Another important production standard is the recipe. A recipe is a list of the ingredients and the quantities of those ingredients needed to produce a par- ticular item, along with a procedure or method to follow. A standard rec-
ipe is the recipe that has been designated the correct one to use in a given
establishment.
Standard recipes help to ensure that the quality of any item will be the same each time the item is produced. They also help to establish consistency of taste, appearance, and customer acceptance. Figure 6.1 provides the stan- dard recipe for Fruits de Mer, an item on the menu of the Grandview Bistro. If the same ingredients are used in the correct proportions and the same pro- cedure is followed, the results should be nearly identical each time the stan- dard recipe is used, even if different people are doing the work. In addition, returning customers will be more likely to receive items of identical quality.
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Standard recipes are also very important to food control. Without standard recipes, costs cannot be controlled effectively. If a menu item is produced by different methods, with different ingredients, and in different proportions each time it is made, costs will be different each time any given quantity is produced. For example, the standard recipe for Fruits de Mer calls for 2 ounces of scallops, 4 shrimp, and 2 ounces of lobster meat for each por- tion served. If the item is prepared according to recipe, its quality and cost will be maintained according to management ’ s desire. However, if more or less of each major ingredient is used, the cost can be considerably higher or lower and the quality will vary. Additionally, if substitutions are made in the
• FIGURE 6.1 •
Standard Recipe
Fruits de Mer Yield: One 12 - oz. portion
2 oz. scallops (20 – 30 ct.)
4 ea. shrimp (16 – 20 ct.) peeled and deveined 2 oz. lobster meat
1 tsp. chopped garlic 1 tbsp. olive oil 1 oz. white wine 4 oz. light cream
1 tbsp. chiffonade of fresh basil 2 tbsp. freshly grated Romano cheese 4 oz. fresh spinach angel hair pasta salt and pepper to taste
1. Saut é scallops and shrimp in olive oil and garlic until they begin to lose translucency; add lobster meat and continue to saut é one more minute.
2. Deglaze with white wine and reduce by one - half.
3. Add light cream, basil, and half of the Romano cheese. Simmer until a
sauce consistency is achieved.
4. Meanwhile, immerse fresh pasta in salted boiling water for 2 minutes and drain.
5. Add cooked pasta to seafood mixture and toss until thoroughly incor- porated. Season appropriately.
6. Serve on 13 - inch plate. Garnish with remaining Romano cheese and a basil leaf.
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ESTABLISHING STANDARDS AND STANDARD PROCEDURES
169
ingredients (e.g., cod in place of lobster), the cost and taste will be different from what management desires.
Some people have the mistaken impression that standard recipes are those developed for use in schools, hospitals, and similar public institutions and that they use ingredients of poor quality and yield menu items of even lower quality. Such impressions are absolutely false. The term standard merely means that a recipe will produce an item of acceptable quality for a particular operation. Any recipe can be adopted as a standard recipe. Sometimes such recipes are taken from cookbooks or magazines. Sometimes they are devel- oped by the chef in a given restaurant, then tested and modified until they result in the production of an acceptable product. At that point, the recipe becomes the standard — the recipe that will be used each time the product is to be made.
In many operations, these standard recipes are written or printed on cards to be used by kitchen workers. They are made readily available to any workers responsible for producing menu items. If handwritten, the writing must be clear and legible so that the standard recipes can be easily followed. Sometimes they are printed on special cards that are then laminated in plas- tic for durability. Computer - printed recipes are easily stored in a program and can be easily changed and reprinted. In some establishments, these rec- ipe cards include either drawings or photographs of the finished products, to illustrate for the production staff exactly how the final product should look when served to the customer. Because they help provide uniform appearance for all portions of a given menu item, illustrated recipe cards are particularly important in restaurants that have photographs in their menus.
Once standard recipes and standard portion sizes are established and steps are taken to ensure that personnel follow the standard preparation and portioning procedures, standard costs for portions can be developed.
