This dish library is curated by Friam Limited and offered under the Open Database License (ODbL). Anyone may use, adapt, and build on it under the terms of that licence.
1. What this dataset is
The Food Dish Library is a derived library of common UK menu dishes (fish pie, chicken tikka masala, Victoria sponge and their peers), each mapped to the typical set of the 14 regulated allergens a recipe of that dish usually contains, together with search aliases and, where relevant, a caveat (for example, that some recipes of a dish add celery or ground almonds).
We built it to remove the recall burden from small hospitality businesses preparing their written allergen information: instead of remembering every typical allergen from scratch, they start from a reviewed baseline and then confirm each dish against their own recipe. Every row in the published library has been reviewed and ratified by us before release.
2. Where the data comes from
Every row in the current library was written and reviewed by us: a curated list of common UK menu dishes, each mapped by hand to the typical allergens a standard recipe carries, then checked before release. The library grows through the same route — new dishes are drafted, reviewed, and ratified before they are published.
An earlier pilot (version 1.0 of this page) seeded draft rows from Open Food Facts, the open, collaborative database of food products. That derivation did not meet our quality bar and was abandoned before any derived row was ratified or published; all such drafts were deleted. The published library contains no Open Food Facts data, so no ODbL attribution to Open Food Facts attaches to it — we record the history here for transparency.
We continue to publish the library under the Open Database License (ODbL) v1.0 as our own licence choice: anyone may use, adapt, and build on it, on the same share-alike terms.
3. The attribution
This dish library is curated by Friam Limited and offered under the Open Database License (ODbL). It is advisory: typical allergen sets for common UK dishes, to be checked against your own recipes.
4. Download the library
The current ratified library is published as a CSV export. The file carries the licence statement in its header comments and includes, for each dish: the dish name, aliases, the typical allergens (from the 14 regulated allergens), and any caveat. A provenance-barcodes column is retained for compatibility and is empty for curated rows.
Download the Food Dish Library (CSV) →
The export is regenerated as the library grows; the URL above always serves the current ratified version. No sign-up, key, or account is required.
5. What this dataset is not
This dataset is not allergen advice. Each row describes a typical recipe of a dish, not any particular kitchen’s recipe. Allergen content depends on a business’s actual recipes, ingredients, and suppliers: a chicken tikka masala may or may not contain nuts; a gravy may or may not carry gluten. Every food business must confirm each dish against its own recipes before relying on any allergen information, and must keep that information current as recipes and suppliers change. The legal duty to provide accurate allergen information rests with the food business, not with this dataset.
6. Questions and corrections
If you spot an error in the library, want to suggest a dish, or have a question about this dataset or its licence, contact us at legal@everyguard.uk and we will review and correct it promptly.