Shopping Lists | Cooklang

A shopping list in Cooklang is computed, not typed. Point a tool at the recipes you plan to cook and it adds up every ingredient, merges duplicates, groups the result by store section, and drops whatever you already have. This guide uses CookCLI because it shows every step explicitly; the mobile app and Cook Editor do the same thing with a tap and read the same config files.

What you need

CookCLI 0.35 or newer (cook --version)
A folder of .cook files. No recipes yet? Run cook seed ~/recipes to get the sample collection this guide's output comes from.

Every command below is run from inside your recipe folder:

cd ~/recipes

1. Generate a list from one or more recipes

Name the recipes you plan to cook. Paths are relative to the folder you are in and the .cook extension is optional:

cook shopping-list &#34;Neapolitan Pizza&#34; &#34;Breakfast/Easy Pancakes&#34;

[milk and dairy]
milk                     250 ml
butter                   knob
egg                      3
mozzarella cheese        100 grams
[tinned goods and baking]
flour                    125 g
tipo zero flour          840 g
fresh yeast              1.6 g
[dried herbs and spices]
salt                     pinch, 24.6 g, 1 tbsp
[other]
semolina
basil leaves
San Marzano tomato sauce 5 tbsp

(You will also see Unit mismatch warnings on stderr; step 4 explains them.) Four things happened here:

Referenced recipes were expanded. The pizza recipe calls @./Shared/Pizza Dough{6%balls}, so the dough's flour, yeast and water are on the list even though you never named that file. Pass -i / --ignore-references if you only want the top-level recipes.
Duplicates were merged. Both recipes use salt. Quantities in the same unit are added together; quantities in different units are listed side by side rather than guessed at.
Items were grouped by aisle. The headings come from config/aisle.conf, which the sample collection ships with. Step 3 shows how to write your own.
Pantry items were left out. The pizza needs water and olive oil, but the sample config/pantry.conf says you have both, so they are not on the list. Step 4 covers this.

Scale a recipe as you add it

Append :N to multiply a recipe. The pancakes recipe serves 2; this buys for 4:

cook shopping-list &#34;Neapolitan Pizza&#34; &#34;Breakfast/Easy Pancakes:2&#34;

Ingredients written with a leading = never scale, so @salt{=1%tsp} stays at one teaspoon however many portions you make. See Scaling and Servings.

Use globs for a whole folder

Leave the pattern unquoted so the shell expands it:

cook shopping-list Salads/*.cook

2. Generate a list from a meal plan

If you plan the week in a .menu file, hand that file to the same command and you get one combined list for every meal in it:

cook shopping-list &#34;Weekly Plan.menu&#34;

The Meal Planning guide covers writing .menu files.

3. Sort the list by store aisle

Without an aisle configuration every item lands under [other]. An aisle.conf maps ingredient names to the sections of your shop, in the order you walk through it. Create it at config/aisle.conf inside your recipe folder and CookCLI picks it up automatically:

[fruit and veg]
onion | onions
garlic | garlic clove
tomatoes | cherry tomatoes | ripe tomatoes
fresh basil

[milk and dairy]
milk
butter
egg | eggs
mozzarella cheese | mozzarella | fresh mozzarella

[tinned goods and baking]
flour | plain flour
tipo zero flour
fresh yeast

[dried herbs and spices]
salt | sea salt | flaky salt
black pepper | pepper

[oils and dressings]
olive oil | extra virgin olive oil

Rules of the format:

[section] starts a section. Names are free text, so [Tesco] and [farmers market] work as well as [dairy].
One ingredient per line. Matching is case-insensitive.
a | b | c declares synonyms. Whatever the recipe calls it, the item files under that section and shows up as a.
Order matters. Sections and items are printed in the order written, so arrange them to match your route through the shop.

To keep the file somewhere else, point at it explicitly:

cook shopping-list -a ~/tesco.conf &#34;Weekly Plan.menu&#34;

Keep a second file per shop if you split your shopping. To find out which ingredients are still uncategorised, ask the doctor:

cook doctor aisle

Scanned 14 recipes, found 76 unique ingredients

11 ingredients not found in aisle configuration:
  - San Marzano tomato sauce
  - almonds
  - basil leaves
  ...
Consider adding these ingredients to your aisle.conf file.

To skip grouping entirely, use --plain:

cook shopping-list --plain &#34;Breakfast/Easy Pancakes:2&#34;

egg    6
flour  250 g
milk   500 ml
salt   pinch, 2 tbsp
butter knob

4. Leave out what you already have

A config/pantry.conf file lists what is in your kitchen. When it exists, the shopping list subtracts those items automatically, which is why the first list in this guide has no water and no olive oil: the sample pantry has both. Compare with the pantry switched off, which adds them back:

cook shopping-list --ignore-pantry &#34;Neapolitan Pizza&#34; &#34;Breakfast/Easy Pancakes&#34;

Quantities are subtracted when the units match: a recipe needing 250 g of flour against 1 kg in the pantry drops off the list. When units differ (ml in the recipe, l in the pantry) CookCLI prints a warning and keeps the item, so write pantry quantities in the units your recipes use.

Use --pantry <file> to name a pantry file outside config/. The Pantry Management guide covers the format, expiry dates and the cook pantry commands.

5. Add things no recipe calls for

Bin bags and paper towels can ride along on the same trip. Each --extra is a Cooklang ingredient without the @:

cook shopping-list &#34;Weekly Plan.menu&#34; \
  --extra &#34;paper towels&#34; \
  --extra &#34;eggs{12}&#34; \
  --extra &#34;coffee beans{250%g}&#34;

Extras are merged like any other ingredient: they land in their aisle, add to an existing entry with the same name, and are subtracted from by the pantry.

6. Take the list with you

Print or share it. Choose a format and write it to a file. Markdown pastes cleanly into a note or a message; JSON feeds a script:

cook shopping-list &#34;Weekly Plan.menu&#34; -f markdown -o shopping.md
cook shopping-list &#34;Weekly Plan.menu&#34; -f json --pretty -o shopping.json

Use the phone app. The Cook app reads the same aisle.conf from your synced folder and builds an interactive list with checkboxes. Add recipes to the list from each recipe's page.

Use the browser. cook server gives every device on your network a shopping list page with checkboxes, backed by a .shopping-list file in your recipe folder (see Shopping list format). The Raspberry Pi guide sets this up permanently.

Shopping list in the cook server web UI

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Fix
Everything is under `[other]`	No `config/aisle.conf` was found. Create one, or pass `-a`. Run `cook doctor aisle` to see what is unmapped.
An ingredient appears twice with slightly different names	Add the variants as synonyms on one line in `aisle.conf` (`onion \| onions`), and consider renaming in the recipes.
Two amounts for the same item, e.g. `1 tbsp, 24.6 g`	Recipes used different units. Either standardise the recipes or accept both and buy the larger.
Pantry item still on the list, plus a "Unit mismatch" warning	The pantry quantity uses a different unit than the recipe. Change the pantry entry to the recipe's unit.
A referenced recipe's ingredients are missing	Check the path in `@./Folder/Name{}` matches the file relative to the recipe folder root. `cook doctor validate` reports broken references.
`Failed to find recipe`	Include the sub-folder: `"Breakfast/Easy Pancakes"`, not `"Easy Pancakes"`.