Allergens on a Menu
Tag the nine major US allergens on each dish, and read the matrix that produces.
Every dish on a menu can be tagged with the allergens it contains, and the menu then produces a single table showing which dishes contain what. That table is the thing you print for the kitchen, hand to a coordinator, or check before answering a couple's question about their guest with a nut allergy.
The nine allergens
CeremonySync uses the nine major food allergens defined by US federal law — FALCPA's original eight plus sesame, which the FASTER Act added in January 2023:
| Milk | butter, cream, cheese, yogurt, whey |
| Eggs | mayonnaise, meringue, egg wash, some pasta |
| Fish | salmon, cod, anchovy — including fish sauce and Worcestershire |
| Crustacean Shellfish | shrimp, crab, lobster, crawfish |
| Tree Nuts | almond, walnut, pecan, pistachio, cashew |
| Peanuts | peanut oil, satay, some sauces |
| Wheat | flour, bread, pasta, roux, soy sauce |
| Soybeans | soy sauce, tofu, edamame, many oils |
| Sesame | tahini, hummus, seeded breads |
Each one shows those examples next to it while you are tagging, because the person working through forty dishes should not have to remember that sesame hides in bread or that Worcestershire contains fish.
Tagging a dish
- Open the menu and pick a section
- Open a dish and choose Edit
- Under Contains Allergens, select everything the dish contains
- Save
Tag what is IN the dish, not what a guest avoids. The Dietary Flags section directly below means the opposite — Vegan, Gluten-Free, Nut-Free describe who a dish is suitable for. "This salmon contains fish" and "four guests have a shellfish allergy" are different facts, and the two sections keep them apart on purpose.
Reading the matrix
In the menu builder, the warning-triangle button beside Save Version opens the Allergen Matrix: every dish on the menu down the side, the nine allergens across the top, a check where they meet. Dishes are grouped by section, so it reads in the same order as the menu itself.
Export CSV gives you the same grid as a file — the version you print and pin up, or send to a coordinator who does not use KitchenSync.
An empty table is not a clean bill of health
If nothing has been tagged yet, the matrix says so above the grid. This matters more than it sounds: an all-blank table looks exactly like a menu where nothing contains an allergen, and quietly telling someone a menu is allergen-free is a dangerous thing to do by accident. Once any dish is tagged, the notice disappears.
How this relates to guest dietary counts
Two different things, deliberately separate:
- Allergens are dish-level and live on the menu. They answer "what is in this?"
- Dietary counts are guest-level and live on the catering order, gathered from what the couple submitted. They answer "how many people need something different?"
You need both. The counts tell you four guests have a nut allergy; the matrix tells you which four dishes you cannot serve them.
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