Free Allergen Matrix Generator
Paste the ingredients for every item on your menu and get one grid showing which of the nine major US allergens appears in which dish. Read it down the columns to see where milk hides across the range.
6 of the 9 major allergens appear across 3 products: Milk, Eggs, Fish, Crustacean Shellfish, Peanuts, Wheat. 1 product has no detected allergen.
| Product | Milk | Egg | Fish | Shell | Nuts | Peanut | Wheat | Soy | Sesame |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blueberry Muffin | ● | ● | · | · | · | · | ● | · | · |
| House Vinaigrette | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
| Pad Thai | · | ● | ● | ● | · | ● | · | · | · |
| In how many | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Hover or tap a marked cell to see the ingredient term that triggered it.
- This matches words, not formulas. "Coconut milk" and "cocoa butter" both trip the milk column; "almond flour" trips wheat. Every mark shows the term that caused it - check them against your spec sheets and delete the ones that are wrong.
- It cannot see cross-contact. Whether a dish needs a "may contain" advisory depends on your facility, your equipment and your changeover schedule. No ingredient list answers that, so this grid does not try.
- Nine allergens, US only. The UK and EU declare 14, which includes celery, mustard, lupin, molluscs and sulphites. This grid is FALCPA plus the FASTER Act sesame addition.
Common questions
What is an allergen matrix for?
It puts every dish or SKU on one axis and the Big 9 allergens on the other, so you can see at a glance which products share an allergen. That is the view you need for scheduling production (run the allergen-free items first), for planning a cleandown, and for answering a customer or auditor question without re-reading every recipe.
Is a matrix required by law?
Not in the United States as a labelling requirement. The label declaration is what the law requires. A matrix is a working document that supports your allergen controls, and food-safety auditors frequently ask to see one. In the UK and EU, allergen information for non-prepacked and prepacked-for-direct-sale food has its own rules, and a matrix is a common way caterers meet them.
Should the matrix show "may contain" alongside actual allergens?
Keep them in separate columns or use a distinct mark. Conflating a deliberate ingredient with a cross-contact risk makes the matrix useless for the decision it exists to support, and it tends to push products toward blanket precautionary labelling, which helps nobody.
How often should it be reviewed?
On every recipe change, every supplier change and every new SKU, plus a scheduled full review. Most allergen incidents trace back to a substituted ingredient that nobody propagated into the paperwork, so the review trigger matters more than the review frequency.