After the parsing and mapping phase, one critical step is to determine the overall weight of each ingredient. This is perhaps the most complex step in the whole process and the subsequent nutritional calculation heavily depends upon this. This is complicated by the ingredient listings like
Pinch of salt to taste
Two 15-ounce cans chickpeas (4 cups), rinsed and drained
pinch is a very common kitchen unit and has to be appropriately handled for weight calculation. Similarly the second ingredient (chickpeas) has weight-hint given in it’s description (4 cups). Indentifying these lexical clues and incorporating them in the weight deduction is achieved in this step. This critical step is often overlooked in classical Information Extraction literature and discussed by \cite{badra2011ontology}