Due to a passing in the family a few years ago and my subsequent health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for years after the bereavement. Thank you for the opportunity.

I found this book to be very helpful as I have tried different diets and tried to fins substitutes for the foods I cook with.

This book is essential for your kitchen. I hate going to make something just to realize I'm missing an ingredient. Or trying to figure out how to turn a recipe I love healthier or vegetarian. The first one is usually a quick google search, the other two can often take quite awhile as I look for the right information. I highly recommend this book for anyone who loves to be in the kitchen as it will save you plenty of time.

When cooking and following a recipe, certain foods or ingredients can be hard to find, or you may need to eliminate certain foods from your diet. This book gives you alternatives to certain ingredients and how to implement them.

Wow, this book is incredibly thorough and a must-have resource for anyone who cooks or bakes! There is no introduction for this book, but rather the author jumps right in starting off with "abalone" which is something I had never even heard of. That's how specific this book is! Ingredients are listed out in chapters from A to Z, making it super easy to search for something specific. There are multiple variations of the same ingredient (i.e. almond flour, almond butter, almond extract, almond milk, almond paste, almond syrup, etc.) and many include "Make Your Own" instructions which is very helpful.

I transitioned to a plant-based lifestyle four years ago and spent a lot of time experimenting on my own and adapting my family's traditional recipes to plant-based by swapping out sour cream, butter, mayo, and more. This book would have been so helpful to me back then! My favorite substitution for mayo is actually published in this book--silken tofu with vinegar, lemon juice, and dijon mustard. I can't wait to explore this book more and then next time I start cooking a recipe and realize I'm missing an ingredient, this will be the first place I go to find a replacement.

*Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley. However, all opinions are my own.*

3 out of 5

**OMG! I cannot believe that these reviews haven't been done! I am so sorry they are so late!!!**

Wow! This is one of those books that belongs on every cook’s shelf. How many times have you been in the middle of a recipe and found you were out of a critical ingredient? The Complete Food Substitutions Handbook: Including Options for Low-Sugar, Low-Fat, Low-Salt, Gluten-Free, Lactose-Free, and Vegan. Jean B. McLeod has outdone herself with this excellent book, since it contains not only standard ingredients, but also hundreds – maybe thousands – of lesser known and specialty ingredients. This is a must-have book for those who want to convert recipes to special diets, such as vegan, gluten-free, and lactose-free. It is also a must-have for when an ingredient isn’t available, or when it isn’t convenient to run to the grocery store.

The book is well-organized, and the ingredients are in alphabetical order, making it easy to locate what is needed. It includes spices, as well as cheeses, vegetables (even exotic ones used all over the world), meats, grains and flours, and seafood, to name a few. There are also definitions after most of the ingredients for those of us who aren’t familiar with them. Just perusing the book will be educational and informative.

Although this isn’t a cookbook, there are a few recipes for spice mixes, all purpose biscuit mix, and flavored vinegars – very helpful, and very easy to follow. The text in the book is concise and easy to understand and, although there may be a few things left out that none of us have ever heard of, it seems that this book includes almost every ingredient known to man.

Highly recommended, this is one to give as a gift and will be a help in every kitchen – whether for beginning cooks or advanced chefs. There is something here for everyone.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

Where has this handbook been for the past 50 years? I could have used it so many times I probably would have needed several due to wearing them out. It is formatted similar to a dictionary. You search for the item you need to substitute and it gives you items that can be used instead of the searched item. It truly is essential for those times when you think you have an ingredient and discover you or out. It is also necessary when a particular item cannot be used due to allergies or dislike.

Buy one for you and one for your each of your family members, all of your friends, the people at church and everyone you work with. We all need to have this book!


I received an ARC from BooksGoSocial in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affects my opinion or rating of this book.

I received this arc from NetGalley for an honest review. This book is fairly easy to use handbook that will help readers find the right substitutions for their kitchen. There are well-known ingredients and others you may have never heard of.

I loved this book. It gave me a lot of great ideas and was easy to read. I appreciated how much information the book had. I highly recommend this book for anyone and everyone. It will become a great reference book for me to keep coming back to.

This book rocks my world. Every kitchen needs it. It truly is a comprehensive food substitutions bible that will save you time and effort. You won’t have to run to the computer and start researching different sites for food substitutions. It reads like a dictionary. Ingredients are in alphabetical order and it’s easy to read and understand. I’m grateful Jean MacLeod created this handbook.

So far I have only 'dipped in' (pardon the pun!) and dipped out of this book. However, it is well written and an easy reference book with the alphabetical chapters. No doubt it will be 5 stars eventually. Superb, and different

Such a helpful reference book! Like it because the substitutions are clear and easy - the variety is amazing. Sometimes you need to use other ingredients. You've run out of something; your food sensitivities mean you can't have certain ingredients; you're trying a restricted diet. Or you're serving a guest with restrictions.

GET THIS book if you or your family have food sensitivities. The recipes use easy-to-find and simple ingredients. The instructions are clear.

Wish I'd had it when I was vegan. Would have been such a help.

A great little book for telling me what to use in all those foreign recipes or for replacements for hard to find ingredients.

