What goes on a cake allergen label? All fourteen allergens, and the line most labels miss

Short answer: a label needs to say what the item contains, in words a worried customer can read in a hurry, with the bakery's name on it — and it needs a second line that a Contains list cannot give you: what else is in your kitchen. Bake Boost builds both. Tick allergens on your ingredients, recipes and products, write one cross-contamination sentence in settings, and print one label per product from the order — on an A4 sticker sheet or a thermal printer. It is on every plan.

This is post seven in the series on what Bake Boost does for you day to day. Post six was about cutting food waste. This one is about the sticker on the box, and about a gap in our own software that we spent October closing.

The quick facts

The part we got wrong, and fixed

It is worth starting here, because it affected real labels.

Bake Boost has printed allergen labels since June. The label itself was fine. The data behind it was not. The allergen tick-list on a product, a recipe or an ingredient held nine boxes — and that list was hardcoded in three separate files, which is how a gap like this survives unnoticed.

Five of the fourteen allergens a food business has to declare were simply not there. There was no box for celery, mustard, lupin, molluscs or sulphites. If your cake contained one of them, you could not record it, and the label you printed was incomplete. Not wrong in a way you could see — wrong in a way you could not.

Two more were named too narrowly. "Wheat" is not the allergen; cereals containing gluten is, and that includes rye, barley and oats. "Shellfish" quietly merged crustaceans and molluscs, which are two separate declarable allergens.

As of 11 October 2026 all fourteen are there, in one canonical list that all three editors read from. If you have ticked allergens on your products before now, go back and look at them — the five that were missing could not have been ticked, because the boxes did not exist.

What are the fourteen allergens on a label?

These are the fourteen declarable under UK food information rules and EU Annex II, which is the list Bake Boost follows:

A fair number of these look irrelevant to a cake decorator until they are not. Sulphites turn up in dried fruit, glacé cherries and some fondant and glucose syrups. Lupin appears in gluten-free flour blends. Celery and mustard arrive through savoury work, stock powders and some seasoning blends. Molluscs will probably never apply to you — but it costs nothing to have the box there, and it costs a great deal to be the bakery that needed it and did not have it.

If you bake outside the UK and EU, check your own list before you rely on this one. The United States, Canada and Australia each name a different set, and some include allergens this list does not. Bake Boost prints what you declare; it does not know which jurisdiction you are in.

Where does the "Contains" line come from?

This is the part that saves you the most time, because it means you record an allergen once, as far upstream as you can, and it follows the food.

Allergens travel in one direction, upward:

Ingredient → Recipe → Product → Label

Tick almonds on your ground almonds ingredient, and every recipe using that ingredient carries nuts. Every product built from that recipe carries nuts. Every label printed for an order containing that product says Tree nuts. You did not re-tick it three times, and you cannot forget to.

Two rules govern that chain, and both lean the same way:

• It only ever adds. A derived allergen never clears one you set by hand, and removing an ingredient from a recipe never silently drops an allergen from it. The safe failure is to over-declare, never to miss one.
• Nothing is ticked on your behalf. Bake Boost does not guess that a sponge contains eggs. No backfill was run when the new allergens arrived, and no stored row was changed. An empty tick-list means nobody has told the system yet — it does not mean the product is free of anything.

The label combines the product's own allergens with those of every recipe linked to it, and removes duplicates. If a product and its sponge both say Eggs, the label says Eggs once.

One distinction worth being clear about: the Contains line is what the product contains. It is not the customer's "avoid" list from their enquiry. Those are two different things that look similar in a database and must never be confused on a sticker.

The line a "Contains" list cannot give you

Here is the gap that even a perfect Contains line leaves open.

A Contains list describes what you put in on purpose. It describes nothing about the flour dust in the air, the shared mixer, the nut paste that was on the bench an hour earlier, or the single oven that bakes everything. A customer with a serious allergy needs to know about all of that, and a label that stays silent on it is answering a question they did not ask.

So Bake Boost now prints a cross-contamination statement of your own writing at the foot of every label. One short sentence, set once in Settings → Business → Allergen labels:

Made in a kitchen that also handles nuts and sesame.

Write your own in your own words. Keep it to one honest sentence — it prints on every sticker, and a sticker is small.

Note what the Contains line says there: Gluten, not "Wheat". Soya, not "Soy". And Sulphites and Celery, which could not have appeared on that label a month ago.

It prints even when there is nothing to declare

This matters more than it sounds. A product with no allergens ticked still gets a label, and that label reads "No declared allergens" — and it still carries your cross-contamination statement.

That is the honest outcome. A plain shortbread genuinely contains none of the fourteen, and it is genuinely baked in a kitchen that handles nuts. Both facts belong on the box.

How do you print allergen labels for an order?

Open the order, and the button is next to Job Sheet.

You get two formats:

• A4 sticker sheet — a 3 × 8 grid, so twenty-four labels to a page, on roughly 63.5 × 33 mm cells. That is Avery-style geometry, but check it against your own label stock before you buy a box. A label that declares most of the fourteen will push its row slightly taller rather than squeeze the text — a readable sticker is worth more than a tidy grid.
• Thermal label — one small page per label, for a thermal label printer.

