Forum

Probably a good idea - I get stuck with different types of cream! Heavy, whipping, single, double, half-and-half...

It would be a huge undertaking for us to create an ingredient glossary - we have over 27,000 ingredients in the database.  Given that we have so many experts as members maybe we should create a wiki glossary that members could contribute to and edit.

We do link ngredient names - so if you search by plain chocolate you find all recipes with dark chocolate.  Or search by aubergine and you see everything with eggplant.  That won't really help you when you want to know what an ingredient is.  But maybe start a new thread "What's this ingredient?" and members will join in.  Since EYB members are from all over the world there is bound to be someone who knows what the ingredient is.

Foodycat - I understand your confusion with cream.  Cream is quite different in the UK - much thicker, richer and generally more delicious.  Double cream has nowhere near as much air as whipped heavy cream but is the nearest equivalent.  Likewise single cream is richer than light cream but again the closest equivalent.  There isn't a UK half-and-half - people generally use full fat milk in coffee.

Jane - I apologize if this isn't the place to bring it up, but this topic is related to a big issue for me with ingredient indexing.

Basically: The 30-item limit on dropdown lists makes it impossible to review the possible types of ingredients with large numbers of variants. Suppose a recipe calls for a type of sausage that doesn't seem to be in the ingredient list. You need to be able to review all the EYB types of sausage to see if there's one that is an equivalent. But '[space] sausage' brings up a list that only gets to L. Indexers can't be expect to guess the M-Z choices. The 30-item limit has to be increased, at a minimum.

Ideally, frequent indexers* have to be given (read-only) access to the full database, including the linked ingredients.

* EYB pro indexers, and members who've indexed multiple books (tiny % of members overall, and even pretty small fraction of members who've done any indexing).

Jane I like your idea of a Wiki section for members to edit or just a continuing Forum topic where members can post their queries and other members can answer.  Searching for terms online is ok but not always definitive and I think I would trust other EYB members more than some anonymous online post.