--- title: "Paste & Parse" description: "Paste a recipe's text and let Scrumptious fill in the card — with or without AI." url: https://scrumptiouswp.com/help/paste-and-parse/ site: "ScrumptiousWP" --- # Paste & Parse Paste the whole recipe **text** — from a Word or Google document, an email, an old post or your notes app — and Scrumptious fills in the title, description, times, servings, ingredient and step groups, notes and nutrition. ## Using it 1. Add a **Recipe Card** block and click **Create new recipe** (or open a recipe under **Recipes**). 2. On an empty recipe, click **Paste & Parse** in the box *Have this recipe written down somewhere?* On a recipe that already has content, use the small **Paste & Parse** link at the top left of the card. 3. Paste the recipe into the box and click **Parse recipe**. 4. The card fills in and shows *Recipe filled in. Give it a quick check.* 5. Check it over — especially ingredient amounts — and fix anything that’s off. **Important:** On a recipe that already has ingredients or steps, Paste & Parse **replaces** its ingredients, steps and details. The box warns you before you parse. The recipe name is only filled in if the recipe doesn’t have a real name yet (empty or *Untitled recipe*), so it never overwrites a name you chose. ## Import from a link (Scrumptious Pro) With [Scrumptious Pro](https://scrumptiouswp.com/help/pro-license/) you can also paste just the web address of a recipe page, and the recipe is read from the page for you. See [Import from a link](https://scrumptiouswp.com/help/import-from-url/). ## Two ways it reads your text The box tells you which one it will use. ### Built-in parser (always available, free) Works with no set-up. It reads text laid out the usual way: ``` Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies Soft, chewy and loaded with chocolate. Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 10 mins | Chill: 1 hour Servings: 24 cookies Ingredients 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 1 tsp baking soda For the topping: 1 T flaky sea salt Instructions 1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. 2. Whisk the flour and baking soda. Notes Dough keeps 3 days in the fridge. Nutrition Calories: 190kcal | Fat: 10g | Sodium: 130mg ``` What it recognises: - **Title** — the first short line. - **Description** — lines between the title and the first heading. - **Headings** — *Ingredients*, *What you’ll need*, *Instructions*, *Directions*, *Method*, *Steps*, *Notes*, *Tips*, *Nutrition* and similar. A colon after them is fine. - **Times** — *Prep*, *Cook*, *Bake*, *Total*, *Rest*, *Chill*, *Inactive*, *Marinate*, followed by a time like *15 minutes*, *1 hr 30 mins*, *1h 30m* or *1 day*. - **Servings** — *Servings: 4*, *Serves 4*, *Yield: 24 cookies*, *Makes 12 muffins*. - **Groups** — lines like *For the topping:* or *Sauce:* start a new group. - **Clean-up** — bullets, checkboxes (▢ ☐), step numbers and website clutter (*Jump to Recipe*, *Print Recipe*, *Pin*, *Rate this recipe*, review counts) are removed. - **No headings at all?** Lines that start with an amount become ingredients; longer sentences become steps. A line like *Cook 5 minutes until soft* inside the instructions stays a step: only labelled lines (*Cook time: 5 min*) count as times there. ### AI (optional, uses your own key) With an AI provider connected, your text is read by AI instead. It copes with things the built-in parser can’t: long blog stories around the recipe, unusual layouts, text copied from a PDF or a photo caption, missing headings. The AI is told to use **only what’s in your text**: it doesn’t invent amounts, times, nutrition or steps, and keeps each ingredient worded the way you wrote it. Scrumptious then splits the amounts and units itself, the same way as when you type them. AI also picks the recipe’s **course**, **cuisine** and **diet**, reusing the ones already on your site where they fit. These are the one thing it’s allowed to work out rather than copy, so check them before publishing, especially diets. See [Let AI suggest them](https://scrumptiouswp.com/help/taxonomies/#let-ai-suggest-them). If the AI can’t be reached or its answer can’t be read, the built-in parser is used instead and the message says why. You always get a result. Set it up in [Setting up AI](https://scrumptiouswp.com/help/ai-setup/). Cost is usually well under one US cent per recipe with the automatically chosen model. ## Getting the best results - Copy **only the recipe** if you can — from the recipe card, not the whole page. - Keep headings (*Ingredients*, *Instructions*) when copying; they help both parsers. - For very messy text, connect AI. - Always check the ingredient amounts after parsing. The preview under the ingredients box shows how each line was read. ## Limits - Up to about 30,000 characters per paste (a very long page). Extra text is ignored. - Images in the pasted text aren’t imported. Add the recipe photo under **Recipe image**. - When you paste **text**, courses, cuisines and diets aren’t filled in; add them in the sidebar. [Import from a link](https://scrumptiouswp.com/help/import-from-url/) (Scrumptious Pro) fills them in when the page provides them. ## Related - [Setting up AI](https://scrumptiouswp.com/help/ai-setup/) - [Ingredients](https://scrumptiouswp.com/help/ingredients/) - [Troubleshooting AI](https://scrumptiouswp.com/help/ai-troubleshooting/)