Either one downloads as a PDF. You get one label per product in the order by default — not one per order, because an order with a cake and a box of macarons needs two different labels. If you need one sticker per physical unit, there is a copies setting for that.

The bakery's name prints on every label, even when you have a logo. That was a deliberate decision and it cost us a label per sheet: hiding the name behind a logo freed up enough space for a denser grid, but operator identification is not a layout variable on a food-safety label. The sheet yield gave way instead.

A thirty-minute job worth doing this week

1. Open Settings → Business → Allergen labels and write your cross-contamination sentence. One minute.
2. Go through your ingredients and tick allergens on the ones that carry them — nut flours, dairy, dried fruit with sulphites, gluten-free blends with lupin. This is the step that pays, because it flows up into everything.
3. Open your recipes and check the allergens that have been derived look right. Add anything the ingredient list cannot know about.
4. Check your top ten products.
5. Print one label for a real order and read it. Out loud, slowly. It is a short piece of text and you will find anything wrong with it in ten seconds.

Step five is not padding. A label is the one thing in your software that a stranger reads under pressure.

What this does not do

Allergen labelling is a legal responsibility, and it is worth being exact about which parts of it are yours:

• It does not make you compliant. It prints what you declare. The accuracy of every tick is yours, and so is knowing which rules apply where you trade.
• It does not know what is in your ingredients. No supplier data is read, and nothing is inferred from an ingredient's name. A box ticked is a box you ticked.
• It does not cover the whole world's lists. The fourteen are the UK and EU set.
• It cannot separate your old shellfish entries. Until October, one box covered both crustaceans and molluscs, and nothing can now tell those rows apart. So that box prints as "Crustaceans/Molluscs" — deliberately wider than it may be, because under-declaring is the dangerous direction. Re-tick against the separate boxes when you get a chance, and it will narrow.
• It does not replace talking to the customer. A label is the record. The conversation is still the conversation.

Frequently asked questions

What are the 14 allergens that must be declared on a food label?
Cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soya, milk, tree nuts, celery, mustard, sesame, sulphur dioxide and sulphites, lupin, and molluscs. That is the list set out in UK food information rules and EU Annex II, and it is the list Bake Boost records. Other countries name different sets, so check the rules where you trade.

How do I put allergens on a cake label?
Record the allergens on your ingredients, recipes and products in Bake Boost, then open the order and choose Allergen Labels. You get a PDF with one label per product, each showing a Contains line built from everything that product and its recipes declare, plus your dietary and storage information and your cross-contamination statement.

Does Bake Boost work out allergens from my recipes automatically?
It carries them upward. Allergens you set on an ingredient flow into every recipe that uses it, and a recipe's allergens flow into every product built from it. The combination is additive, so a derived allergen never clears one you set by hand. It never invents one — nothing is ticked on your behalf, so an empty list means nobody has recorded it yet.

What is a cross-contamination statement and do I need one?
It is a short sentence saying what else your kitchen handles, for example "Made in a kitchen that also handles nuts and sesame". A Contains line only covers deliberate ingredients, so it cannot describe shared equipment, shared air or a shared oven. In Bake Boost you write it once in Settings and it prints at the foot of every label, including labels that declare nothing.

What happens if a product has no allergens recorded?
Its label still prints, and it reads "No declared allergens" rather than guessing. It still carries your cross-contamination statement. Because nothing is ticked automatically, treat an empty list as "not yet recorded" rather than "confirmed free of".

Why does my label say Crustaceans/Molluscs when I only ticked shellfish?
Until October 2026 a single "shellfish" box covered both families, and nothing can tell the older entries apart. Printing only "Crustaceans" would name the wrong family and omit the right one for a product containing molluscs, which is the dangerous direction to be wrong in. So the printed wording names both until you re-tick against the separate crustaceans and molluscs boxes.

Can I print allergen labels on a thermal printer?
Yes. Choose "Thermal label" and each label is its own small page, sized for a thermal label printer. The other option is an A4 sticker sheet that lays the labels out as a grid for Avery-style label paper. Check the grid against your own label stock before buying in bulk.

Do I get one allergen label per order or per product?
One per product by default, because an order with a cake and a box of macarons needs two different labels. A copies setting prints one label per physical unit if you want a sticker on every box.

Which Bake Boost plan includes allergen labels?
Every plan. Allergen labels are part of the orders screen, so Essentials, Growth and Pro all have them at no extra cost.

Does Bake Boost make my bakery legally compliant on allergens?
No, and no software can. It gives you a place to record all fourteen allergens, carries them from ingredient to label so you cannot forget one in transit, and prints a clear sticker. The accuracy of what you tick is yours, and so is knowing which rules apply in your country.

Next in this series

Next we look at the AI seasonal planner — what to put in front of customers before each season arrives, rather than the week it starts. If you want the whole picture now, see what you get with Bake Boost, or read the production planner post for how an order becomes a bake day.