Viewing & Tweaking Recipes

Every recipe on Vinst has its own page — called a Food Story — where you can read through it, scale it up or down, switch units, and even ask Vini (Vinst's AI) to tweak it for you. This guide walks through everything you can do once you open a recipe.

What you'll need

A recipe already saved in your Recipe Box (or a link to someone else's shared recipe)
A couple of minutes

📱 Using Vinst on your phone? Everything below works the same way — you'll just find the menu behind the ☰ icon instead of a sidebar, and pop-ups open as full screens instead of small centered windows.

The basics, at a glance

Change the portion size — scale a recipe up or down
Convert units — switch between Original, Metric, and Imperial
Tweak with Vini — ask AI to adjust the recipe however you like
Edit the details directly — if you'd rather make the change yourself
Undo a change — one click back to the original

Opening a recipe

Click into any recipe from your Recipe Box (or open a link someone shared with you) to land on its Food Story page. If you own the recipe, you'll see the full set of tools across the top: Add to collection, Edit, and Share, plus the language switcher.

📱 On mobile: the Food Story logo moves down into the recipe header itself (it's centered in the top bar on desktop), and every top bar action — language, Add to collection, Edit, Share — becomes icon-only instead of labeled.

On desktop:

On mobile:

Step 1: Change the portion size

Under "Ingredients," click the portion count (e.g. "4 portions") — the -, the number, or the + all open the same dialog. Set the number you want and click Apply; every ingredient quantity rescales automatically.

💡 The portion count can't go below 1, but there's no upper limit — scale up as far as you need for a crowd.

Step 2: Convert units

Click "Convert units" next to the portion stepper and choose:

Original — the recipe as written
Metric — grams, centimeters, Celsius
Imperial — ounces, inches, Fahrenheit

Click Apply and every measurement in the recipe updates to match.

Step 3: Tweak a recipe with Vini

Click "Tweak with Vini" at the top of any recipe to open a chat built specifically around that recipe. You'll see a few suggested questions to start with, and a row of one-tap tweaks like Lighter, High-protein, Vegetarian, Vegan, Faster to cook, and more — or just type your own request in plain language (e.g. "swap the chicken for tofu").

Vini rewrites the recipe right there in the chat. If you like the result, it's saved back to your recipe automatically — no separate "save" step needed.

💡 Tip: Vini can make mistakes, especially with more unusual substitutions — always give a tweaked recipe a read-through before you cook from it.

📱 On mobile: the Back button loses its label (just the arrow), and the legal disclaimer at the bottom shortens to "Vini can make mistakes." instead of the full paragraph with Terms of Service/Privacy Policy links.

On desktop:

On mobile:

Step 4: Edit the details directly

Prefer to make a change yourself instead of asking Vini? Click Edit at the top of the recipe to update the title, author, ingredients, instructions, servings, time, or notes directly, then click Update. This is the same editor used everywhere else your recipes appear, so the change carries through to any cookbook or collection that includes this recipe too.

Undo a change

After adjusting portions, units, or tweaking with Vini, a banner appears above the recipe letting you review what changed. Click Revert to put the recipe back exactly as it was — or just close the banner if you're happy with the change and want to stop seeing the reminder.

📌 Revert rolls back to the recipe's original state in one step — it's not a step-by-step undo, so if you've made several changes since the last revert, they'll all be undone together.

Saving someone else's recipe

If you land on a recipe you don't own — shared by a friend, or found through a search — you'll see a Save button instead of Edit. Click it to copy the recipe into your own Recipe Box, where you're free to tweak, convert, or edit it without touching the original.

If you're not signed in yet, you'll be asked to sign in first — the recipe saves automatically right after.
Trying to adjust portions, units, or edit a recipe you don't own will prompt you to save your own copy first, since those changes only apply to recipes in your own box.