Every Number This Site Runs On

Salty and Clever · the numbers

Every number this site runs on, on one page.

All of it is free, none of it is behind an email, and every figure here is the one the calculator beside it actually computes with — because there is one canon and this page is where it lives. If a number here ever disagrees with a tool, the number here is wrong and we want to know.

Salt percentages, pull temperatures, hold times, pan volumes, yields, board densities and bar pours. The tables a working kitchen keeps taped inside a cupboard door.

• Salt
• Temperature and time
• Set points
• Frying and reheating
• Pans
• Yield
• Boards
• The bar

What this page is, and what The Number is.

This page is the reference: every figure the site runs on, with the reasoning, free and unmetered. It answers what is the number. The Number ($15) answers what is my number — you type in your guest count, your room, your oven and your service window, and it returns the quantities for your night, holds them while you shop, and tells you which one runs out first. This page will never do that, because a page cannot hold your numbers.

See The Number →

Salt

The percentage bands below are culinary working targets used by this site, not safety standards or universal optimal values. Ingredient salinity, curing ingredients, personal taste and the amount of liquid lost during cooking can move the right number.

Salt is the only seasoning where the recipe and your box can differ by more than double and nobody says so. A teaspoon of Diamond Crystal and a teaspoon of table salt are not the same amount of salt, which is why every figure below is a percentage of weight instead of a number of spoons.

What a level teaspoon actually weighs

How much salt, as a percentage of weight

Pasta water is not meant to taste like the sea. The sea is about 3.5 percent, which is three and a half times what a pot should be, and anyone who has followed that instruction has made inedible pasta. Runs on the Salt Calculator.

Temperature and time

Every recipe gives you the temperature the meat should reach. Almost none gives you the one you can act on. Meat keeps cooking on the counter by an amount that scales with its mass and with how hard the oven was driven, so the number that matters is the target minus that climb.

The temperature to take it out at

The safety rows use current USDA consumer minimums before removal: 165°F for all poultry; 160°F for ground beef, pork, veal and lamb; 145°F plus at least a 3-minute rest for whole beef, pork, veal and lamb cuts; and 145°F for fish. Carryover is a planning estimate, not a subtraction from those minima. Rare and medium-rare beef entries below 145°F are labeled as culinary preferences rather than USDA safety guidance, and mechanically tenderized or injected cuts should not be treated as a universal surface-only exception.

How long a roast takes, and how long it rests

The minutes-per-pound figures below are Salty & Clever planning estimates for scheduling, not universal cooking laws. Roast shape, starting temperature, oven calibration, airflow, stuffing and bone structure all move the clock. Use them to decide when to start checking; the thermometer determines doneness.

How long a dish will wait between finished and eaten

This is the number that decides a schedule and no recipe prints it. Sorted by patience: the top has to be finished last, the bottom is what moves to make room. The rule underneath the column, and what to make ahead because of it, is in The turkey holds for an hour, the roast potatoes hold for ten minutes.

These hold times are house quality estimates, not food-safety permissions. Perishable food held hot should stay at 140°F or above; otherwise refrigerate within two hours (one hour above 90°F). A dish kept in a hot oven may also continue cooking, so texture and safety are separate constraints. One oven cannot be two temperatures. Dishes with nearby set points may sometimes share an oven, but the workable spread depends on the food and the oven. A heavily loaded oven can recover heat and brown food more slowly; there is no defensible universal six-percent penalty per rack, so the calculators treat load as a planning heuristic rather than a physical constant. Runs on the Roast Clock, the Thanksgiving Clock and the Oven Traffic Calculator.

Set points

Temperature is often a better checkpoint than elapsed time, but these are not all literal phase transitions. Some rows are established confectionery or safety ranges; others are Salty & Clever technique targets for texture. Ingredient ratios, altitude, probe placement and equipment can move the useful endpoint, so the table now treats them as working checkpoints rather than universal constants.

Sugar

Egg, dairy and dough

Long heat

Where a fix on The Rescue names a temperature, it is one of these.

Frying and reheating

Frying is one number, watched. Reheating is that number watched a second time, because anything reheated is being cooked again, and most of what goes wrong is a cook who did not count the second cooking.

