CulinaryItem.md

🧠 CulinaryItem and Recipe Core Model

This document defines the foundational business concepts and relationships that form the backbone of the recipe system.

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🧱 CulinaryItem

A CulinaryItem is any discrete food-related object—raw or prepared—that can appear in a recipe system.

🔑 Properties

• IsRawIngredient (bool)

  • true if the item cannot be broken down into other CulinaryItems (in-app).
  • Examples: Salt, Olive Oil, Basil Leaves

• IsIngredient (bool, read-only)

  • true if the item appears as an input in at least one Recipe.
  • Derived dynamically based on system data.

• IsRecipe (bool, read-only)

  • true if the item is produced as an output of at least one Recipe.
  • Derived dynamically based on system data.

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🍴 Recipe

A Recipe is a transformation rule that defines how to create one CulinaryItem from others.

🧾 Structure

• InputItems: List<CulinaryItem>
  Items required to produce the output.

• OutputItem: CulinaryItem
  The resulting item after following the recipe.

• Instructions: List<string>
  Steps to combine or transform the inputs.

🔁 Derived Behavior

• Any item listed in InputItems will have IsIngredient = true
• The OutputItem of a recipe will have IsRecipe = true

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🧪 Example: Pesto Sauce

Recipe: Make Pesto

• Inputs:
  • Basil (IsRawIngredient)
  • Olive Oil (IsRawIngredient)
  • Parmesan (IsRawIngredient)
  • Garlic (IsRawIngredient)
  • Pine Nuts (IsRawIngredient)
• Output:
  • Pesto Sauce

Resulting Flags:

• Basil, Olive Oil, etc. → IsIngredient = true, IsRawIngredient = true
• Pesto Sauce → IsRecipe = true, IsIngredient = false, IsRawIngredient = false

If later used in a new recipe (e.g., "Pesto Noodles"), Pesto Sauce would also have:

• IsIngredient = true

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This model supports modularity, reuse, nesting, and clean separation of concerns. It forms the conceptual spine of the recipe app.