Recipe/Rephrasing
What a recipe exactly is, seems sufficiently defined. But how can we determine this recipe.
The problem is that a product is a black box. We are looking at the output of a factory, but we do not know what goes on inside. Image a factory that makes Apple syrups. If we can look at the factory through binoculars we can see farmers with pallets full of apples go inside and trucks with port of apple syrup going out. By smartly counting what goes in and comes out we make a recipe estimation for the apple syrups in that factor. If we could observe more of such factories we could estimate the average recipe of apple syrup.
Unfortunately we cannot observe these factories. We only have the results of various products from different factories. And we have some characteristics of the products in the form of ingredients and nutritional values. The ingredients of a product are pretty vague and lack details. The amount of apples used in the various product might vary wildly.
In order to get a feel for the amount of apples we could assume a specific kind of apple and use its nutritional values. But what apple to use?