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I've been up since ridiculously early this morning due to an annoying head cold, thinking random thoughts. One that I've been pondering is how close to the average kitchen pantry is the store-cupboard ingredients list. What items are more common staples in different regions? How do your cooking habits impact your pantry?

I don't do much baking, so it's not so surprising that the baking powder in my pantry is too old and the baking soda is used for cleaning. There is no cream of tartar, cornstarch or cooking spray.

From the second list, olive oil (for salads and some cooking) and canola oil (for most cooking) are essentials for me. Yellow onions, some type of milk (diary or non-dairy) and red wine vinegar would be missed if we ran out. Garlic and lemons are regulars. Butter and eggs have been infrequent visitors.

It's not unusual for the house to be completely empty of sugar (like it has been for the last several days). I can't remember the last time we had vegetable shortening, self-rising flour or confectioner's sugar.

On the other side of that coin: my larder can just about make anything.. I was once known as "surprise chef" as I'd go around to friends and whip up a meal from whatever was lurking in cupboards/fridges.. I'm now trying to wind back my larder/fridges/freezers as I'm remodelling the kitchen!

I have most everything.  With these exections:

Only I don't use canola oil, safflower oil is my veg oil of choice.  When I pan fry, nothing gets crispy with canola.

I make my own rendered and clarified lard, bacon fat, beef tallow, chicken fat (smaltz), so no crisco

I use goat dairy subsitutes for everything as I have a cow dairy allergy.

I do bake, so I have all those items.

Katy

Oh, and I use "true lemon" and "true lime" to substitute for lemon and lime juice.  

and I make and can my stocks, and I make them without salt because of my mom's stage 3 kidney failure, very low sodium diet for her.

I'm okay with the never include ingredients, but the others, even in small quantities I would prefer to see listed as many of them are often not in my cupboard.

The only item on the list I don't use and never have is self-rising flour.  But then I don't think I would have any cookbooks that would call for it - they would specify flour, baking powder & salt. 

Oh - and canola oil.  I think it tasts fishy.  But with 6 other oils in the cupboard, I could easily substitute.

I don't think I have cream of tartar. I seldom have wine or fresh onions on hand. I usually use dried onions. I may or may not have red or white wine vinegar on hand.

A bit of a "beef" I have with the store-cupboard list is it seems so Western-kitchen themed. I'm another "rare" baker (ie, only around the holidays when I feel it's a necessity) so I have to make a point at those times of the year to actually buy fresh baking powder/soda, confectioner's sugar, vanilla extract. I don't think I've ever had cream of tartar on hand. I don't tend to use vegetable shortening ever - however I do render my own lard since I've had a source for pastured pork fat and have more of it in my freezer than I know what to do with! Yet with all of the Asian cooking I do, what are some real pantry necessities for me? Soy sauce (dark and light), sesame oil, and rice wine vinegar.

I also use corn oil far more than I ever use canola oil. (Probably been 5-6 years since I even bought canola oil.) And limes are more common in my fridge than lemons.

Dijon mustard is one of the weirdest things I find listed in the store cupboard list. Is it really that common in so many recipes? I use it in occasional salad dressings and on sandwiches, maybe sometimes in a marinade but it's a far less regularly used condiment in my house than so many others.

Originally Posted by: nicolepellegrini

Dijon mustard is one of the weirdest things I find listed in the store cupboard list. Is it really that common in so many recipes? I use it in occasional salad dressings and on sandwiches, maybe sometimes in a marinade but it's a far less regularly used condiment in my house than so many others.

I don't always have dijon mustard on hand but always have ketchup, even though it's not listed as a cupboard ingredient.

Can't you normally substitute corn oil for canola oil and vegetable oil? I tend to use them interchangeably.

Almost everything in the Store-Cupboard Ingredients list is usually on hand here. The exceptions are self-rising flour (have never used, despite a childhood of Grand Ole Opry ads <g>), Crisco (which is what I take the 'vegetable fat' ingredient to be), and dark brown sugar. We use light brown sugar with morning coffee, and I sub it for dk brown unless there's some very specific need -- which I haven't run into, not being much of a baker or dessert maker.  Usually sub the light brown for tablespoon quantities of white sugar, too, just because it's right to hand on the prep counter.

Most years, the granulated white sugar and confectioner's sugar tins go for loooong periods without being opened -- summer jams and simple syrups for drinks for the white sugar, Christmas bourbon balls for the confectioner's. If I were to bake just a tiny bit more (i.e., any), it would be the kind of cakes that are decoratively dusted with confectioner's sugar; I love that look.

Lemons or limes are almost always on hand, and their absence indicates a period of less-cooking-going-on-than-ideal. Actually, same is true for wine; in a period when I'm cooking regularly, there's a bottle of red or white around. I feel lucky that there's a winery in our county, so that drinkable wine is inexpensive enough to cook with -- and has a super-low carbon footprint.

Where can I find the list(s) of store-cupboard ingredients now? The link in the OP no longer works.

