The Armed Forces Recipe Service is a compendium of high-volume

foodservice The foodservice (US English) or catering (British English) industry includes the businesses, institutions, and companies which prepare meals outside the home. It includes restaurants, school and hospital cafeterias, catering operations, and many ...

recipes written and updated regularly by the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national sec ...

Natick Laboratories The Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC) Soldier Center, now CCDC SC, was formerly the United States Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, and is a tenant unit of the United States Army Natick Soldier Syste ...

, and used by military cooks and by institutional and

catering Catering is the business of providing food service at a remote site or a site such as a hotel, hospital, pub, aircraft, cruise ship, park, festival, filming location or film studio. History of catering The earliest account of major services be ...

operations. It originated in 1969 as a consolidation of the cooking manuals of the four main services, and is based on previous military publications dating back to the first standardization efforts in the US Army in 1896. Recipes are based primarily on American cookery, with the addition of specialized items such as

vegetarian Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slaughter. Vegetariani ...

, kosher and

halal ''Halal'' (; ar, حلال, ) is an Arabic word that translates to "permissible" in English. In the Quran, the word ''halal'' is contrasted with '' haram'' (forbidden). This binary opposition was elaborated into a more complex classification k ...

recipes to meet more specialized needs of those being served. The Service database is now distributed by the Joint Culinary Center of Excellence, a division of the US Army Quartermaster School based in

Fort Lee, Virginia Fort Lee, in Prince George County, Virginia, United States, is a United States Army post and headquarters of the United States Army Combined Arms Support Command (CASCOM)/ Sustainment Center of Excellence (SCoE), the U.S. Army Quartermaster Sc ...

. Each recipe card has a standardized format; each recipe is calibrated to feed 100 people, with a basic nutritional analysis across the top of the card. Traditionally available primarily in print format, the AFRS database is also available electronically.

External links

US Army Quartermaster Center Joint Culinary Center for Excellence
including the
full AFRS recipe download
as well as numerous supporting documents regarding military food service procedures (backup lin
here
Cookbooks Military food of the United States {{Food-book-stub