A versatile food appliance includes a set of hardware components common to a plurality of single-purpose food appliances. The set of hardware components is controlled by a microcontroller executing a program from a repertoire thereof stored in the general-purpose food appliance. Many processing programs are stored for operating the appliance in different modes and for processing different kinds of food by using different ingredients. Each processing program is assigned a code and can be selected by specifying the code associated with it from a control panel. The programs may be further modified parametrically by a group of process parameters. Ingredients to be used in each of the programs may be in a premixed form in a package with the code optionally labeled thereon. The repertoire of programs is updatable by the user. In the preferred embodiment, a memory card interface allows updated programs to be introduced via a removable flash memory card.