Food allergies, intolerances, and celiac sensitivities require relentless vigilance in the kitchen. Forgetting that a staple ingredient in your pantry is an allergen—or missing an allergen buried deep in a recipe’s ingredient list or cooking instruction—can lead to severe allergic reactions or dangerous cross-contamination.

Minthee solves this with Automatic Pantry Allergen Warnings: you flag an item once in your pantry inventory, and Minthee automatically ripples high-visibility warning symbols (⚠️) across your entire collection: on home recommendation cards, recipe detail banners, ingredient prep checklists, and live step-by-step cooking sessions with spoken audio alerts.

1. Flagging Allergens in Your Pantry Inventory

Managing dietary risks starts right where your ingredients live—in your local pantry.

To flag an ingredient as an allergen:

Open the Pantry tab from the main navigation bar.
Tap on any existing pantry item (or tap + to add a new item, such as Whole Milk, Peanut Butter, Tiger Prawns, or Soy Sauce).
In the item details dialog, toggle Mark as Allergen Caution.
Choose a standardized classification chip or type a custom tag:
- Standard Allergens: Peanuts, Tree Nuts, Dairy, Eggs, Shellfish, Fish, Wheat, Soy, Sesame.
- Custom Tags: Enter specific labels such as Severe Peanut Allergy, Mustard, Celery, Sulfites, or Lupin.
Tap Save.

Bulk Marking Selected Pantry Items

You can also mark multiple pantry items simultaneously:

Long-press any item in the Pantry tab to enter selection mode, then tap all items you wish to flag (e.g. selecting Almond Flour, Walnuts, and Cashews together).
Tap Edit selected in the top action bar.
In the Bulk Edit Pantry Items dialog, toggle Mark as Allergen Caution in the Allergen Caution section.
Select the desired allergen chip (e.g. Tree Nuts) or leave it empty to use the general allergen caution indicator.
Tap Apply to Selected Items. All chosen items are updated at once.

The items immediately display distinctive warning badges (⚠️ Allergen or ⚠️ [Type]) in your pantry ledger, reminding you at a glance of every restricted item currently in your household.

2. Word-Boundary & Plural Matching

Unlike naive keyword search tools that produce frustrating false alarms, Minthee features a specialized Word-Boundary Matching Engine (PantryAllergenMatcher):

Word-Boundary Isolation (\b...\b): The engine scans ingredient names and cooking text using strict word boundaries to avoid false positives:
- Flagging "nut" alerts on "walnuts" or "mixed nuts", but never triggers on "nutmeg" or "butternut squash".
- Flagging "egg" alerts on "eggs" or "boiled egg", but never triggers on "eggplant".
Singular & Plural Inflections: Automatically recognizes grammatical forms, so flagging "peanut" accurately flags "100g roasted peanuts", and flagging "prawn" flags "tiger prawns".
Synonym & Alias Matching: If you add aliases in your pantry (e.g. cow milk, heavy cream, or peanut butter under Peanuts), the engine catches recipes and instructions that refer to either the display name or any of its known aliases.
100% Offline & Private: All matching runs locally on your Android device with zero cloud latency and no tracking of your family’s dietary or medical sensitivities.

3. Extra Caution Alerts Across Recipes (`⚠️`)

Once an allergen is marked in your pantry, you don’t need to manually edit dozens of saved dishes. The app automatically scans your catalog and highlights affected recipes across all major views:

Recipe Collection Cards & Rediscover

If any dish in your All Recipes, Rediscover, or category collections contains a pantry allergen, a high-prominence alert pill is anchored directly on the recipe card:

⚠️ Allergen: [Peanuts, Dairy]

This ensures you never accidentally start preparing a dish that poses a dietary risk to someone dining at your table.

Recipe Lists & Tablet Grids

Every recipe card across your Home Collections and Tablet Multi-Column Grid displays a colored warning chip (⚠️ [Allergens]) directly alongside cooking times and category pills.

Dish Action Bottom Sheet

Long-pressing or tapping the action menu on any recipe card immediately reflects allergen warnings before you plan the meal into your weekly schedule or mark it cooked.

4. Recipe Details & Ingredient Prep Awareness

When you tap into a dish to review its ingredients or adjust portion sizes, Minthee provides two layers of safety:

Standalone Cross-Contamination Caution Card

Positioned directly before the Ingredients checklist, a dedicated alert card highlights potential cross-contamination risks before you begin prepping:

⚠️ Cross-Contamination Caution
This dish contains ingredients marked as allergens in your pantry: Peanuts, Dairy.

Having this standalone card prominently displayed immediately above the ingredients checklist ensures you see which items demand caution and separate prep surfaces right as you read through your ingredients and quantities.

Individual Ingredient Prep Chips

In the Ingredients Checklist, matching ingredient lines display an amber warning chip directly beside the ingredient name (e.g., ⚠️ Peanuts next to Crushed roasted peanuts, or ⚠️ Dairy next to Whole Milk).

