FodScale

← All posts · Oct 30, 2026

Making a recipe safe without wrecking it

The easy way to make a recipe low FODMAP is to cut whatever is over its limit until the numbers work. The numbers will work. The dinner often will not.

Cut the squash in a squash soup to a third and you have thin broth. Cut the cream in a pasta sauce to a quarter and it never coats the pasta. Halve the filling in stuffed peppers and you are eating roasted peppers. Every one of those passes a FODMAP check, and every one is a worse meal than just picking a different recipe.

So FodScale's Make it safe follows one rule above the arithmetic: never make a change that destroys the dish's texture. Here is how that works, and how you can use the same rule when you adapt a recipe by hand.

Every ingredient has a job

Before changing anything, ask what the ingredient is doing in the dish. FodScale sorts ingredients into families by the job they do:

  • Bulk vegetables give a dish its body: squash in a soup, cauliflower in a bake.
  • Starches fill the plate: rice, potatoes, pasta, bread.
  • Sauces and liquids carry flavour and moisture.
  • Creamy things make a dish rich and smooth: cream, soft cheese, coconut milk.
  • Binders hold it together: flour, eggs, breadcrumbs.
  • Legumes are often the protein and the bulk at once.
  • Sweeteners, fruit and tomato are mostly about flavour.

The family decides what happens when an ingredient has to be cut back.

Rule one: when you cut, top it back up

If more than a fifth of an ingredient has to go, the missing weight comes back as a low-FODMAP food from the same family, cut the same way and cooked the same way.

Say a squash soup can only keep about half its squash. Instead of serving half a soup, make up the rest with carrots and potatoes cut to the same size. Monash has said carrot, potato and parsnip stay low FODMAP even in large amounts (Monash, FODMAP stacking), which makes them ideal fillers. The soup tastes a little different and cooks exactly the same. A bake that loses some of its starchy vegetable gets potatoes. A stir fry that loses some vegetables gets more of the low-FODMAP ones already in it.

When FodScale does this, the adapted recipe says so plainly: what was cut, what was added and how much, so nothing changes without you seeing it.

Rule two: some things cannot be topped up

Fruit and fresh tomato are the exception. In a fruit salad or a tomato salad, the fruit is the flavour, and swapping half of it for something neutral just makes a blander dish. When one of these has to be cut, the dish gets smaller rather than diluted, and FodScale tells you it will taste different.

Sweeteners are similar. Less honey simply means less sweet. FodScale suggests making up the sweetness with maple syrup, or keeping a little more honey and accepting a yellow score.

Rule three: protect what holds the dish together

Sauces, creamy ingredients, binders and legumes are guarded. If one of them makes up a real share of the dish (a tenth of its weight or more) and would have to be cut to less than half, FodScale stops and flags the recipe instead of adapting it. A béchamel at a quarter strength, or a cake with half its flour, is not a low-FODMAP version of the recipe; it is a recipe that will not work.

The same goes for top-ups that would take over. If the filler would outweigh what is left of the main ingredient, the cauliflower bake has become a carrot bake, and you deserve to know that before you cook it.

Rule four: say how the dish changes

Smaller cuts that do not need a top-up still change the dish, and the adapted recipe says how:

  • A sauce cut back will be thinner and milder. Loosen it with low-FODMAP stock or water.
  • A vegetable cut back means less body and bite. Make up the bulk with a low-FODMAP vegetable such as carrot.
  • A sweetener cut back means less sweetness. Make it up with maple syrup.

Using the rule by hand

You can apply all of this without FodScale:

  1. Find the backbone. What is the dish named for, and what holds it together? Touch those last.
  2. Swap before you cut. Garlic-infused oil for garlic, scallion greens for onion, lactose-free cream for cream. A good swap keeps the full amount.
  3. When you must cut, refill from the same family. Same size, same cooking method.
  4. Know when to stop. If the only way to make a recipe low FODMAP is to hollow out its main ingredient, choose a different recipe, or save this one for when you know what you tolerate.

Weigh everything as you go. FODMAP serves are published in grams, and a scale is the only way to know you have kept the bulk you meant to keep.

FodScale applies published portion science mechanically. It is not medical advice and does not know your triggers; a dietitian can help you through elimination and reintroduction.

Save my data

Your saved recipes and reviews live on this device. Sign in once and they follow you to your phone and computer. No password: a link in your inbox or your Google account is the whole login.

Device ID: