SQL query through an intermediate table

Question

Given the following tables:

Recipes
| id | name
| 1  | 'chocolate cream pie'
| 2  | 'banana cream pie'
| 3  | 'chocolate banana surprise'

Ingredients
| id | name
| 1  | 'banana'
| 2  | 'cream'
| 3  | 'chocolate'

RecipeIngredients
| recipe_id | ingredient_id
|     1     |      2
|     1     |      3
|     2     |      1
|     2     |      2
|     3     |      1
|     3     |      3

How do I construct a SQL query to find recipes where ingredients.name = 'chocolate' and ingredients.name = 'cream'?

Answer 1

Use:

  SELECT r.name
    FROM RECIPES r
    JOIN RECIPEINGREDIENTS ri ON ri.recipe_id = r.id
    JOIN INGREDIENTS i ON i.id = ri.ingredient_id
                      AND i.name IN ('chocolate', 'cream')
GROUP BY r.name
  HAVING COUNT(DISTINCT i.name) = 2

The key point here is that the count must equal the number of ingredient names. If it's not a distinct count, there's a risk of false positives due to duplicates.