Recipe Migration Checklist: What to Verify After Converting

July 17, 2026 6 min read

You have exported your recipes from one format and converted them into another. The file downloaded successfully. The progress bar hit 100%. You are done, right?

Not quite. Recipe conversion is generally reliable, but data does not always transfer perfectly between formats. Differences in how apps structure recipe data mean that some details can be lost, reformatted, or misplaced during conversion. A few minutes of verification now can save you from discovering a problem months later when you are halfway through cooking Thanksgiving dinner.

Here is a practical checklist for verifying your converted recipes.

Step 1: Check the Recipe Count

This is the simplest and most important check. Count the recipes in your export and compare that number to how many you had in the original source.

If you exported from Paprika, your .paprikarecipes file is actually a compressed archive containing one file per recipe. If you had 247 recipes in Paprika, your converted output should contain 247 recipes.

A mismatched count usually means one of two things: duplicate recipes were merged (which might be intentional), or some recipes failed to parse. If the count is lower than expected, check whether the missing recipes had unusual formatting -- recipes pasted from plain text or imported from unusual sources are the most likely candidates for parsing issues.

What to do if recipes are missing: Try re-importing just the missing recipes individually. On MoveMyRecipes, you can upload individual recipe files alongside batch archives. For recipes that originated as plain text or images, the OCR image import can sometimes recover content that structured parsers miss.

Step 2: Verify Ingredients Are Complete

Open five to ten recipes -- a mix of simple and complex ones -- and compare the ingredient lists against the originals.

Look specifically for:

Missing ingredients. Are all ingredients present? Complex recipes with sub-sections (like "For the crust" and "For the filling") sometimes lose ingredients during conversion if the source format handles groupings differently than the target format.
Quantity and unit separation. Does "2 cups flour" come through as a single string, or is the quantity (2), unit (cups), and ingredient (flour) properly separated? This depends on your target format. JSON (Schema.org) stores these as structured fields. Markdown and plain text keep them as readable strings.
Special characters. Fractions like 1/2 and 3/4, degree symbols, and accented characters in ingredients from non-English recipes can sometimes be mangled during conversion.

Step 3: Read Through the Instructions

Ingredients are structured data and usually convert cleanly. Instructions are where problems are more likely to hide, because they are often stored as free-form text with formatting that varies between apps.

Check for:

Step numbering. Are numbered steps preserved? Some formats store instructions as a single block of text; others store each step separately. Conversion between these styles can sometimes merge steps or split them incorrectly.
Line breaks and paragraphs. A recipe that looked nicely formatted in one app might appear as a wall of text in another format. This is usually a display issue rather than data loss, but it affects readability.
Embedded temperatures and times. Instructions that reference "350 degrees F" or "bake for 45 minutes" should come through intact. These are part of the instruction text and rarely cause problems, but it is worth confirming.
Links and images. If your original recipes contained links to source websites or embedded photos, these may not survive conversion depending on the target format. JSON and HTML preserve links well. Markdown preserves links. CSV and plain text generally do not carry images.

Step 4: Confirm Timing and Servings

Prep time, cook time, total time, and serving counts are structured fields in most recipe formats. Open a handful of recipes and verify these values transferred correctly.

Common issues:

Missing times. If the source recipe did not have structured time fields (common with recipes imported from plain text), these will be empty in the export. That is not a conversion error -- the data simply was not there to begin with.
Unit confusion. A recipe with "1 hour 30 minutes" of cook time might come through as "90 minutes" or vice versa. Both are correct, but it is worth checking that the value itself is right.
Serving counts as text. "Serves 4-6" is harder for structured formats to handle than "4 servings." Check whether ranges were preserved or simplified.

Step 5: Check Categories and Tags

Recipe categories, tags, courses (breakfast, dinner, dessert), and cuisines are the metadata most likely to be lost or altered during conversion, because different formats handle categorization very differently.

Paprika uses categories. Schema.org JSON uses recipeCategory and recipeCuisine. CookLang does not have a built-in category system. CSV typically puts categories in a column.

If categories are important to your organization system, check a few recipes from different categories to make sure the labels survived. If they did not, you may need to re-categorize after import into your new app, which is tedious but not a data loss issue.

Step 6: Spot-Check Your Most Important Recipes

Every recipe collection has a few that matter more than the rest. Your grandmother's pie crust. The birthday cake you make every year. The weeknight dinner your family asks for by name.

Open these recipes specifically and read through them carefully. Make sure every detail is correct. These are the recipes where an error would actually hurt.

What to Do When Something Is Wrong

If you find issues during verification, here are your options:

Re-convert with a different export format. Sometimes switching from one output format to another resolves the issue. For example, if JSON lost your categories, try CSV, which handles flat metadata well. If Markdown mangled your ingredient formatting, try HTML, which preserves richer structure.

Edit individual recipes. For a small number of recipes with minor issues, manual correction in your target app is often faster than trying to fix the source data and re-convert.

Try a different import path. If your source is a URL, try importing via URL rather than uploading a file, or vice versa. Different import methods sometimes capture different data.

Accept imperfection on low-priority recipes. If you have 500 recipes and 3 have minor formatting issues in the instructions, that is a 99.4% success rate. Perfection is the enemy of done. Fix what matters and move on.

Make Verification a Habit

If you adopt a practice of regular recipe exports (and you should -- see our post on building a lasting recipe archive), make verification part of the routine. A quick spot-check of five or six recipes after each export takes two minutes and ensures your backup is actually usable when you need it.

Your recipes are worth the effort. Check the work.