Getting your recipes in

Import recipes is how your existing book gets into Tavorly. Its promise sets the shape of the whole thing: “Paste or upload your recipes — we read them, then you review and fix each one before it’s created as a draft.”

Nothing is created until you say so, and everything arrives as a draft. An import cannot put anything in front of a cook.

Getting the text in

Drop a file or click to upload accepts PDF, Word (.docx), plain text, or a photo/scan (PNG, JPG).

There is a real difference in how those are handled, and it is worth knowing:

• Typed files are read in your browser. A text PDF or a Word document is parsed locally — nothing is sent anywhere to be read.
• Photos and scanned PDFs are transcribed by AI, because there is no text to parse, only pixels.

Either way the result lands in the Recipe text box, where you can edit it before extraction. You can also just paste.

The three modes

mode	what it does	best for
AI structure	“AI reads ingredients, quantities, and steps into structured recipes.”	a real recipe book — prose, inconsistent formatting, many recipes at once
Quick import (no AI)	“Imports each menu item as a title + description you fill in.”	designed menu PDFs and Front-of-House views
Structured CSV	“No AI, and no guessing — every quantity, unit and step is read exactly as written.”	when accuracy matters more than convenience

Which to pick

Start with Structured CSV if you can. It is the only one with no interpretation step: what is in the cell is what lands in the recipe. Download the CSV template on that mode and your columns will line up. See Importing recipes from a spreadsheet.

Use AI structure for a book you did not write in a spreadsheet — a stack of PDFs, a binder someone photographed, prose recipes with the quantities inline. It is very good at this, and the review step exists because it is not perfect.

Use Quick import for a menu, not a recipe book. It deliberately does not try to find quantities: a designed menu PDF has dish names and descriptions and no build, so “read the ingredients” would invent them. You get titles and descriptions to fill in.

What Tavorly needs to see

The box’s own hint is the spec: “Each recipe needs a title, an ingredient list (quantity, unit, name), and steps.” The placeholder shows the shape:

Hush Puppies
1 1/2 cup cornmeal
2 Tbsp sugar
1 each egg
kosher salt to taste

1. Whisk the dry ingredients together.
2. Fry at 350F for 3 minutes until golden.

Blank lines between recipes are what separates one from the next. If your source runs recipes together without a break, add one — it is the single cheapest thing you can do to improve an import.

Then you review

Every mode lands on the same review screen before anything is saved. See Reviewing an import.