AI recipes from ingredients in your fridge: prompts to copy and what to check

In short: AI gives you a dish idea, quantities for the number of people and a substitute if an ingredient is missing, but it does not taste, does not see the dates on your packs and has no data of its own on this week’s promotions. The vendors warn that answers can be inaccurate. Below are four prompts with placeholders, the mistakes to check and the FSVO’s rules on food safety and allergens.

Updated October 2026. Sources: FSVO (Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office), pages on hygiene when handling food (in German, French and Italian) and on food labels; OpenAI, “ChatGPT Image Inputs FAQ” and “Does ChatGPT tell the truth?”; Anthropic, “Upload files to Claude” (23 July 2026) and “Claude is providing incorrect or misleading responses” (16 March 2026); Google, “Upload & analyze files in Gemini Apps” and “Learn about responses from Gemini Apps” (viewed on 14 October 2026).

Can you make recipes with AI from what you have?

Yes, within limits. An AI recipe is a recipe that a general-purpose AI assistant, such as ChatGPT, writes for you from the ingredients you list: it suggests a dish, quantities for the number of people, the steps, a vegetarian version or a substitute if something is missing. Some also accept a photo of the fridge: ChatGPT on free and paid plans, with usage limits, according to OpenAI; Claude and Gemini according to Anthropic and Google (October 2026).

It is, however, generated text, not a recipe signed by an author who tested it: nobody has checked those times and quantities for you. OpenAI writes that ChatGPT can give incorrect or misleading answers, even in a confident tone, and should be used as a first draft, not a final source. So you ask the AI for the idea and the structure, and you check times, temperatures, quantities and allergens yourself. Without AI, you find the method in what to cook with what you have and the patterns in using up leftovers; using what you already have also helps to reduce food waste.

Prompts for recipes from ingredients and leftovers

A good prompt says how many people you cook for, what you have, what you cook with and the format you want. Replace the parts in square brackets; prices and brands are not needed.

1. From ingredients to a recipe. “At home I have: [ingredients with quantities]. Use first: [ingredients that expire soon, with the date printed on the pack]. There are [number] of us and we cook with [hob, oven, frying pan]. Suggest two recipes with quantities in grams or millilitres, numbered steps, times and ingredient names that are common in Switzerland. If you are not sure about a quantity, a time or a temperature, say so instead of making it up.”
2. From leftovers to a new dish. “Yesterday I cooked [dish] and I have [ingredients and quantities] left. Suggest two ways to turn them into a different dish for [number] people and, at the end, list the hygiene and storage points I have to check myself.”
3. Substitute and adapt. “The recipe [paste the recipe] needs [ingredient], which I do not have. Suggest two substitutes from what I have ([list]) and tell me what changes in the result. Then rewrite it as a vegetarian version for [number] people.” For a whole week: AI meal planner.
4. From a fridge photo, in two steps. “[Attach the photo] List only what you recognise in this photo and flag what you cannot read or tell apart. Do not suggest recipes until I confirm the list.” After you correct it: “Here is the corrected list: [list]. There are [number] of us. Suggest two recipes.”

List first, recipe second: according to OpenAI, with an ambiguous or unclear image the results can be less accurate; Anthropic recommends images of at least 1'000 × 1'000 pixels. Before you upload a photo, check what it shows (faces, letters, calendars, labels with names) and crop it to the shelves; for data, see the guide to ChatGPT and personal data.

Where does an AI go wrong in the kitchen?

Food safety and allergies: what to check every time

Check the four hygiene rules, the dates and the labels. These are general FSVO guidelines for home cooking: they apply to every recipe and are not medical advice.

1. Wash. Hands with soap before and after preparing food, worktops and utensils with hot water and soap after each step.
2. Heat. Meat, poultry, fish and seafood to at least 70 °C, and cooked food you reheat to 70 °C too: at low heat germs survive, especially in poultry and minced meat.
3. Separate. Keep raw and cooked food apart, with different chopping boards and utensils.
4. Chill. Meat, poultry, fish and seafood in the fridge below 5 °C, and the same for leftovers and perishable food; thawed food never refrozen.

Dates. The “use by” date is about safety: after it, the FSVO says, safe consumption is no longer guaranteed, even if the food smells, looks and tastes normal. The “best before” date is about quality, not safety.

Allergens. The FSVO lists 14 ingredients that must be labelled as allergens: cereals containing gluten (wheat, including spelt and Khorasan wheat, rye, barley, oats or their hybridised strains), shellfish (crustaceans), eggs, fish, peanuts, soybeans, milk (including lactose), nuts, celery, mustard, sesame seeds, sulphur dioxide and sulphites (over 10 mg/kg or 10 mg/l), lupins and molluscs. In the ingredient list they must be highlighted, for example in bold, CAPITALS or underlined; with no ingredient list, the word “contains” is used. Allergens present unintentionally must also be declared if they may reach or exceed certain limits.

For anyone with an allergy, what counts every time is the label of the product in your hand. You can ask the AI to mark which ingredients of the recipe fall into these 14 groups, but only as a reminder: it does not know the packs you bought. For allergies, intolerances or medical diets, do not rely on an assistant: Google asks users not to rely on Gemini’s responses as medical advice.

From the recipe to the list and the promotions

Your first step today: pick a recipe, go through the table rows that apply to it, and note the ingredients you are missing. The guide to turning recipes into a shopping list shows how to make a list from them, and the guide to the AI grocery list has prompts to sort it by aisle.

For the part the assistant cannot see, you can use Rappn, a free Swiss app (iOS and Android) that compares the current promotions of seven Swiss retailers and turns receipts into a spending overview. You write the missing ingredients into the app’s list: it shows an estimated price for the whole list and, for each item, products with prices by store; a filter keeps only those on offer. Prices are indicative; the promotions are updated daily as the chains publish them and can be filtered by canton (Swiss state). For a product you follow you get an alert when it goes on offer. There is no subscription. Rappn covers only the grocery line of your budget, not rent, insurance or taxes. Rappn is building an AI assistant for groceries: you can join the waitlist.