Halving Recipes

How to scale down recipes for smaller portions

Why Halve?

Halving recipes is perfect for cooking for one or two people, trying a new recipe without committing to full portions, or reducing food waste.

2 cups becomes 1 cup when halving

Tricky Fractions

Halving can create awkward fractions. Here's how to handle them: ½ cup → ¼ cup, ⅓ cup → 2⅔ tablespoons, ¼ cup → 2 tablespoons, 1 tablespoon → 1½ teaspoons.

$Chart showing solutions for odd number fractions$

How to handle tricky halving situations

Eggs and Odd Items

For 1 egg halved, whisk the egg and weigh out half, about 25 g for a large egg. For 3 eggs halved, the scaler shows 1½ eggs: use 1 whole egg plus half of a whisked egg.

Sources: King Arthur Baking — How to reduce a recipe · King Arthur Baking — Digital kitchen scale

Single-Serving Scaling

Going from 4 servings to 1? That's ÷4 or ×0.25. The scaler handles this automatically—just set your original servings to 4 and target to 1.

Ready to Scale?

Open Recipe Scaler