All indexing manuals and guides are on our Help pages, accessed from the Help link at top right. This is the Store-cupboard ingredients list. I will also update the link in the old post above.

Originally Posted by: Jane

All indexing manuals and guides are on our Help pages, accessed from the Help link at top right. This is the Store-cupboard ingredients list. I will also update the link in the old post above.

That's interesting - I had an email exchange with EYB because a recipe didn't list butter as an ingredient, and was informed that of course it wasn't listed as it was only a "store cupboard" ingredient but according to that link it should have been listed as the recipe was for pastry and used a lot (plus flour and sugar and not much else)

i think that's a very N American list - most Britons and Europeans would have to guess if a yellow onion would be significantly different from the generic onions they had in the kitchen as it's not a term in common use. Similarly canola oil is not obtainable here (UK) and I don't know if most people would know that it's a form of corn oil. 

I am a bit surprised wine up to a cup counts as store cupboard, not everyone keeps it in the house and it could come as a bit of a surprise to need to open a bottle!

On the other hand, I find Dijon mustard a very ordinary ingredient, always in the house

When we started indexing cookbooks on the site our target was to get as many books indexed as possible as the complaint we heard most was "not enough of my books are indexed!". When we looked at our indexing costs we realized that a significant number of ingredients indexed were those that most cooks would have in stock and would also not be searching to find recipes that contain them. We realized if we excluded those ingredients we could get a lot more books indexed, and that is how we now have more than 2 million recipes indexed.

I do accept that the list may have a North American bias (though Fiona and I are both British) as we first launched the site in the USA. Though of course many cookbooks and magazines are now indexed from the UK, Australia and New Zealand. But with members now in about 120 different countries (though predominantly the English-speaking larger countries) the store-cupboard ingredients are never going to match everyone's actual store cupboards. 

We do have on our development to-do list to improve our meal planning and shopping list features. And part of that would be that members could create their own store-cupboard ingredients, which would not appear on their shopping lists. 

We did change the store-cupboard rules on eggs a few years ago and all eggs are now indexed. But we do have a lot of earlier indexed books that are missing the eggs (and page numbers). If any member would like to run through early indexed books and add page numbers and eggs, please email us and we can assign the book to you for that job (much quicker than indexing a book from scratch).

BTW canola oil is not corn oil but rapeseed oil (those bright yellow fields you see around the UK are rape). The name means Canadian oil (CAN-OLA) as it was invented in Canada.

Very interesting topic! I found my cupboard changing as I moved from the UK to France in particular for baking as we do not have self rising flour, but standard only and in different grades, and then baking powder and soda are usually mixed in what we call "levure chimique" or "levure alsacienne"...

I am not bothered: it would be very difficult for EYB to create a standard list that would satisfy everyone in all countries and cooking styles...

That being said I sure am glad eggs are back in!

Hello Agaillard. Self-raising flour is readily available in France. It is called "Farine de blė pour gateaux - poudre à lever incorporėe" in both Francine brand and others, even Super U used to do their own brand. It's exactly the same as UK self-raising flour. 

Originally Posted by: Jane

.. BTW canola oil is not corn oil but rapeseed oil (those bright yellow fields you see around the UK are rape). The name means Canadian oil (CAN-OLA) as it was invented in Canada.

Yes, sorry,  I knew it was Canadian oil, so not quite sure why my brain went for corn not rape seed - either way I dislike the odours of both corn oil and rapeseed oil so would substitute, but that doesn't matter, I'd always have both a neutral cooking oil (in my case usually sunflower) and a decent olive oil in the kitchen, as would many keen cooks I suppose.

I don't keep cream of tartar these days, but I'd be unlikely to cook a recipe that required it, unless it was something historical, in which case I'd do a check against source for ingredients I'd given up on, as with the oil, one has to be a little bit alert.

I've a really weird store cupboard obviously!.. I have a cupboard full of oils; same again of vinegars; herbs & spices now take up way too much space; what I always seem to run out of is onion!! Time to get some chopped up and in the freezer! Always have any wine/alcohols on hand.. that is the one stock level that always gets replenished!!

Originally Posted by: debkellie

I've a really weird store cupboard obviously!.. I have a cupboard full of oils; same again of vinegars; herbs & spices now take up way too much space; what I always seem to run out of is onion!! Time to get some chopped up and in the freezer! Always have any wine/alcohols on hand.. that is the one stock level that always gets replenished!!

On a whim I checked my vinegars- I have 12 kinds right now, including balsamic, white balsamic and 3 bottles of fig balsamic! Just used up the violet vinegar & chive vinegar... even with a ton of cupboard space many of my vinegars are on the counter.

My vinegar bottles are on the counter too, because I'm saving cupboard space. A less shaded spot for the tinted-glass bottles, a more shaded spot for the clear-glass bottles. Among the vinegars are tomato vinegar and fig vinegar.

There should be vinegar-bottle cosies to protect vinegar from light.