How recipes are made

The bulk of the catalog is adapted from MyPlate Kitchen, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's recipe collection. Those recipes are works of the U.S. federal government and are in the public domain. USDA has since retired the MyPlate site, so Minced read the pages from the Internet Archive's saved copies.

We normalise units, match each ingredient to a standard ingredient list and reflow the steps. Because that changes the text, each page says “adapted from”, not “by USDA”.

Some recipes are marked Drafted with AI, reviewed by Minced. An AI model wrote the draft. Each dish was checked against several independent recipes to confirm it is a real, traditional dish with a standard ingredient list, and Minced reviewed the result for ingredient matching. Amounts, cook times and steps are our own and have not all been checked by a cook.

That is not the same as cooked and tested in a kitchen. If a time or temperature looks off to you, trust your thermometer and your senses, and cook meat, poultry and eggs to the safe internal temperatures published by the USDA.

A photo appears only when we can use it honestly: public-domain photos (USDA photographs and other files marked public domain), or files from Wikimedia Commons and Openverse (mostly Flickr) licensed CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, with the author credited on the image where the licence asks for it. Where a photo is not free to use, or isn't a real picture of that dish, the card shows a plain striped block instead. We never show an AI-generated image as the finished dish.

Calories and nutrients are estimated from USDA FoodData Central, which is public domain. Recipes adapted from MyPlate Kitchen carry USDA's own published values; for the rest, Minced adds up the USDA values of each ingredient. Brands, trimming, cooking method and how you measure all move the real numbers. Treat them as a guide, not a label.

Minced is not medical or dietary advice. If you are pregnant, managing a medical condition or on a prescribed diet, check with a qualified professional.

Allergens are worked out from the ingredients a recipe lists. That means they can be incomplete or wrong. They cannot see the brand of soy sauce you buy, a “may contain” label or cross-contact in a factory or kitchen. Read the labels of what you buy, and do not rely on Minced if you have a serious allergy.

You tap what you have and Minced lists every recipe that uses at least one of those things, closest match first. Each recipe ingredient is matched to one standard ingredient, so “scallion” and “green onion” are the same thing. Salt, pepper, oil, butter, sugar, flour and water are assumed to be in your kitchen and never count as missing, and optional ingredients are not counted either. You can search by fridge without an account; the picks live in the link you share. Sign in to save your fridge, your favourite recipes and a shopping list.

Minced is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or reviewed by the USDA.

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