Vegetarian, Vegan, Pescatarian: What Dietary Tags Do and Do Not Tell You
Dietary labels on recipe sites are inferred from categories, not verified ingredient by ingredient. Here is how to check for yourself.
A tag like "vegetarian" on a recipe card looks like a guarantee. On most sites, including this one, it is closer to a hint — derived from the recipe's category rather than checked against every line of the ingredient list.
How the tags are derived here
Our recipe source classifies dishes into broad categories such as Vegetarian, Vegan, Seafood, Chicken, and Beef. We map those categories onto dietary tags. A dish in the Seafood category is tagged pescatarian; a dish in the Vegetarian category is tagged vegetarian.
That mapping is coarse by design, and it inherits any misclassification from the source. It cannot detect a splash of fish sauce in an otherwise vegetarian curry, or the anchovies in a Worcestershire-based marinade.
The ingredients that most often break a tag
- Fish sauce and Worcestershire sauce in dishes that otherwise look vegetarian.
- Chicken or beef stock used as the cooking liquid.
- Parmesan and similar hard cheeses, which are traditionally made with animal rennet.
- Gelatin in desserts, mousses, and some yoghurts.
- Honey, which many vegans exclude.
- Lard or beef fat in pastry and refried beans.
If you have an allergy, read the list
This matters more than dietary preference. No inferred tag anywhere on this site should be used to make an allergen decision. Open the recipe, read every ingredient, and where a product could contain a hidden allergen, check the packaging of what you actually buy.
Use tags to narrow down candidates, then confirm by reading the full ingredient list on the recipe page. Filter first, verify second.
Nutrition figures, cooking times, and dietary tags shown across Recipe Finder are estimates derived from recipe data, not measured values. Read the full ingredient list before making any allergen or medical decision — see how it works.
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