Okay, I know this thread is kindof stale by now, but I had another thought I wanted to add.

If performance is important, you could write a script that writes your script. The actual script that computes the data would be unreadable but that wouldn't matter so much because you could make the script-that-creates-the-script as readable and slow as you like. You could even separate out the crazy 50 clause recipes into their own config file that non-coders can understand and maintain. Or! Say you've got a zillion recipes in an excell file or web page or whatever. Make it part of your process to parse that to create your config to create your actual script. (Having the intermediate step of creating a config file can help make it possible to check that the parsing of the original data is working correctly).

Okay! I know this thread was dead before I got here and no one is going to read this! Woo hoo!

Eat More Cake

--Pileofrogs