We've all experienced this frustration: you're in the middle of cooking, things are sizzling on the stove, and you need to stop and scroll back to the ingredients list to check how much garlic that step requires. Even when cooking from a tablet where both sections are visible, your eyes constantly jump between different parts of the screen.
It's a small source of friction, but it adds up. When you're juggling multiple pans and trying to time everything perfectly, these constant context switches can turn a relaxing cooking session into a stressful experience.
That's why we built inline ingredients — a feature that brings ingredient quantities directly into your cooking instructions, right when you need them.
How Inline Ingredients Work
When you start a cooking session in Deglaze, you'll see a new toggle at the top of the instructions. Turn it on, and our AI automatically annotates each step with the specific ingredients and quantities you need.
For example, a typical recipe instruction might read:
"Toss lemon slices and shallots together in a small bowl"
With inline ingredients enabled, you'll see:
"Toss lemon slices (1, thinly sliced) and shallots (1, peeled and cut into thin wedges) together in a small bowl"
The annotations appear in a lighter font to distinguish them from the original recipe text, but they're immediately visible when you need them. No more stopping mid-instruction to check the ingredients list.
Smarter Than Simple Text Matching
Building this feature for our recipe organizer presented unique technical challenges. Some cooking apps have attempted similar functionality using basic string matching, but that approach quickly breaks down with real-world recipes.
Simple matching fails when an ingredient appears multiple times, misses complex ingredient groupings like "add the dry ingredients," or can't handle recipes with multiple ingredient sections. That's why we use AI to power inline ingredients.
Our system understands recipe context and structure, handling everything from complex multi-course meals to recipes with grouped ingredients. It also works seamlessly with recipe scaling — if you double a recipe, all the inline annotations update automatically with the correct quantities.
The AI processing takes up to 60 seconds depending on recipe complexity, but instructions load progressively so you can start reading immediately. We believe the accuracy and reliability are worth the brief wait.
Part of a Complete Cooking Experience
At Deglaze, we're focused on making every part of cooking easier — from discovering recipes to organizing recipes to the actual time you spend in the kitchen. Inline ingredients joins several other features designed to improve your cooking sessions:
- One-tap timers that count down right in the instructions
- Ingredient checklists to track what you've already added
- Multi-recipe cooking so you can easily switch between dishes during dinner parties
- Recipe scaling and unit conversions that update in real-time
- Screen stays on so you don't have to touch your device with messy hands
These features work together to create a meal planning app that supports you from the moment you start planning meals through the final plating.
Why This Matters for Home Cooks
Cooking should be enjoyable, not a constant exercise in scrolling and searching. When you can follow a recipe smoothly without interruption, you're more likely to try new dishes, cook from scratch, and actually enjoy the process.
Whether you're an experienced home cook managing multiple dishes or someone just learning to organize recipes and build confidence in the kitchen, inline ingredients removes one more barrier between you and a great meal.
For families using our grocery list app to plan meals for the week, this feature makes it easier to execute those plans successfully. No more abandoned recipes because they felt too complicated to follow in the moment.
Try Inline Ingredients Today
Inline ingredients is available now for Deglaze Pro subscribers. If you haven't tried Deglaze Pro yet, new users can start a free trial to test inline ingredients along with our other premium features:
- Calendar-based meal planning with your entire household
- Auto-categorized grocery lists organized by store aisle
- Recipe scaling with automatic unit conversions
- Unlimited recipe imports and collections
Download Deglaze for iPhone, iPad, or Android and discover why thousands of home cooks trust it as their recipe organizer and meal planning app. Your future self — the one cooking dinner without constantly scrolling — will thank you.
Have feedback on inline ingredients or other features? We'd love to hear from you at help@deglaze.app.
