Scale Any Recipe

A recipe is a set of ratios. A cake calling for 2 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, and 3 eggs holds a 2:1:3 balance whether you bake for 4 people or 40. To scale it, multiply every ingredient by the same factor. Doubling? Multiply everything by 2. Cutting it to a third? Multiply by 1/3.

The key idea: multiplication preserves ratios. If the original works, scaling by any positive factor works too, because the proportions stay identical. It is the same math behind map scales and architectural blueprints. A recipe is a real-world linear function, where the scaling factor is the input and each ingredient is a separate output.