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The app itself is free, with no trial period and no countdown. Your recipes, the shopping list and the pantry all work without paying anything, and there is no advertising anywhere.

Mattarello Plus unlocks the rest: scanning recipes and receipts, the nutrition insights, sorting your list by supermarket aisle, the recipe book as a PDF and iCloud sync. It costs € 1,50 per month, or € 14,99 once if you would rather be done with it.

• Scan recipes from a photo, so they arrive filled in
• Scan receipts so your pantry stocks itself
• Insights per recipe and per week: nutrition per portion, Nutri-Score and the NOVA scale
• Sorting by supermarket aisle on the shopping list
• Your recipe book as a PDF, ready to print or share
• iCloud sync between your own devices

Anything we add to Plus later is included in what you already paid.

No. There is no account, no login and no password. Everything you write down lives in the app on your own device. The only account involved is your Apple Account, and only for the purchase and for iCloud if you switch it on.

Yes, all of it. Reading a recipe, adding one, the shopping list, the pantry, scanning and the insights: it all happens on your device. The only moments Mattarello needs a connection are the one-time download of the assistant's model, the App Store purchase, and iCloud sync if you use it.

The assistant is an open-source language model called Qwen3 4B, published under the Apache 2.0 licence. It is what reads your photographed recipes and receipts and what works out the nutrition.

Because it runs entirely on your phone, the whole model has to be there: that is the 2,5 GB. It is a one-time download, best done over wifi, and it is completely optional. Do not download it and the app simply works without the scanning and insights.

Yes. Open Settings in the app, go to Cooking assistant and tap Delete. It frees up 2,5 GB immediately, and everything except the scanning and insights carries on as before. You can download it again whenever you like.

A few things help:

• Scanning works best with printed recipes. Handwriting is hard on any reader.
• Take a sharp photo in good light, straight on rather than at an angle.
• Recipe running over two pages? Take more photos, the assistant reads them as one.
• Does it stall? That is almost always memory. Close a few other apps and try again.
• The first scan after starting the app is the slowest, because the model has to be loaded from storage first.

Put in what you keep at home, with an amount if you want the app to track it. From then on two things happen by themselves: a scanned receipt adds to the cupboard, and every recipe you put on the shopping list takes off the share it needs.

Leave the amount empty for things you always have, like oil or salt. Those never run out, they simply stay off your shopping list. When a tracked item does run out it moves to Out, buy more.

Probably because it is in your pantry. The list quietly sets aside what you already have, and if you have part of the amount it only asks you to buy the rest. You can always tap Buy it anyway on such a line to put it back on the list.

The nutrition values come from a table bundled with the app, built from NEVO online (RIVM, CC BY 4.0) and USDA FoodData Central. The Nutri-Score is calculated from those values with the official revised formula for general foods.

Ingredients the table does not recognise are estimated by the assistant, and the app tells you what percentage of the dish the calculation actually covers. It is a good estimate to cook by, not a medical judgement.

NOVA says something about how processed food is, from unprocessed (1) to ultra-processed (4). It says nothing about the nutritional value itself. Processed is not automatically unhealthy: bread, cheese and frozen vegetables are processed too. Read it as context next to the Nutri-Score, not as a verdict.

Unlock Plus, open Settings in the app and switch on Store in iCloud. Your recipes, shopping list and pantry then travel through your own private iCloud to every device signed in to the same Apple Account.

Existing recipes come along when you switch it on, and stay on the device if you switch it off again.

That message appears when the app could not connect its database to iCloud, so it carried on locally. Your recipes are safe, they are simply on this device only. Check whether you are signed in to iCloud and whether iCloud Drive is on, then restart the app.

Yes. With Plus, open Settings and go to Recipe book. Mattarello lays all your recipes out as a PDF, with a cover, a page per recipe and your photos. From there you can print it, mail it, or save it wherever you like. The PDF is made on your device.

Yes. In Settings under Units you choose between metric (grams, litres) and imperial (ounces, cups). Recipes and the shopping list follow your choice.

Subscriptions are handled by Apple, not by us. On your iPhone open Settings, tap your name at the top, then Subscriptions, choose Mattarello and cancel there. It keeps working until the end of the period you already paid for.

Open the Plus screen in the app and tap Restore an earlier purchase. As long as you are signed in with the same Apple Account, Plus comes back at no cost. Not working? Check your internet connection and try again, and if it still refuses, mail us.

No. No analytics, no trackers, no advertising and no profile. There is no server of ours for the app to talk to. The full story is in the privacy policy.

The app is in Dutch at the moment. More languages are on the way, and this website is already in English and Dutch. The units follow your own choice, so cups and ounces work whatever the interface language.

Mattarello is Italian for rolling pin: the simplest tool in the kitchen, and the one that turns a lump of dough into dinner. The app opens with one rolling out the dough, which is exactly the amount of ceremony we thought it deserved.