Health & safety.
The short version. Every dish says what you need to know where you are looking: the temperature its inside should reach, the allergens its ingredients carry, and the safer way to serve it when someone at the table is young, pregnant or older. The app reads all of that from the recipe itself, so a writer cannot forget a line. What it cannot read is the label on the product you bought, the thermometer in your hand or the people at your table. Those are yours.
The three things below are what we count on you for. The rest of the page says how we get there.
1. Three things we count on you for
Before your first cook, the app shows these once, under the heading “Before you cook with Manners”, and keeps the date with your account. You see them again only if the words change.
Temperatures.
Every dish with meat, poultry, fish or eggs says what the inside should read. The thermometer decides, not the timer.
Allergens.
We read them from the recipe's ingredients. The product you buy can differ, so the label is the last word.
Who is eating.
Where a dish has a safer version for young children, anyone pregnant or older adults, it says so. Those lines are for you to follow.
2. The sentence under every recipe
A guide, not a guarantee. Cook to the temperatures shown; allergens are read from the ingredient list, so check the label on what you buy.
It stands under every dish on this site and in cook mode in the app, and it means what it says. A recipe is our careful account of how a dish is made. Your store, your kitchen and your table are the parts we cannot see.
3. How allergens are read
A dish's allergens come from its ingredient list, read against our ingredient table. Every ingredient we price is marked with the allergen classes it carries — milk is dairy, soy sauce is gluten and soy both — and a dish declares every class any of its ingredients carries. We track nine: dairy, gluten, egg, soy, shellfish, fish, tree nut, peanut and sesame. On a dish's page it reads “Contains gluten, egg.”
- The product you buy can differ. The table knows the ingredient, not the brand on your shelf, what the store substituted or what shares a line at the factory. “May contain” lives on the label, not in our data. If anyone at your table has an allergy, the label is the last word, every time.
- A declared allergy hides dishes from the planner. Tell the app about an allergy in your household and the planner stops proposing any dish that carries it.
- The All shelf shows every dish anyway. Nothing leaves the catalog. On the All shelf, a dish that carries a declared allergen names that allergen in red, so you can see why it is not on your week and decide for yourself.
4. Temperatures
Every dish with raw meat, poultry, fish or eggs names the temperature the inside should reach, in the step where it matters. The figures are the USDA's safe minimums, and they are the ones our recipes use.
| What you are cooking | The inside reads |
|---|---|
| Poultry, whole or ground | 165°F |
| Ground beef, pork, lamb or veal | 160°F |
| Whole cuts of beef, pork, lamb or veal | 145°F, then a three-minute rest |
| Fish | 145°F |
| Egg dishes | 160°F, yolks and whites firm |
| Leftovers, reheated | 165°F |
The thermometer decides, not the timer. Our minutes are for planning your evening; ovens, pans and the thickness of a piece of meat vary too much for a clock to be the test. Read the thickest part, away from bone. Where a recipe only warms something through — a cooked sausage, a rotisserie chicken, deli meat — the ingredient was cooked before you bought it; for anyone the next section describes, heat it until steaming all the same.
5. Who is eating
Most dishes are for everyone. Where one is safer served another way for young children, anyone pregnant or older adults, the recipe says so in a line under “Know before you cook”, in the app and on the dish's page here. Those lines are for you to follow; the app cannot know who is at your table. These are the lines a dish can carry, in the words it uses:
- Soft yolks. Cook them until firm for young children, older adults or anyone pregnant.
- Deli meat. Heat it until steaming if anyone is pregnant or over 65.
- Smoked fish, uncooked. Skip it if anyone is pregnant or has a weakened immune system.
- Honey. Not for a child under 1.
- Sprouts. Serve them cooked, not raw, to young children, older adults or anyone pregnant.
- Small children. Cut grapes, hot dogs and hard pieces small; leave out toothpicks.
Three more are about the cooking rather than the table, and appear the same way:
- Raw egg in the mix. Don't taste it before it's cooked.
- Hot blending. Fill the blender half full, lid vented, a towel over the top.
- Made with wine or spirits. Most of the alcohol cooks off, not all.
The reasons are the usual ones. Deli meat and uncooked smoked fish can carry Listeria, which matters most in pregnancy, after 65 and for a weakened immune system. Honey can carry the spores that cause infant botulism, so it waits until a child is one. Soft yolks and raw sprouts are about Salmonella. Choking is about shape and size, not ingredients: a whole grape or a round of hot dog is the wrong size for a small mouth, and a toothpick has no business on a child's plate.
6. When something is wrong
A temperature that reads low, an allergen we missed, a line that should be there and isn't: write to hello@mannersapp.com with the dish and the step. It is fixed within the day, and the fix reaches every phone with the next update.
7. The Terms govern
This page explains how Manners handles health and safety. It is not medical advice, and it does not replace the Terms of Service, which govern your use of Manners — what the app is and is not, and the limits on our warranties and liability included. Where this page and the Terms differ, the Terms are what counts.