Halve a Recipe

Halving a recipe means cutting every ingredient to exactly half, which is ideal when a dish serves more than you need or you're cooking for one or two. The tricky part is the fractions: half of 3/4 cup is 6 tablespoons, half of 1/3 cup is about 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons, and half of a single egg means beating one egg and using half by volume (roughly 2 tablespoons). This tool does that fiddly math for you and returns measurements you can actually scoop.

Paste your recipe, halve it in one click, and every quantity is rewritten in clean kitchen units. It's the fastest fix when you spot a tempting recipe that simply makes too much. A practical tip: keep the oven temperature exactly the same when halving, but check for doneness a little earlier, since a smaller quantity in the same-size pan can cook faster. For baking, a half batch often suits a smaller tin, which helps things rise and bake evenly.

How to scale a recipe up or down

To resize a recipe, multiply every ingredient by the same factor: ½ to halve it, 2 to double it, 3 to triple it. Paste your ingredients above and this tool does the math for you, including the tricky fractions, so you get “1 ½ eggs” instead of “1.5 eggs”.

Tips for reliable results

• Eggs: for half an egg, beat one egg and use half by volume (about 1½ tbsp).
• Leaveners & salt: scale them too, but taste-sensitive items like spices can be adjusted to preference.
• Pans & time: a bigger batch needs a bigger pan; baking time changes with depth, not just volume. Check early with a skewer.
• Don’t over-scale: beyond 3–4× it’s usually better to bake in batches for even cooking.