# Platelab — The art of the composed plate > The art of the composed plate (iPhone/iPad app by Ryan Dewsbury.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/platelab/id6802895327 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [Ryan Dewsbury](https://appshunter.io/developer/310652816) - Category: Food & Drink, Lifestyle - Price: Free with in-app purchases - Age rating: 12+ - Requires: iOS 17.0 · 570 MB - Languages: American English - Released: 2026-09-01 - Data updated: 2026-09-16 - User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/platelab/id6802895327/reviews.md ## What is Platelab? Following a recipe teaches you that recipe. It doesn't teach you to cook. The cooks you admire aren't recalling steps. They're making decisions — what belongs beside the lamb, where the acid goes, when to stop adding. That's the actual skill, it's learnable, and you can start on it tonight whether this is your fiftieth dinner or your fifth. Platelab teaches it the way it's really learned: by having you compose the plate yourself, one decision at a time, with the reasoning out in the open — until the instinct is yours and you don't need the app to find it. WHAT CHANGES You walk into the kitchen with an idea instead of a search. You cook things you've never made before, and they work. Your plates start looking composed rather than assembled. You stop rotating the same six dinners and don't miss them. You learn why a pairing works, so the next one is your own. Dinner suits everyone at your table without becoming a compromise. The week stops being seven separate problems. HOW IT WORKS Build a plate in six moves. Start with one good thing — a cut, a fish, a vegetable in its short season. Then compose outward: something to echo it, a vegetable with real presence, a sharp note to cut the richness, texture so the last bite is as good as the first, and a finish that ties it together. Every pairing tells you why. Behind the app is a canon built one affinity at a time — French and European foundations, wok cookery from East and Southeast Asia, Indian tempering, Persian, Levantine, Latin — where each combination earns its place through real precedent or the chemistry underneath it. Nothing is there to fill space. Balance is watched while you work. Acid where the dish has gone heavy. Fat where it does actual work. Salt, crunch, a finishing gesture. Take the plate anywhere you like; the structure comes with you. See the plate before you cook it. Ask for a photograph and your composition arrives the way it would at the pass — the placement, the sauce, the garnish, the space you left alone. Ask anything, mid-cook. Why the vinegar goes in last. What to do with the bones. How to make the same dish gentler for someone who won't eat heat. You get an answer from someone who has stood at a stove. Compose a whole week. Seven nights that go somewhere — varied in technique, honest about a Tuesday, and aware of what's in the pantry and what you'll owe the market. Set your table once. Say who eats with you and what is never welcome, and every plate after that quietly respects it. Elegance isn't complication. It's the three right things, put down with nerve. Start there. SUBSCRIPTION Platelab Pro unlocks the full app. New subscribers get a 1-week free trial, after which the subscription renews monthly at $9.99 USD. Prices may vary by region and are shown in the app before you purchase. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. The subscription renews automatically unless it is cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period; manage or cancel it any time in your Apple Account settings. Any unused portion of a free trial is forfeited when a subscription is purchased. Privacy Policy: https://food.rdews.com/legal/platelab-privacy Terms of Use: https://food.rdews.com/legal/platelab-terms ## Pricing and in-app purchases Base price: Free. **Subscriptions** | Subscription | Price | Period | | --- | --- | --- | | Platelab Pro | $9.99 | per month | ## Version history (last 3 releases) ### 1.0.188 — 2026-09-11 2026 Sauce Release • Marinades as a real step. Choose tikka, shawarma, bulgogi, jerk or saffron-citrus in the prep step; the marinade's own pairings join the plate and its recipe is built first. Saved plates carry over. • 45 new larder items, from the pantry the sauces call for (soy sauce, fish stock, veal stock, red wine, sake, brandy, black vinegar, red miso…) to the counter (bacon, dry-cured ham, Spanish chorizo, bottarga, smoked salmon, oyster, sea urchin, black truffle, mozzarella, fontina, nori, papad, panisse…). • 6 new sauces (dashi air, tomato water gel, squid broth gel, beet agar sheet, pecorino fonduta, fonduta di fontina) and 2 new techniques (gratin, besan batter fry). • 9 sauces now lead their own dishes: béchamel, sugo d'anatra, saffron brodo, the crustacean reduction, marqa, crema di Parmigiano, tomato consommé, kadhi, sambar. • Crema al limone and fregola added, from the salmon-on-pasta ruling. • Every hero is one record with its pairings: a guest's rule on beet or shrimp reaches it as a centrepiece and as a pick, the Library has one switch per item, and shopping merges an egg with the yolk a sauce takes. • Well over a hundred new pairings, each with its precedent stated. • Larger type on plate details, recipes, reviews and ingredient pages; an ingredient's pairings read full width. ### 1.0.158 — 2026-09-07 Platelab 1.0.158 — The Five Forms Release The composer has been rebuilt around plate forms, and the pantry has more than doubled. Plates now know what kind of dish they are. A centre-led plate, a poured bowl, a dressed plate, a handed bite, a tossed starch — each composes on its own ladder of courses instead of one universal template, and the Lab walks the form you're on. Pasta is finally treated as what it is: an architecture with its shapes, not a protein with sides. A real sauce library. 109 sauces across 26 architectures — hollandaise, poivrade and mole negro to sambar, jerk marinade and leche de tigre, plus modernist builds like airs, espumas and fluid gels. Sauces carry their own pairings now, so a poured sauce brings its classic partners to the plate — trofie for pesto, tagliatelle for ragù. Browse them grouped by architecture in the Ingredients tab. A much bigger larder. 345 ingredients and 60 heroes — octopus, lobster, quail, foie gras, venison loin, veal shank, salt cod and more — every pairing justified by a classical precedent or a real flavor argument, never filler. Build around what you have. Anchor an ingredient and the Lab narrows to heroes that can actually carry it — including through a sauce that classically brings it along. Smarter shopping. The list is organized into honest shelves — cured meats, acids, wines & spirits, stocks & broths, sweeteners — and a kitchen-made component shops as the ingredients it's made from. See the plate's profile. Balance and taste radars on every record and every composed plate, with textures and traditions surfaced, and heat read on the balance wheel. Plus hundreds of new hand-drawn tiles, per-form plating photos with the right vessel for each dish, and a smoother, steadier Lab walk. ### 1.0 — 2026-09-01 No release notes. ## More apps by Ryan Dewsbury - [gpokr](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/gpokr/id954677486) - [kdice](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/kdice/id969869818) - [listy.day](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/listyday/id6787763820) - [Crumple: Receipts & Taxes](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/crumple-receipts-and-taxes/id6791381552) - [Krestfell](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/krestfell/id6791728948) All apps by Ryan Dewsbury: https://appshunter.io/developer/310652816 --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-16.*