Standard Portion Cost
A standard portion cost can be calculated for every item on every menu, pro- vided that the ingredients, proportions, production methods, and portion sizes have been standardized as previously discussed. In general, calculating standard portion cost merely requires that one determine the cost of each ingredient used to produce a quantity of a given menu item, add the costs of the individual ingredients to arrive at a total, and then divide the total by the number of portions produced. However, there are several techniques for doing this calculation.
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Before considering the several different ways of determining portion costs, it is important to understand that the portion costs determined by these techniques will only be calculated portion or planned portion costs. These indicate what portion costs should be. Real portion costs may be quite different. There are many possible reasons for this variance. For exam- ple, if the employee making shrimp cocktails gives customers seven shrimp rather than five (the number established by management as the standard), the real portion cost will be greater than the calculated or planned cost. If the employee gives customers three, the real portion cost will be less than planned. Real portion costs for these shrimp cocktails may be either higher or lower than planned, depending on whether customers have been given too many or too few shrimp.
Real portion costs will also be different from planned costs if employees fail to use portion scales, use improper portioning devices, fail to follow stan- dard recipes, or purchase ingredients other than those stipulated by standard recipes. If the seafood Fruits de Mer recipe illustrated in Figure 6.1 were pre- pared with cod instead of lobster, real portion costs would be lower than planned because cod can be purchased at a much cheaper price than lobster.
Calculated, or planned, portion costs are best known by the term stan-
dard portion costs . Standard portion cost is defined as the dollar amount
that a standard portion should cost, given the standards and standard pro- cedures for its production. The standard portion cost for a given menu item can be viewed as a budget for the production of one portion of that item.
There are several reasons for determining standard portion costs. The most obvious is that one should have a reasonably clear idea of the cost of a menu item before establishing a menu sales price for that item. For con- trol purposes, there are additional reasons, including the need to make judg- ments in the future about how closely real or actual costs match standard costs, as well as the extent to which operating efficiency can be improved. These topics are discussed in later chapters.
CALCULATING STANDARD PORTION COSTS
There are several methods for calculating standard portion costs:
1. Formula
2. Recipe detail and cost card 3. Butcher test
4. Cooking loss test
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CALCULATING STANDARD PORTION COSTS 171
Owners, managers, chefs, and others with responsible positions in food service should be familiar with and able to use all of these methods.
Formula
For many (perhaps even for a majority) of the menu items prepared in food- service establishments, determining standard portion cost can be very sim- ple. For a large number of items, one may determine portion cost by means of this formula:
Standard portion cost ______________________ Purchase price per unit Number of portions per unit
For example, consider an establishment serving eggs on the breakfast menu, with two eggs as the standard portion. One can determine the stan- dard cost of the portion of the eggs by dividing the cost of a 30 - dozen case of eggs — say, $ 41.40 — by the number of two - egg portions it contains (180) to find the standard portion cost of $ 0.23.
$41.40 purchase price per case________________________ 180 standard portions per case $0.23
This simple formula can also be used to find the standard cost of each of the additional items served in a typical standard breakfast, including the juice, bacon, toast, butter, and coffee. The sum of the standard costs of the individual items will thus be the standard cost of the whole breakfast, possibly offered in a particular restaurant as Breakfast Special #3, at a $ 4.95 menu price.
In many restaurants today, large numbers of menu items are purchased already portioned by vendors. Determining the cost of one portion of any of these items is very simple: One divides purchase price by number of portions. Frankfurters purchased 12 to the pound for $ 2.40 cost $ 0.20 each. Frozen heat - and - serve entr é es are often purchased in individual units, in which case the purchase price is the portion cost. Many frozen preportioned foods come packed in cartons marked to show the exact number of portions in the car- ton. In most fast - food restaurants, portion costs for the majority of menu items can be determined by means of this simple formula.
Determining the portion cost of a large number of menu items may be done rather easily, merely by applying a very basic formula. However, not all foods may be so simply portioned after purchase, and other techniques
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must be developed to determine the standard portion costs of more complex items, such as those prepared from standard recipes.