Recipe Book Ferret

Features

This simple, lightweight quality-of-life mod makes recipe books from crafting tables and player inventory consider and use contents of nearby containers when determining which recipes can be crafted. There is no in-game UI. It all happens automatically.

If a recipe is deemed craftable based on the player inventory + container contents, when the player clicks on the recipe book entry's icon, ingredients will be pulled from containers if necessary to fill the crafting grid.

If the player closes the crafting screen while container-sourced ingredients are still inside the crafting grid, those items are returned to their original container.

Currently Covers:

• Regular chests (including Copper Chests and Barrels)
• Shulker Boxes
• Ender Chests (optional, off by default)
• Chests inside Boats or Minecarts
• Chests attached to saddled Mules
• Bundles inside the player inventory
• ..theoretically any in-world entities implementing Container.

ModMenu Options:

• container search area size: default search area is a 21x21x21 (radius=10) block space centered on the player (not the crafting table). This can be expanded up to 53x53x53, or reduced to 3x3x1.
• toggle EnderChest inclusion in container search. Defaults to off.

Compatibility & Limitations:

• Currently only supports single player worlds. Multiplayer/Server support has not been implemented or tested yet.
• Tested and working with Fabulously Optimized modpack on MC 1.21.11 with Fabric.
• Not tested with alternate crafting table-like items from other mods (example: Conquest Reforged's Sawhorse)
• Vanilla MC Furnace recipe books are able to see the contents of nearby containers (and will show matching recipes as craftable), but items will not be pulled into the furnace crafting grid when you click on the recipe icon.
• Chest, Ender Chests, and Shulker Boxes must be placed as blocks in the game world in order to be considered.

Alternatives considered:

• "Bluetooth Chests" and "Craft from Chests" are the closest matches, but they both currently (as of Feb 7 2026) have a dependency for 'Recipe Book Access API' mod, which has not been updated since April 2025 and only supports up to MC version 1.21.5. This would require the user to manually-override install an 'out of date' mod as dependency. Also neither of these support Bundles, and I believe also do not support MuleChests, BoatChests, and MinecartChests.
• "Nearby Crafting" is the mod that 'Recipe Book Access API' mod references as an example of how the API should be used, but it also has not been updated since MC 1.21.5.
• "Tom's Simple Storage" provides similar functionality through its crafting terminal system, but is more complicated than what I wanted for these features.

Built for:

• Minecraft 1.21.11
• Fabric Loader 0.18.4
• Fabric API 0.141.2+1.21.11

Other Mod Requirements:

• YACL 3.8.2+
• ModMenu 17.0.0-beta.2+

License

CC0