I am trying to create, possibly an Excel spreadsheet to assist in this as the quantities can change, and will change, as this problem is executed. Unless someone can offer a better way, but here goes:
I have a variety of foods, and a varying quantity of each food item. These foods make dishes, each dish has a varying quantity requirement (aka “serving”) of the food items used in that dish (ie. Dish 1 uses 2 eggs and dish 2 uses 5). And each dish has a different value to “earn” each time you can you make it.
Using the eggs example, say I have 100 eggs and dish 1(d1) has a value of 10 and dish 2(d2) has a value of 30. If I use all my eggs to make only d2 I can earn (20egg servings x value 30) 600. Or if I use all my eggs to make only d1 I can earn (50egg servings x value 10) 500.
Clearly the better value is to make only d2.
However, each dish can have 4-7 different food elements to each that may be required for a higher value dish.
This is a very simplified version of what I am working with.
What’s the best way I can input my food items and their quantities, and the individual dishes with their food items and servings and varying earning values to figure out the best way to use my foods to “earn” the most value?
I’ll open this up for conversation because I welcome questions to help clarify what I might not have explained fully.
Added 3+ months ago:
I’d like to add that not every dish uses shared foods.
Ultimately the final tally will have 36+ dishes with 100+ food items. . .
But as a sample: >> d1(value 17) uses: 1egg, 2flour, 2creamchz, 1raspbry. >> d2 (value 28) uses: 1egg, 2baguette, 1dill, 1blkpepper, 1heirloomtomato, 1figjam. >> d3 (value 33) uses: 1egg, 1creamchz, 2unsaltedbutter, 1honey, 2maplesyr, 1raspbry. >> d4 (value 55) uses: 2egg, 1blkpepper, 2balsamicglz, 3pecan, 3sugar. . . .
You can see that there are many unrelenting food items, and some that will exhaust from making a certain dish before other foods will. The only repeating foods in this sample is: eggs, baguette, black pepper, cream cheese. . . .
If it won’t complicate things, a select flew of the items I am able to increase the quantity of over time (eggs, baguette, and flour in this sample) but it won’t be many. . . . .
I don’t need someone to use this data to tell me the best way to make the dishes I’ve listed to get the most out of the foods I have on hand, as I have a data set far larger than this sample. I’d like to know how I can best figure this out on my own, or by entering the data into an excel spreadsheet. Thank you for your time, and please ask as many questions as you have and I will do my best to answer them as thoroughly as possible.
Added 3+ months ago:
I’ll add some quantity numbers as well, in case this helps:
Eggs (569), flour (337) cream cheese (185), raspberries (240), baguette (146), dill (118), black pepper (207), heirloom tomato (246), fig jam (381), unsalted butter (181), honey (249), maple syrup (234), balsamic vinegar (340), pecans (286), sugar (116).
And all of these are subject to change, which I can manually input (assuming the solution is an excel-based solution).