A mechanism is provided for modifying an existing recipe to meet a set of desired colors for a final food dish. Responsive to receiving a request to modify the existing recipe to meet the set of desired colors, at least one of the set of existing colors to be changed to meet the desired set of colors is identified. An ingredient-action-sequence triplet associated with each at least one existing color to be changed in the existing recipe is identified and, from a corpus of ingredient-action-sequence triplets associated with other existing recipes, one or more candidates that can be added to produce the at least one target color are identified. The one or more candidates that can be added are ranked based on how each candidate pairs best with other ingredients in the existing recipe. Based on a selection of a candidate, the existing recipe is modified with the selected candidate.