posted
So I got a British cookbook, and I'm seeing ingredients I've never heard of or I think may be hard to get. So, if anyone on here knows of a substitute or availability of these ingredients, please tell me.
Tarragon
Mushroom ketchup
Gooseberries
Suet
Cream of tartar
Liquid glucose
Bicarbonate of soda
Marzipan and toffee spread(where would you get those?)
Swede
Ground Turmeric
Lard--Really. I need a substitute for this, certainly. It's part of a pastry.
Sausage skins
Emmental cheese
Cardamom pods
'tsall for now.
Posts: 550 | Registered: Jan 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't know about where you are, but where I am (Ottawa, Canada) Emmental isn't that rare... have you looked in all your local stores?
Bicarbonate of Soda is merely Baking Soda or equivalent. You can get it everywhere.
Marzipan my familly actually either makes (recipies all over the internet) or imports from England by a visit or relatives or through a special British food-ordering company...
posted
Tarragon/Turmeric/Cardamom are herbs -- I have some, wanna borrow 'em? Try your supermarket.
Gooseberries are small, green, tart fruit. They're hard, but not impossible, to get here. Give some context, and I can try to recommend a substitution.
Suet/lard are animal fats. Crisco (or margarine/butter) should be a good substitution.
Cream of tartar is offered by Schilling/McCormick at most supermarkets. It's made from the lees of wine.
Liquid glucose I believe corn syrup is a good substitute.
Emmental cheese is sometimes sold simply as "Swiss cheese" -- as though it were the only type.
posted
Heh, the most used part of my cookbooks is the "common substitutions" section. This is what happens when you try to make say, a chocolate cake, and get halfway thru before remembering you are out of chocolate. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Marzipan, if you can't find it, can be made easily enough. Give me a sec and I'll dig up the correct proportions (it's an almond paste with sugar).
Actually, I'm feeling lazy and don't feel like going through my loose papers... Here's a recipe for it, however: Marzipan
Oh! If it's gooseberry jam you want, that's not so hard to find. The Hero brand (Swiss? I think), among others, is carried by many supermarkets.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Suet is fat from beef and mutton. Lard is from a pig/hog.
If you can't get these from a normal grocery store (I know around here you can- Ont. Canada), I would suggest going to a butchers. If they don't, they probably have an idea where to find it
Swede is a rutabagas (a turnip)
If you feel the need to have mushroom ketchup there are recipes online Posts: 944 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
For those of you who know Dsicworld: This is Nanny Ogg's Cookbook, complete with clairvoyant gumbo, primordial soup, Assassin's mint humbugs, and strawberry wobblers(you really, really, don't want to know). Absolutely wonderful.
It's actually got some very tasty-sounding recipes and good humor, as is to be expected of Dsicworld books.
Posts: 550 | Registered: Jan 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
You can get canned gooseberries. Oregon brand has them with the rest of their canned fruits.
And lard is actually quite a bit different than cooking with crisco - it's the same as the difference between butter and margarine. And it's easy to find. If they don't have lard in the butter and eggs case, look in the Mexican aisle and they might be selling it as manteca.
And I don't know where you're located, Anthro, but most big towns have a british import store of one type or another where you can find things like mushroom ketchup. Salt Lake has one called the British Pantry.
Sausage skins you can find at a small butcher shop - they're usually called casings.
posted
Tarragon, Cream of tartar, Ground Turmeric and Cardamom are all available in the spice section of any major supermarket. Marzipan will be with the baking stuff – near the chocolate chips and things.
For toffee spread, use toffee ice cream topping (Or butterscotch, if you can’t find toffee).
Canned Gooseberries will be near the pie filllings
Bicarbonate of Soda is Baking Soda.
Use Crisco if you don’t want to use lard, but many supermarkets will have lard.
Suet and sausage skins you can get from a butcher.
I have that cookbook too. It’s great.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Have you tried making the Strawberry Wobblers? You can really analyze someone's psyche by their reaction to Strawberry Wobblers at a dinner party.
Posts: 550 | Registered: Jan 2004
| IP: Logged |
Gooseberries are small fruit that grow abundantly on bushes in England... they're sour, but I adore them. I don't know if you can get them here or not.
Bicarbonate of Soda, as someone mentioned already, is like baking soda.
You can get an almond paste which is like marzipan. Is that satisfactory?
Cardomom is a type of strong spice (I think it's a spice) that smells a tad bit like ginger, and is very strong. I know you can get it here somewhere, because I had lunch at a friend's house on sunday, and she made a cardomom and sour cream cake. (I know, sounds gross, but it was actually really good).
