Chicken & Pea Risotto: where the numbers come from

Per ingredient

Oxalate

14 mg per serving (56 mg for the whole recipe, divided by 4). This comes from the Oxalosis and Hyperoxaluria Foundation list rather than the Australian composition data above, which does not carry oxalate.

Low Sodium Stock

Prepared liquid stock is water with roughly one to two per cent solids. The OHF lists no stock, and treating it as an unknown would put an unresolved line in a third of the recipes on the site over a contribution too small to change a band.

Water

Tap water carries no oxalate: oxalate is a plant metabolite and drinking water is not a plant.

Oxalate in a plant moves with variety, ripeness, soil and cooking, and what you absorb depends on the calcium eaten in the same meal rather than on the figure alone. The full table and what it is worth.

Not counted

These lines contribute nothing to the figures above, because they carry no weight or no composition match. Finishing salt and pepper added to taste are deliberately excluded: the amount is the cook's, so counting it would be inventing a number.

• Ground black pepper, to taste

Why these records

Where a generic database item cannot represent an ingredient exactly, the choice is recorded with the ingredient rather than left to inference.

Low Sodium Stock

Measured as ready-to-use reduced-salt chicken or vegetable liquid stock; record used for this ingredient for stock, and the all-flavours record covers both.

Water

Contributes no energy or nutrients but mapped honestly rather than skipped; tap water is what the recipes use, and the ledger left this unkeyed.

Frozen Peas

Weighed frozen, which is compositionally the raw green pea; AUSNUT has no frozen pea record. The canned drained record was rejected because it carries added brine sodium the recipes do not use.

Olive Oil

Measured from the bottle, plain or extra-virgin; AUSNUT has a single olive oil record and the ledger key is carried over verbatim.

Onion

Weighed raw and peeled before it is softened in the pan; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

Garlic

Weighed or counted as raw peeled cloves before cooking; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

Chicken Thigh

Weighed raw as boneless skinless thighs before cooking; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

Arborio Rice

Weighed dry (280 g arborio) before the risotto absorbs stock, so the uncooked white rice record applies; AUSNUT has no arborio-specific entry.

Salt

Weighed or added to taste from the packet; iodised table salt matches the fine salt the recipes specify, and the ledger key is carried over verbatim.

Unsalted Butter

Ingredient name specifies unsalted, so the plain no-added-salt butter record is used rather than the salted or not-further-defined records.

Parmesan

Weighed as a hard cheese and grated at the point of use; the fresh parmesan record matches the record used for this ingredient and is preferred over the dried finely grated record, which is far more concentrated.

Lemon Juice

Measured as squeezed juice, not whole fruit; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

Flat Leaf Parsley

Weighed raw as fresh leaves for finishing; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

What this is and is not

These figures match the ones shown on the recipe page exactly, because both come from this same arithmetic.

A composition database gives representative values for a food, not an analysis of your tin, your loaf or your cut of meat. Brands differ, produce varies, and yields change with how long something cooked and how hard it was drained. Treat every figure here as an estimate of the right order rather than a measurement, and where a number matters clinically, take it to whoever is managing your care. CERNERE publishes the working so it can be argued with, not to imply a precision food does not have.