Spiced Lamb & Apricot Tagine with Couscous: where the numbers come from

Per ingredient

Oxalate

136 mg per serving (546 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.

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.

Diced Lamb

Diced shoulder or leg weighed raw as purchased and trimmed, matching the state it is browned in; the cooked record already assumes a braising moisture loss the recipe does not control.

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.

Carrot

Weighed raw, peeled and sliced or grated, before any cooking; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

Ground Cumin

Measured dry from the jar; the ground cumin seed record matches the record used for cumin.

Ground Coriander

Ground dried coriander seed from the spice jar, not the fresh leaf, weighed as the dry powder the recipe spoons in.

Ground Cinnamon

Measured dry from the jar in 0.5-3 g amounts; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

No-Added-Salt Canned Tomatoes

Ingredient name explicitly specifies no added salt, matching this record exactly; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

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.

Dried Apricots

Dried apricots weighed dry from the packet, which is the state the recipe measures them in; they take up a little liquid in the tagine but the nutrients come from the dried fruit.

Wholemeal Couscous

Recipe weighs 240 g wholemeal couscous, dry, before hydrating; ledger key carried over verbatim, and AUSNUT's uncooked couscous record has no wholemeal variant.

Almonds

Weighed raw, unsalted and unroasted as the recipes use them, whether whole, halved or roughly chopped; roasting in a dry pan changes flavour but not the weighed composition basis.

Flat Leaf Parsley

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

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.

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.