There are about 50 recipes and the ingredients will be frozen so I don't need to worry about buying the correct quantities etc. I assume VENN would not be suitable. I can research methods that you think would be suitable.

#### romsek

Math Team
If you don't have to worry about buying correct quantities I don't see what the issue is.

Put together a spreadsheet of your recipes including the number of each recipe you want to actually make.

Total up all the needed ingredients by scaling the per recipe quantity by the # you want to make and sum up across the recipes for each ingredient.

Allow for a bit of wastage. You can figure out how much after a few goes.

Buy that amount of each ingredient. Done.

What am I missing?

#### WinklePicker

I'm trying to work out how to buy a generic group of ingredients that need a few other ingredients for the recipies.

e.g.

generic - kale, banana, spinach etc
recipe 1 - generic & flax seeds & lemon
recipe 2 - generic & coca & lime

I'll have a go at the spreadsheet to see how I get on.

Thanks for the tips.

#### skipjack

Forum Staff
Will you be using the recipes just for people you know well? I ask because, for example, not everyone wants the flavour of what they consume to be dominated by banana flavour, or they may prefer their spinach to be cooked.

#### WinklePicker

It is just for myself.

#### skipjack

Forum Staff
If the $n$th recipe includes the $m$th ingredient, you can plot all the points $(m, n)$ and the resulting chart will probably make it easy to see which ingredients should be regarded as generic.