This allows the cook to prepare the kitchen before turning on the stove:

Set aside dedicated allergen-free cutting boards and knives.
Swap out the ingredient for a safe alternative (e.g., oat milk for cow’s milk, or sunflower seed butter for peanut butter).
Prepare the allergen-free portion first before opening allergen containers.

5. Live Cooking Session Alerts & Spoken Audio Warnings

During live cooking, hands are often messy, hot pans require attention, and cooks may not be staring closely at their screens. Minthee ensures safety warnings are unmissable at the exact moment an allergen is used:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  ⚠️ Cross-Contamination Alert                               │
│  This step uses Whole Milk. Take allergy precautions &      │
│  sanitize utensils and prep surfaces.                       │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
  Step 2 of 4: Pour milk and whisk gently until thickened.

Step-Specific Detection

Rather than displaying a generic alert on every step (such as boiling water or chopping onions), Minthee only triggers step warnings when the specific instruction text or active step ingredients involve the flagged allergen.

Visual Caution Card

A prominent amber CrossContaminationCautionCard docks above the step instruction, prompting the cook to sanitize work surfaces and keep allergy-sensitive portions separated.

Spoken Audio Announcements (Hands-Free TTS)

If voice assistance is enabled in Cooking Mode, Minthee’s CookingVoiceEngine speaks a proactive alert immediately upon advancing to the step:

“Caution: this step uses [Allergen]. Take allergy precautions.”

This audible alert catches your attention even if you are standing across the kitchen, looking into the oven, or washing dishes.

6. Safe Kitchen Practices & Cross-Contamination Checklist

To keep family members and guests with severe allergies or celiac disease safe, use these kitchen habits alongside Minthee’s alerts:

Kitchen Practice	How to Implement
Mise en Place Order	Always wash, chop, and seal allergen-free portions before opening or measuring ingredients flagged with `⚠️`.
Color-Coded Utensils	Use designated cutting boards, spatulas, and tongs for allergen meals to eliminate microscopic residue transfer.
Sanitize Surfaces	Wipe countertops and induction cooktops with warm soapy water and clean dish towels between recipe phases.
Porous Equipment Caution	Avoid using scratched plastic containers, wooden spoons, or unglazed earthenware for allergen-free cooking, as allergens can linger in pores.
Safe Recipe Duplication	Use Minthee’s Duplicate Recipe feature to maintain a dedicated safe variant (e.g., Pad Thai (Peanut-Free) or Pancake Batter (Gluten-Free)).

7. Customizing Allergen & Dietary Safety Preferences

By default, all allergen cautions and voice warnings are turned off so cooks who do not manage food allergies enjoy a clean, distraction-free interface. If anyone in your household or dining circle has an allergy, intolerance, or celiac sensitivity, you can enable alerts in seconds via a dedicated configuration dialog:

Open Settings from the navigation bar.
Under the Allergens & Dietary Safety card, tap Allergen Alerts & Cautions to open the options dialog.
Toggle any of the three safety preferences:
- Recipe & Pantry Allergen Banners: Displays cross-contamination caution cards and allergen badges across home recommendation cards, recipe detail cards, and ingredient checklists.
- Cooking Step Caution Cards: Displays step-specific safety caution cards that appear during live step-by-step cooking sessions.
- Spoken Voice Warnings: Enables hands-free audible voice alerts (“Caution: this step uses [Allergen]. Take allergy precautions.”) when advancing to a cooking step containing flagged allergens.
Tap Done to save your preferences. The settings card immediately reflects your active alert count (e.g. Off or 3 active).

Lossless Backup & Disaster-Proof Restore

All allergen configurations are preserved losslessly across backups:

Pantry Allergen Cautions: Every flagged pantry item’s allergen status (isAllergen) and classification tag (allergenType) are backed up in full detail.
Recipe Allergen Tags: Custom allergen tags attached to recipes are archived.
Safety Preferences: Your toggled allergen alerts (banners, cooking step cards, and spoken audio warnings) are exported into backup metadata.
Cross-Format Resilience: Whether creating local .disharchive ZIPs, JSON export files, pre-migration snapshots, or Cloud backups, your allergen safety profile is automatically included and restored.

Explore other features that keep your kitchen organized, efficient, and safe:

Aisle-Sorted Grocery List: Master pantry inventory tracking, aisle sorting, and automatic ingredient deduplication.
Hands-Free Cooking Mode & Step Timers: Run multiple named kitchen timers, sub-timers, and voice-assisted cooking sessions.
Weekly Meal Planning: Plan meals Monday through Sunday with balance, variety, and automatic grocery list generation.
Live Recipe Sharing & Web Links: Share recipes and shopping lists via interactive web links and QR codes.