How to write an ingredients list for your food labels (UK)

An ingredients list looks simple until you sit down to write one. Which order? Do you list what's in the chocolate? Is it "butter" or "butter (milk)"? This guide walks through it step by step for a small UK food business, with a full example at the end.

It's based on the Food Standards Agency's guidance. If you sell prepacked for direct sale (PPDS), read Natasha's Law explained too. If in doubt, your council's environmental health team can check a label for you.

Step 1: Start with your recipe in weights

You need the weight of every ingredient as it goes into the mix. Cups and spoons won't do. If you use a sub-recipe, like a buttercream or a pastry, you'll need its recipe in weights too.

Step 2: Put them in order, heaviest first

List every ingredient in descending order of weight at the point you mix them. Water and other liquids that cook off are a special case: water only needs listing if it makes up more than 5% of the finished product, and it's placed by its weight in the finished product. For most bread, water is listed.

Step 3: Use names customers will recognise

Use the proper name: "wheat flour", "unsalted butter", "free range eggs", "dark chocolate". Brand names alone aren't enough. Additives are listed by their function and name or E number, for example "raising agent (sodium bicarbonate)".

Step 4: Break down compound ingredients

A compound ingredient is something you buy that already has its own ingredients list: chocolate, puff pastry, jam, baking powder, stock. List it by name, then its ingredients in brackets, copied from the packet:

dark chocolate (cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, emulsifier (SOYA lecithin), vanilla extract)

Your own sub-recipes work the same way. If your buttercream goes into a cake, either list "buttercream (icing sugar, butter (MILK), vanilla extract)" or merge its ingredients into the main list by weight.

Step 5: Emphasise the allergens

Any of the 14 allergens must stand out: bold, capitals, underline or colour. Emphasise just the allergen word, name the specific cereal or nut, and add the allergen in brackets when the ingredient's name doesn't make it obvious:

• WHEAT flour, not "flour (gluten)"
• ground ALMONDS, not "nuts"
• butter (MILK), or simply BUTTER
• pesto (basil, sunflower oil, Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (MILK), pine nuts, garlic)

Step 6: Check everything against the packets

Suppliers change recipes. Before printing a batch of labels, check the packets you're actually using, especially for chocolate, margarine, stock and anything "free from". Keep the packets or photos of them on file.

A full example: chocolate brownies

Recipe for one tray: dark chocolate 300 g, butter 250 g, sugar 300 g, eggs 4 (about 200 g), plain flour 120 g, cocoa 40 g, salt 2 g.

Ingredients: sugar, dark chocolate (cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, emulsifier (SOYA lecithin), vanilla extract), butter (MILK), free range EGGS, WHEAT flour (WHEAT flour, calcium carbonate, iron, niacin, thiamin), fat-reduced cocoa powder, salt.

Sugar and chocolate are both 300 g; when two weigh the same, either order is fine.

Common mistakes

• Listing in recipe order rather than weight order.
• Leaving out the ingredients of bought-in chocolate or pastry.
• Writing "nuts" or "gluten" instead of the exact nut or cereal.
• Forgetting glazes, dusting flour and toppings.
• Not updating labels after changing a supplier.

Let your recipes write the label

Writing labels by hand works for a few products. Past that, it's easy for one to fall out of date. In MakrPrep you record each ingredient once, with its allergens and its packet ingredients, and every recipe builds its ingredients list automatically in weight order, with allergens in capitals and your own sub-recipes broken down. Change an ingredient and every label that uses it updates.