This is a handy book, arranged in alphabetical order, which gives you ideas for substitutions in recipes where you haven’t quite got all the right ingredients. For example, if you want to make hummus but have no tahini, you could use smooth peanut butter instead. As a vegetarian, I’m often disappointed to find anchovies hidden away in a recipe, but now I know I can replace them with capers.
There are limits though. Often the substitutions are merely the same item in a different form eg flaked rather than powdered. The other issue for me was that although I was using a review copy from NetGalley UK, the book was plainly American and had US measurements and ingredient names. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if all the unfamiliar ingredients were actually rare foods or just ones I didn’t recognise the American words for. I hope the edition they sell in the UK is a British version, but if not, you may have to use Google in conjunction with the book.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this arc.

Very helpful and beneficial for people. It is great to have opportunities to mix up food sources. I liked it!

The Complete Food Substitutions Handbook by Jean B. MacLeod has virtually anything you would need for a recipe. I chose random, unpopular ingredients and found them all in here with how to make a substitution. This book will be helpful to people who like to cook or to those trying to create dinners from ingredients they have on hand.

Wow, this book really is a complete handbook on food substitutes! I love that this book often tells you how to make things from scratch but also recommends store bought ingredients as well, I was shocked at how many incredible substitutes this book has!

This is an odd sort of book. It's an alphabetical dictionary of any food ingredient you might need and what to use if you don't have it, or if you need to avoid it. Thus on the first pages we find:

ACHIOTE/ACHUETE See ANNATTO OIL; ANNATTO SEEDS

ACHIOTE PASTE/RECADO ROJO (Latin American seasoning and coloring) - 1 tablespoon
• 1 tablespoon Sazon Goya Seasoning
• 2 teaspoons ground annatto seeds or powdered annatto/bijol (for coloring; lacks seasoning)
• 1 teaspoon paprika (for coloring only)

ACIDULATED WATER (anti-browning agent for certain cut fruits and vegetables) - 1 cup
• 1 cup water plus 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt (rinse well with fresh water after soaking)
• 1 cup water plus 1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar
• 1 cup water plus 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• 1 cup water plus small pinch ascorbic acid granules, or 1 (250-mg) pure vitamin C pill crushed to a powder
• 1 cup apple juice (for holding prepared apples)

ACITRÓN (Mexican candied cactus pieces) - 4 ounces
• 4 ounces candied pineapple

On page 500 we find:

PECTIN, REGULAR, POWDERED - 0.4 ounce (enough for two 1/2-pint jars)
• 1 1/2 ounces regular liquid pectin (Add after the mixture is brought to a full boil, bring again to a full boil, and boil for 1 minute to activate the pectin.)
• 1 (0.6-ounce) packet instant powdered pectin (Reduce the sugar by half and prepare following the package directions.)
• 4 teaspoons powdered apple pectin (Add after the mixture is brought to a full boil, bring again to a full boil, and boil for 3 minutes to activate the pectin.)
• 1/4 cup bottled lemon juice, if not already included in the recipe (for jams and preserves; will also reduce the amount of sugar required)
• 1 slightly underripe quince, peeled and chopped (for jams and preserves)
• 1 crab apple or small tart green apple, peeled and grated (for jams and preserves)
• One-quarter of the fruit underripe and three-quarters of the fruit fully ripe (for jams and preserves)
• Increase the cooking time until the jam reaches the desired gel (will result in reduced volume).
PEKMEZ/PETIMEZI (thick Turkish sweetener) See GRAPE MOLASSES

PENNYWORT, ASIATIC/GOTU KOLA/GOTUKOLLE/BUA BOK - 1 bunch (4 ounces/1 cup sprigs)
• 1 cup baby arugula leaves, flat-leaf (Italian) parsley, or watercress sprigs

PEPPADEW/PIQUANTÉ PEPPERS, JARRED (South African sweet pickled Juanitapeppers)
• Pickled Italian cherry peppers or pepperoncini, plus a little sugar, agave syrup/nectar, or other sweetener added to the brine

and on the 741, final page of the list:

ZERESHK (Middle Eastern small dried berries) See BARBERRIES, DRIED

ZINFANDEL VINEGAR - 1 tablespoon
• 1 tablespoon Cabernet Sauvignon vinegar, or other mellow red wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon red wine

ZUCCHINI BLOSSOMS See SQUASH BLOSSOMS, SUMMER

ZUCCHINI/ITALIAN SQUASH/COURGETTES (straightneck, round, and baby/mixed colors) - 1 pound
• 1 pound pattypan or scallop, globe, calabacitas, yellow squash (straightneck or crookneck), Tromboncino, young Zuccheta, or Zephyr summer squash
• 1 pound young calabash/cucuzza, chayote, or bottle gourd
• 1 pound green, immature Potimarron squash (for round French zucchini/Ronde de Nice; more dense)
• 1 pound seedless cucumbers, such as Armenian, Asian, Persian, or Kirby (juicier)


That's it. A huge long list. No text. Very useful but very odd.

Well this was a good idea waiting to happen! And worth the wait...Hats off to the author, it must have taken an immense amount of research to compile all of this information. Sure, we could all Google our queries as & when we need to know something, but there are times when it really is just so much more convenient to have it all to hand - & this book ‘fills the bill’. I am certainly happy to recommend it.