The Food Substitutions Bible: More Than 6,500 Substitutions for Ingredients, Equipment and Techniques

From the Orange County Register May 4, 2006 by Judy Bart Kancigor, author of Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family It happens all the time. You're in the middle of a recipe and - oh no! - you reach for the capers or self-rising flour or honey and there it isn't! Do you drop everything and run to the store or improvise? Learning how to substitute ingredients in a pinch is only one reason why "The Food Substitutions Bible" (David Rose) by David Joachim should be on every cook's shelf. How many of us slavishly follow a recipe when our creativity cries out for experimentation? But which substitutions will work? "I don't think the issue is trying to replicate a mock version of the original," Joachim explained when I caught up with him at the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) annual conference I attended recently in Seattle. "What is your intended goal? Is it just to vary the flavor? Maybe you want the dish to be more nutritious or less caloric. The point is to think about the function or flavor of an ingredient. Cooks make all kinds of substitutions to suit their preferences or just to try something new." Joachim, who gave up a career as a musician, opens the book with excerpts from two songs: "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing" and The Who's "Substitute," pointing up the fine line the cook walks between the real thing and reality. "When it comes to cooking, I do believe that there is nothing like the real thing," he said. "Nothing performs or tastes quite like butter. But I'm also a realist. This is a choice we face all the time, respecting individual ingredients that are irreplaceable or the reality of having to reduce saturated fat, for example." Five thousand substitutions are organized easily from A to Z and conveniently labeled "If you don't have it," "To vary the flavor" and "For better health." There are two pages of substitutions for butter alone and two more for margarine. Scattered throughout are mini-recipes and interesting factoids that make this handy reference book fun to read as well. On margarine he writes: "It is a culinary irony that a cheap fake butter was invented in France, the country whose classic cuisine is unimaginable without real butter. The developer named his solidified white mixture of beef fat, skimmed milk, and water after margarites, the Greek word for pearl. Most margarines are now made with vegetable oil...." But "The Food Substitutions Bible" is not just about ingredients, but also cooking techniques and equipment. That heating pad I use for my back can double as an electric warming tray! Now why didn't I think of that? Ingredient guides take the guesswork out of shopping for vinegars, oils, apples, salts, chiles, and beans, for example, and the measurement equivalents section is invaluable. No wonder the book took this year's IACP cookbook award in the food reference/technical category. Joachim, whose "A Man, A Can

This book deserves 5 stars on several accounts: 1) Sheer number of and variety of ingredients included;I thought I was fairly well read on food but I am learning all matter of new things--jaggery, anybody? Caerphilly? 2) Cookware is listed, too. 3)Lay-out: items are listed alphabetically, each with a straightforward description and specific quantities of the recommended subsitutions. 4)Obviously, a lot of very careful research went into this reference. 5)I've had it several months now and it continues to prove its usefulness time and time again. The guiding scenario for the book is the cook who is trying to follow a recipe faithfully but lacks a required ingredient or implement. This is not for the person who has food allergies and sensitivities--most substitutions are from the same family of foods. Likewise, the cook who wants to make the stew calling for a cup of mushrooms but has a mushroom phobe in the family and is looking for something else to take their place is not going to find that kind of information.

I really enjoyed this book, even though like others stated, some of the items were so obscure I had never heard of them! LOL. Saying that, I would still recommend it highly for anyone who cooks. I mean who hasn't started cooking and realized they did not have an essential ingredient. I looked up several of my favorites items to see if any of the substitutions were feasible, most were. Each of the ingredients in their reference book includes a description of the item, i.e. Durum Flour: finely ground durum (high-gluten) wheat. One of the features I liked about the book is that some of the listed ingredients, i.e. butter and all-purpose flour, include substitutions "To Vary the Flavor" or "For Better Health". Many of the substitutions also include info on how it might affect your recipe. For example, if you look up Butter, the "For Better Health" substitution states: 1/2 butter and 1/2 vegetable oil, best "for baking, especially quick breads and some cookie doughs: reduce baking time slightly; baked goods will be slightly more chewy; use pastry or cake flour for lighter texture..." This kind of info is just the thing to help make me a better cook. The final sections include ingredient tables for common foods and include direction of what they are best suited (cooking, baking, eating). Other tables include ingredients with characteristics of each variety and what can be substituted within the categories (potatoes, beans, pears, apples, olives, legumes, lentils, mushrooms and more). I definitely recommend this book for anyone who loves cook.

`The Food Substitutions Bible' by David Joachim runs a big risk in assuming such a pretentious title, as it simply invites a search for things which are missing in order to take it down a peg or two. I have to say, however, that compared to several other `bible' titles published by this `Robert Rose, Inc.' company, this book more than lives up to its promise. On the way, it happens to fill a great need in one's culinary library. Most good cooking manuals have substitutions and `how to make' for several of the more common pantry items such as buttermilk, lemon juice, crème fraiche, and preserved lemons. It it's an especially good book, it may have as many as 100 such substitutions. This book advertises `more than 5000 substitutions'. The book doesn't just stop at one substitution or recipe for each item. Many options have three or four or five. It also does not stop with formulas or recipes. It does an excellent job, for example, of giving substitutions for common cooking tools such as a zester or a potato ricer. Of course, I could not resist trying to find things the book missed. I am happy to say I did find a few, but I am also happy to say that with one exception, they were all very obscure. I found no entries for the ancient Roman fermented fish sauce, `garum' or the traditional French sour grape condiment, `verjus' or the middle eastern spice, `Aleppo pepper' or the North African pantry item, salt preserved lemon. I think all these are fair, in that I have seen recipes for all these in at least one cookbook and I have seen all of them used in at least two modern cookbooks. I also felt some of the substitutions were just a bit less than useful, as the item being substituted may have been just as hard or harder to come by than the missing ingredient. For example, if I don't have venison, it is highly unlikely I will have antelope meat or gazelle meat or buffalo meat. Fortunately, this observation is generally a quibble, as we are also given `beef' as a substitute for venison. My last quibble with these entries is that several substitutions are a bit questionable for all but the most casual situations. For example, suggested substitutions for mozzarella are Gouda, provolone, Muenster, and Fontina. I think all of these are much too strongly flavored to act as a good substitute for classic mozzarella uses. I suppose that if all you want is `some soft cheese', these would work, but I would question all of these in a baked dish or in classic raw dishes such as the Caprese salad. The other side of the coin is brilliantly represented by the ingredient guides in the back of the book including apples, rice, clams, pears, dried beans, lentils, olives, mushrooms, potatoes, chiles (fresh and dried), flour (wheat and alternatives), Asian noodles, roe, crabs, oils, vinegars, and salts. These pages alone are worth the price of the book. I am forever trying to remember which apples are best for baking and which clams are best for chowder. I will have to p

I found this book and initially thought, well, it has got some great tips and I could take it shopping with me (I like the substitution for confectioner's sugar on back that hooked me or what to do when you find a great recipe that features something esoteric like burdock and you need a siimilar taste, texture, etc) but then I got to the ingredient guides and this is worth the price of admission! These guides are broken into ingredients like vinegar, Asian noodles, beans, olives and then simply demystifies them. For the noodles it listed the English and Asian names, characteristics, and then substitutes. It did not matter that I knew many of them, having this guide handy in a pinch will save me when memory fails or I cannot find mai fun. And I must admit I am lacking on what vinegars are like other vinegars, so knowing when I need cider and all I have is white wine or I wanted rice and all there is might be champagne, I can compare their characteristics and know the substitutes are okay. Thanks David, a great resource that will save me many time down the road I am sure!