In short
- Savour adds up the allergens of every recipe, including those from your base recipes.
- You link hundreds of ingredient names in one go, and you always see first what Savour will do.
- As long as something is unchecked, Savour says so. Never "allergen-free" by guesswork.
Savour reads your ingredients
For every recipe line Savour looks up the ingredient: in "250 g cold butter, diced" that is butter, with milk as the allergen. For this Savour uses one shared list of ingredients and their allergens: the Savour list. It exists in five languages. The Dutch list has over 3,100 ingredients; English, German, Spanish and French each have between 2,600 and 2,900.
So you do not have to enter hundreds of ingredients yourself. Whatever is on the Savour list counts straight away. If you use a base recipe, such as a stock, a dough or a sauce, its allergens count too. If the mustard is in your vinaigrette, you also see mustard on the salad that uses the vinaigrette.
You only answer the questions
Whatever Savour is not sure about is under Allergens → To check. There you get one question at a time:
- Is this suggestion right? For example: crème fraîche, with milk.
- Is this right for your brand? For ingredients that differ by brand.
- Is this your own recipe? "Veg stock" in a line then becomes your recipe Vegetable stock.
- Is this an ingredient at all? Words like "mix", "filling" or "for the tin" you remove; Savour remembers that for new recipes.
- What is this? For a name Savour does not know, such as "juice": which juice, only you know.
Different by brand
Some ingredients contain something different from one brand to the next. Think of gelatine (pork, beef or fish), soy sauce (with or without gluten), chocolate (milk, soy, nuts), stock and fond (celery, gluten), sausage and cold cuts, pesto (nuts), mayonnaise (egg, mustard) and breadcrumbs. For these ingredients Savour asks once per kitchen. If your brand is different, make your own version; it takes priority over the Savour list.
The 14 allergens, and what you switch on
By default Savour shows the 14 allergens from the European rules: gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soy, milk, nuts, celery, mustard, sesame, sulphites, lupin and molluscs. Under Allergens → Allergens you switch on what else guests ask about, such as lactose, pork, alcohol, garlic or the onion family. Those are off by default. Whatever you switch off again is kept; you just no longer see it.
Lactose is deliberately separate from milk: lactose-free cream still contains milk protein.
Why Savour never says something is allergen-free
One allergen too many is annoying; one too few is dangerous. That is why Savour is strict. As long as a recipe has an ingredient that has not been reviewed, it says the recipe is not complete yet, with a question mark where Savour does not know. Only when everything is reviewed and none of the 14 allergens is in it does Savour say the recipe contains none of the 14 allergens. For the characteristics you switch on yourself, Savour only reports what is in it, never that it is not.
A suggestion stays a suggestion. Your supplier’s label always comes first.
On the recipe, on the chart and on paper
Every recipe has an Allergens block that you fold open. Below it is the allergen chart: for each ingredient line which allergens it contains, so you see at a glance where the celery comes from. When you print a recipe, you choose whether the allergens go on it. If the recipe is not fully reviewed yet, that is on it too.
One allergen too many is annoying; one too few is dangerous.
In the kitchen team
A kitchen team has one ingredient list for the whole team. The owner and those who can edit answer the questions and adjust ingredients. A cook sees the allergens on every recipe and can see per line where they come from.
Where the Savour list comes from
The Savour list is built from the ingredient list of Open Food Facts, the Wikipedia lists of vegetables, herbs, mushrooms, sauces and cheeses, the Dutch product names from NEVO (the Dutch food composition database of RIVM) and Savour’s own list of kitchen terms. NEVO itself contains no allergens; those are added by Savour.
If an ingredient shows up in recipes that is not on the list yet, we review it before it is added. We only see the name of the ingredient, never your recipes. The whole list is public: see Savour’s ingredient list. If you spot a mistake, let us know.
What does it cost?
Allergens are part of Savour Pro, and also work in a kitchen team whose owner has Pro. New accounts get 7 days of Pro for free. Want to look first? Open the demo: the sample recipes show their allergens. More about the feature is on Allergens per recipe.
This explains the feature as it is live today. If anything changes, we will update it here.