Where the oil has to be

Reheating, which is a second cooking

Judgment, not fact: the oil-life count and the drop on loading both move with what you are frying.

Pans

Computed from the stated nominal dimensions as simple geometric shapes. These are comparison volumes, not guaranteed measured brim capacities: real pans taper, round corners, roll rims and vary by manufacturer. One U.S. cup is 14.44 cubic inches.

What a pan holds, by geometry

What a pan holds, by published capacity

These four are not computed. They slope, they have a hole in the middle, or both, and geometry on a stated diameter would produce a confident wrong answer.

How full to fill it

Four swaps need no arithmetic at all: an 8-inch square is a 9-inch round within one percent, a 9-inch square is a 10-inch round within about three, and a 9 by 13 and a half sheet pan are both exactly 234 cubic inches; two quarter sheets come to 247, about six percent more. Two 8-inch rounds are not a 9 by 13; they are fourteen percent short. Runs on the Pan Calculator.

Yield

You bought raw weight and you are serving cooked weight. That conversion matters, but it does not have one fixed percentage for every cut or cooking method.

The percentages below are house planning assumptions for purchasing, not universal USDA yields. Trim, bone, fat, moisture loss, doneness and carving practice can move them materially; use measured yields from your own repeated cook when precision matters.

A fourteen-pound turkey is about six and a half pounds of carved meat. That is the whole argument for buying against the finished weight rather than the sticker.

Boards

The density figures in this section are Salty & Clever layout assumptions for board planning, not published material constants. Slice thickness, folding, bowl shape and how loosely food is arranged can change the footprint substantially.

Food has a footprint, and surface runs out before quantity does — usually at about four in the afternoon, with the shopping already done. Every component claims floor at a depth people can pick from, and the claims add up faster than the weight suggests.

Grams per square inch

What you can actually put it on

Three rules fall out of the physics. Fill to 82 percent, not to the edge, because a board covered to the last square inch has nowhere to set the knife down. Reach runs out at 12 inches, so 24 inches deep is the limit with people on both sides and 14 against a wall. Past 200 g, crackers stop being a board component and become a basket. A board somebody tops up needs about 40 percent less surface than one set down and left. Runs on the Board Calculator.

The bar

Consumption is not flat. The first hour is close to double every hour after it, because people arrive thirsty and because a drink in the hand is what a person does with themselves in a room they have just walked into.

Drinks per guest, per hour

Pours

Batching, with the water in it

A batched cocktail is not the recipe multiplied. A drink stirred to order picks up about a fifth of its volume in water off the ice, and that water is an ingredient — leave it out and you have made something twenty percent stronger and considerably worse than the drink you tested.

Subtract about six points if it will be poured over fresh ice, because it keeps diluting in the glass. Never in a pitcher: anything carbonated, anything with egg white or dairy, anything blended.

Ice, glasses, and getting a bottle cold

Ice in a glass and ice around a bottle are separate purchases, and buying one bag for both is why the tub is water by eight o’clock. Reckon on about six ounces a drink served over ice, and about a pound per bottle or can for chilling. Glassware starts at 1.6 per guest and adds 0.3 for every hour past two, because people set a glass down, lose it and take a clean one.

Water contact is the whole trick — ice alone touches a bottle in about nine places, and water touches all of it. Runs on the Bar Calculator.

What is a fact and what is a judgment

Two kinds of number live on this page and they are not the same kind of number, so it is worth saying which is which.

Physical facts. A teaspoon of Diamond Crystal weighs 2.8 grams. A 9 by 13 pan holds 234 cubic inches. Water freezes at 32°F and it takes 144 BTU to melt a pound of ice. 165°F is the published figure for poultry. None of these are ours to have opinions about.

Planning judgments. How much a room of adults gets through in the first hour. How long roast potatoes are worth eating after they come out. How full a cake pan should be. These are working figures from catering practice and from cooking a great deal, they are generous or mean on purpose, and a different cook would land somewhere slightly different. They are stated so you can argue with them.

What you will not find here is a number invented to avoid admitting we do not have one. Where a tool cannot answer honestly it stops and says so, which is the whole position and the reason any of this is worth reading.

Where these come from