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Mark01Flag for United States of America

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Food Database

This is not a homework question. This question involves defining an entity that includes cake batter, the result of mixing the ingredients in a given recipe resulting in a variety of batters.

Mixing the ingredients in a cake recipe results in producing cake batter. Cake batter is part of some sort of "Type" entity. This "type" entity includes various batters and doughs.

Here is some sample data: cake recipe #1 batter was frozen on 3-1-2000.

The food database already has Recipe and Ingredient tables. Please help me define the entity.
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John Tsioumpris
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I'm having a hard time associating cake batter with a given recipe. Some sample data is shown:
Recipe: cake recipe #1

Batter doesn't seem to be an attribute of the Recipe table. It seems like a linking table with RecipeID foreign key with the batter category name would work. Any thoughts?
It is like a BOM (bill of materials), an Assembly made from ingredients.

You say you have an ingredients table, so this is in between Recipe (being the end product) and Ingredient (being Raw materials).

So, "batter" will become a mix of raw materials (flour, eggs, milk etc) and become the usable part in the Recipe in place of (or a shortcut to) the raw materials themselves. Having said that, It can always be expanded back into the raw materials list if needed. Each "batter" would have deviations of quantities / ingredients etc. So, you need to build that table as a new beast.

When building a recipe (as the end product), you could choose "batter" or bypass that and go straight to raw materials. It depends on how sophisticated you want to get.

Not sure what the correct term would be in a kitchen (it is a type of recipe when you think about it, just not the finished item).... But will have a few thoughts.
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Your comments are very helpful. There is no need to associate ingredients with cake batter. The important association is a recipe with cake batter.

A linking table may be appropriate. The database already Freezer and Shelf tables to track the location of recipes in the freezer.

Fields:
RecipeID (FK)
FreezerID (FK)
Batter (boolean)
Dough (boolean)
Freeze date
 
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Thank you, ste5an, Mark Wills and John Tsioumpris.
Our pleasure. Hope your project works out for you without too many frustrations. Always think about the data. How it relates to each other. All the best....