Prepful
Before you start: decide what you're saving
Digitizing a recipe card can mean two different things, and most people want both:
A picture of the card. The handwriting, the grease spots, the note in the margin. This is the keepsake, and a good scan keeps it forever.
The recipe as text. Ingredients and steps you can search, read on your phone at the stove, and turn into a shopping list. A photo can't do that on its own.
The steps below get you both, using your phone and nothing you have to buy.
Step 1: Scan the cards with your phone
Built in, free, and good enough for an archive. No flatbed scanner needed.
iPhone: the Notes app. Open Notes and start a new note (call it "Family recipes"). Tap the attachment button, then Scan Documents. Hold the phone over the card and let it capture on its own, or tap the shutter. Drag the corners to fit the card, tap Keep Scan, and keep going. Tap Done when the batch is finished. Notes keeps the scans inside the note, so for Prepful you'll use a plain photo of the card instead (next bullet, or Take a photo in step 2).
Android: the Google Drive app. Tap the camera button at the bottom right and point at the card. Use Crop & Rotate to square it up, and Clean to take out stains and fingerprints. Tap Add for the back of the card, then Done, and save it to a Drive folder. Pick JPG if you'll bring it into Prepful (below), since Prepful reads images, not PDFs.
Any phone: the camera. A plain photo works too. Put all of them in one album so they don't get lost in your camera roll.
Tips for scans that last
Shoot by a window, straight down. Daylight from the side and the phone held flat above the card beats any flash. Shadows and curled corners are what make old cards hard to read.
Scan the back too. Many cards have the oven temperature, a note, or whose recipe it was on the back.
One card per scan. It's tempting to lay out six cards and take one picture. Each card ends up small and hard to read. Six quick scans are better.
Name them as you go. "Grandma Rose, apple cake" is easy to find in ten years. "Scan 14" isn't.
Keep the originals. Put the paper cards back in their box afterward. A scan is a copy, and some families like to frame the best ones.
| Method | Keeps the handwriting | Searchable recipe text | Turns into a shopping list |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photos in your camera roll | Yes | No | No |
| Scans in Notes or Google Drive | Yes, cropped and cleaned up | Partly: you can search the notes, but the recipe isn't split into ingredients and steps | No |
| Typing each card out | No | Yes | No, unless you copy it out again |
| Prepful (from your scans) | The first photo becomes the recipe's picture | Yes, ingredients and steps | Yes, when you plan it |
Step 2: Turn each card into a recipe in Prepful
Reads handwriting and print. You don't type anything.
Open Prepful, then go to Recipes > Add > Upload a Photo.
Tap Upload an image and pick the scan or photo of the card. Or tap Take a photo to shoot the card right there.
If the recipe runs onto the back of the card or a second page, pick up to 6 images at once. Prepful joins them into one recipe.
Prepful writes out the ingredients with their amounts and the steps in order. Check them against the card, then save it to your library.
The first image you pick becomes the recipe's picture, so you see the card itself every time you open the recipe. On a computer, the web version works the same way with photos and JPG scans saved on your computer, including iPhone HEIC photos in most browsers.
Old cards are hard to read. Here's what helps
"A pinch" and "a dash". Prepful keeps vague amounts like these as a pinch or a dash.
Smudged or faded numbers. When a number can't be read, Prepful fills in a typical amount for that ingredient instead of guessing wildly. Always check those lines against the card. If you can't read it either, ask whoever remembers the dish.
Cursive and pencil. Tight cursive and light pencil are the hardest. Retake the photo in brighter light, or copy the text by hand and use Recipes > Add > Paste a Recipe instead.
Got a whole box? A plan for one afternoon
Sort first. Pull out the recipes people still ask for: the holiday ones, the birthday cake, the one dish everybody remembers. Start there.
Scan in one batch. Do all the scanning at the kitchen table in one go, front and back, before you import anything. It goes fast once you get a rhythm.
Import in a second pass. Go through the scans and add each one to Prepful. Check the amounts as you go, while the card is still on the table.
Share the scans with family. Put the folder of scans in a shared Google Drive folder or iCloud shared album, so cousins get the handwriting too. More ways in how to share recipes with family.
Then cook from it
A family recipe does the most good on the table. Put it on a day this week, or on your holiday menu, and its ingredients go onto your shopping list with everything else you planned. See how to meal plan with the recipes you've saved and how to make a grocery list from recipes.
If a card won't come through
Prepful needs an ingredient list or steps in the picture, so a photo of the finished dish alone won't import. If a card keeps failing, copy the text with Live Text on iPhone or Google Lens on Android, then paste it with Recipes > Add > Paste a Recipe. More on both in how to save a recipe from a photo.
Saving recipes from links and screenshots too? See how to save recipes on iPhone, on Android, and how to organize recipes in one place.