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.
How an allergen matrix works
One grid instead of one answer per product
The Allergen Detector answers what a single ingredient statement contains. A matrix answers the question a caterer, school kitchen or co-packer has across a whole range: where does milk appear, which dishes are free of sesame, which products share an allergen. Products run down the side, the nine major US allergens run across the top, and a mark in a cell means a term for that allergen was found in that product's ingredients.
Read it both ways. Across a row, it is one product's allergen profile. Down a column, it is every product that brings that allergen into the kitchen, and the "In how many" row at the bottom counts them. The summary line above the grid states how many of the nine appear in total and how many products have none detected.
Every mark shows the word that caused it
Detection matches ingredient text against the same allergen term list the Allergen Detector and Ingredient Formatter use, derivative names included. Term matching is fast, and it is also wrong in predictable ways: "coconut milk" and "cocoa butter" trigger the milk column, and "almond flour" triggers wheat.
On one product those errors are obvious. Across thirty rows they become a wall of dots nobody audits, so each marked cell carries the term that triggered it - hover or tap to see it. Check every mark against the specification sheet and delete the ones that are wrong from the exported sheet. A mark you cannot explain is a reason to look at the ingredient, not to remove the mark.
A missing mark is the bigger risk
A false mark costs a minute of checking. A missing one is the dangerous error, and the grid can only see what you type. If an ingredient is entered as "seasoning blend", "chocolate chips" or "Worcestershire sauce" without its sub-ingredients, the allergens inside it are invisible to the matcher. Paste the full statement from each supplier's specification, compound ingredients expanded, before relying on an empty cell.
For the same reason, "No major allergen detected" is a statement about the text entered, not a clearance for the product. The grid also refuses to show an empty table: removing the last product clears its fields instead, because an empty matrix reads as "no allergens found".
What a matrix cannot tell you
- Cross-contact. Whether a product needs a "may contain" advisory depends on your equipment, shared lines and changeover schedule. No ingredient list answers that, so there is no column for it.
- The species. The columns are categories - tree nuts, fish, crustacean shellfish - but a US label has to name the specific nut, fish or shellfish. The matrix tells you a column applies; the declaration still needs the name.
- Other markets. The grid covers the major allergens under FALCPA plus sesame, added by the FASTER Act. The UK and EU declare 14, including celery, mustard, lupin, molluscs and sulphites, none of which has a column here.
From the grid to the label
Copy as CSV exports one row per product, with YES under each allergen detected and a drafted Contains statement, quoted so that product names containing commas survive a spreadsheet import. That makes it a working document for production planning and audits, but the drafted statement inherits every false positive and every unexpanded sub-ingredient from the text it was built from.
For the declaration that goes on a package, build the product in the label generator, which derives the allergen statement from the same recipe as the ingredient list so the two cannot drift apart.
Reference information, not legal advice. Requirements change and turn on facts specific to your product - confirm against the current regulation before relying on it.
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.