Food Database

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.

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
 

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....