How to turn a handwritten recipe into typed text

How to type up a handwritten recipe card

1. Photograph the card. Lay it flat by a window, shoot straight down and keep the edges in the frame. Photograph the back too if the method continues there.
2. Upload the photo. A JPG, PNG, WEBP or HEIC photo from any phone, up to 5 MB.
3. Get the text. The recipe appears typed out after a few seconds, with the ingredient list as a list and the method as paragraphs.
4. Download Word. Fix the title, add a note about who wrote it, and print it or share it with the family.

What comes through from a recipe card

Ingredient lists

One ingredient per line, kept as a list in Word

Amounts and fractions

1/2 cup, 2 Tbsp and 350 F stay exactly as written

Cursive and faded ink

Joined-up writing on old cards is read line by line

Notes in the margin

"Double for Christmas" or "less sugar" comes back with the recipe

Stained and creased cards

The writing is read around the stains and folds

Old units

Teacups, a knob of butter or 180 Grad stay as the cook wrote them

Keeping the cook's own words matters with family recipes. LoreAI types out what is on the card, so the recipe in the Word file is the recipe Grandma wrote.

Translate a recipe to English

Many family recipe boxes hold cards in the language the family brought with them. Upload the photos to the LoreAI app and choose English. The app detects Italian, German, Polish, Hungarian, Spanish and other languages by itself, and returns one English Word file. Amounts and temperatures stay as written, so 180 Grad stays 180 Grad next to the translated method.

For a whole recipe box, put the photos into one PDF with your phone's scan function first, so the cards stay together. Your first document in the app is free, up to 3 pages and 3 MB. For translating handwriting in general, see the handwriting translator.

A family cookbook from a recipe box

1. Photograph every card, front and back, in the same light.
2. Combine the photos into one PDF per chapter, such as baking, soups or holidays.
3. Upload each PDF to the LoreAI app and download the Word files.
4. Add a heading for each recipe and a line about who wrote it and when.
5. Paste the scanned card next to the typed recipe, so the handwriting stays in the book.

A free alternative for single cards is Google Drive. Upload the photo and open it with Google Docs, but Google says the file should be 2 MB or smaller and that lists and tables are not likely to be detected[1]. Ingredient lists come back as lists in LoreAI's Word file.

Old letters, diaries and notebooks too

Recipes are often found with letters and diaries in the same box. The cursive to text page covers old joined-up handwriting, and how to digitize handwritten notes covers whole notebooks.

Questions people ask