Posts: 7877 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Unfortunately, all the dinner parties I’ve been involved with since I got the cookbook have been church–related. So no strawberry wobblers.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
<Still trying to figure out why someone would want to prepare food designed to taste like British cookin'.>
Posts: 6213 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, people have already answered the big questions, it seems, so I will go ahead and say that I LOVE Nanny Ogg's Cookbook, and that as a substitute for lard I would go with margarine, and not the low-fat kind like Becel. In my (albeit limited) baking experience, Becel and it's ilk make poor cookies. The cheap margarines (around here, No Name or Chefmaster) make good cookies.
(I'm from Ontario, BTW.)
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Cardamom is certainly a spice. It is sold either ground (in which case it looks like ground cinnamon) or whole, in pods.
Cardamom pods are small, green and highly aromatic. They are often used in Indian cooking, both sweet and savoury (cardamom rice pudding - YUM). If the recipe specifies pods, try and get these instead of the ground stuff: not only are they nicer, but you use cardamom pods in different ways to ground cardamom (more for infusing).
Posts: 4393 | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Mushroom ketchup actually sounds pretty good...if it's what I'm imagining it is, I bet it goes good with hamburgers.
Posts: 2292 | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Tarragon - a very nice herb. You can't really substitute for it, as it has its own particular flavor. Very nice with chicken dishes and particularly lovely with salmon. I grow this herb and dry it, so if you want some, e-mail me your address.
Mushroom ketchup - The British like strange things like Shrimp-flavored potato chips. This is probably a hard-to-find specialty item.
Gooseberries - tart, hard, green berries that grow on thorny plants. I think others know better where to find them than I.
Suet - hardened animal fat, basically. If a recipe calls for it, you probably should try actual suet first. Replacing butter with margarine or shortening, for example, changes the consistency of the recipe. Try suet and see what it is like before playing around with the recipe.
Cream of tartar - easy to find in the spices. Use it when canning to avoid hard water stains in your pots.
Liquid glucose - that would be liquid sugar. Whoo!
Bicarbonate of soda - baking soda
Marzipan and toffee spread(where would you get those?) - marzipan is almond creme. I'm assuming bakery stuff.
Swede - ??? Got me there!
Ground Turmeric - This yellow spice stains like the dickens! It's a hallmark of curry and Indian dishes. Spicy and nice. Check your specialty food stores.
Lard--Really. I need a substitute for this, certainly. It's part of a pastry. - Shortening, I think, will work.
Sausage skins - Go pull out an animals guts and clean them off. Really. Intestines.
Emmental cheese - A type of Swiss with small, even holes. Very tasty, and not as brassy as regular Swiss.
Cardamom pods - A sweet-spicy seed. Used in Indian cooking.
Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Muppet: Strawberry wobblers are red jello made in a champagne flute, removed whole onto a plate, and aesthetically arranged with a couple scoops of ice cream and a bit of cream.
dkw: Well, whether you can make them for church dinner parties really depends on what denomination you are.
Posts: 550 | Registered: Jan 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Wow, I'm really shocked! You can't buy marzipan in the USA? What do you put on Christmas cakes under the iceing? It just wouldn't be the same...
By the way I have never heard of mushroom ketchup. i don't think you can buy that in the UK either.
Posts: 119 | Registered: Nov 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Every grocery store I've ever been in has Marzipan, generally under the brand name "Odense". At Christmas time they sometimes sell it in fruit shapes. Martha Stewart made a wedding cake with marzipan fruits on it before. Then again, I've only lived in DC, California, and Salt Lake. So I can't speak for places like Montana and Oklahoma.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I have cake on Christmas. It's my birthday.
Note on liquid glucose. Liquid glucose (while a kind of sugar) is NOT liquid table sugar as far as I know. Table sugar is sucrose. Normally anything that ends in -ose is a type of sugar though. I'm guessing you might find liquid glucose in the "alternative sugar" section of your supermarket or possibly the pharmacy.
Not like you care but sucrose is actually a compound sugar made up of glucose and galactose.
according to here liquid glucose is actually corn syrup.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
Try your supermarket.![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
I'm obviously not a cook.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
This is what happens when you try to make say, a chocolate cake, and get halfway thru before remembering you are out of chocolate. ![[Blushing]](graemlins/blushing.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Anytime.![[Angst]](graemlins/angst.gif)
What cookbook IS this?
