Scan recipe cards
How to save cookbook and handwritten recipes on iPhone
To save cookbook and handwritten recipes on iPhone, scan the recipe cards or pages, let recipe photo OCR turn the photo into a draft, and correct that draft before it joins your library. The photo stays useful. The searchable copy is what you cook from.
A photo is not the same as a saved recipe
A card in a box, a page in a falling-apart cookbook, a note in someone else's handwriting. Taking a picture protects the paper from a spill. It does not let you search for "cardamom" or send the onions to a grocery list. Recipe photo OCR is the step that turns the picture into ingredients and steps.
Scan the card so the draft has a fair chance
You can import from the camera or the photo library. You do not type the card first. The app returns a draft for you to review, not a silent save, because handwriting is where a word is most likely to be wrong.
- Lay the card or page flat and fill the frame. Glare and a cropped last step are the usual reasons a scan comes back thin.
- If the recipe spans two pages or the card is long, take more than one photo. Multi-image scans are stitched into a single recipe draft so you are not stuck with half the method.
- Photo import tries an optional transcription step for handwriting and hard-to-read notes. If that step is unavailable, the iPhone falls back to local OCR and rule-based parsing, so a photo can still become a draft offline.
- Compare the draft with the card. Fix a misread word once. After that, the library copy is the one you search.
- Keep the scan as the recipe photo if you want the handwriting nearby while you cook.
Keep the name of the person or the book
Put the cookbook title or the person who wrote the card in the source field. "Grandma's card, 1998" is a real source even when there is no URL. Source credit stays on the recipe, which is a better label than a screenshot buried in Photos.
Roasted Tomato Soup is an example of a community recipe already written out on this site. A scanned family soup should end up in the same kind of library record: title, ingredients, steps, and a source you can recognize later.
Cook from the phone and keep the card if you want it
Search for the recipe, add it to the weekly meal plan, and send the ingredients to the shopping list. Cook mode shows the steps with the screen able to stay awake, which helps when the original card is across the kitchen and your hands are wet. Keep the paper if you like it. The scan is the copy you can find.
Saved recipes can sync through your private iCloud database when iCloud is on for the app, so the card you scanned on the phone is not trapped in one camera roll.
Quick checklist
- Photograph the whole method, using a second image if the card is long.
- Review every ingredient and step against the paper before you save.
- Name the person or the book in the source field.
- Add a tag such as family or holiday so it is not only searchable by dish name.
- Put it on the meal plan when you actually intend to cook it.
Common questions
Can I scan a recipe card that is longer than one photo?
Yes. Import more than one image of the same recipe. Multi-image scans are stitched into one draft, so a two-page card or a long index card does not have to be cropped down to a single frame.
What if the handwriting is wrong in the draft?
Edit the draft before you save it. OCR is a head start, especially on handwriting, not a promise that every word is right. The optional transcription step helps with hard-to-read notes, and on-device OCR is the fallback when you are offline.
Do I still need the cookbook after I scan it?
Keep the book if you like it. The scan gives you a copy you can search, plan, and cook from on your phone, with the cookbook or the person who wrote the card named on the recipe. The paper and the library copy can both exist.