Does halving a recipe work?

[Wyshiepoo]

As the title suggests, do you think halving a recipe works?

I've been doing this a fair bit recently but not 100% sure it works.
Logic would suggest that it should work as you are only doing the same recipe just with proportionately less ingredients.

It might be my slightly OCD nature kicking in because I'm not doing the recipe as is?

 

[Morning Glory]

In theory there is no reason why not - but one issue might be where very small quantities of ingredients are used. I mean that if, for example, a pinch if something is required then how do you do half a pinch? I'm not explaining this very well - but I think the smaller a quantity of something used then the less accurate the measure is going to be. I'm really not explaining this well!

Personally I very rarely follow recipes and even if I do I use judgement and adjust accordingly. Recently, I did halve a few recipes for the Cookery Book challenge and they worked or more or less OK.

 

[medtran49]

I halve recipes all the time. In fact, just did that last night for moussaka, but I did make the full recipe of tomato sauce because Craig likes lots of sauce on the side and I'll make 3/4 of the bechemel because I like a bit more of that.

I even halve recipes of cakes, etc. You just have to use the appropriate size pan(s). There are web sites that give volume measurements of various sizes of pans.

My recipe does call for a pinch of a couple of things, so I just use half of what I would use as a normal pinch.

 

[The Late Night Gourmet]

I think halving a recipe works well most of the time, except in how it affects cook times. If, say, you decide to make half a cake recipe, you now have a half-sized cake that will cook through faster than the full-sized one, unless you're careful in the way medtran49 suggests. I'm in the habit of checking baked goods before the designated cook time anyway, but I'm especially careful if I'm reducing a recipe proportionally.

I've never had an issue if I'm making, say, half a soup or half a salad dressing recipe, however.

 

[Morning Glory]

. If, say, you decide to make half a cake recipe, you now have a half-sized cake that will cook through faster than the full-sized one

Good point!