Kitchen & Bar

On this phone

How to get around

The bar under the name is the map. Swipe it sideways if a destination sits off-screen. On Tonight, the button pinned to the bottom cooks the lead dish.

  1. Tonight — What you can cook first, plus drinks that fit the same shelf.

  2. This week — Five dinners from the shelf, urgent things cooked first.

  3. Shelf — Edit what you actually own.

  4. Written methods — Every dish and drink with a method somebody wrote out.

  5. The pantry — Start from one ingredient: what it does, and everything built on it.

  6. Out of it — What to use instead, judged by the job the missing thing was doing.

  7. Photo review — Review a demo shelf photo and confirm every item before adding it.

  8. Flavor Lab — Pairings with a track record: classic matches and the mixology behind them.

  9. Wild cards — Combinations with no tradition behind them, only shared aroma notes.

  10. Send to Occasion OS — Prepare confirmed shelf availability for Occasion OS.

  11. The field — The gap this layer owns.

Keep it on the home screen

  1. iPhone — tap Share, then Add to Home Screen.
  2. Android — open the browser menu, then Install app or Add to Home screen.

After that it opens as Kitchen & Bar, not a browser tab. Inventory stays on this device.

Substitutions · 202 dishes here use it

Out of butter

Flavor and body in the same spoonful. Cold butter swirled into a hot pan with the heat off thickens a sauce without flour, which is the most useful thing it does and the thing most cooks never use it for.

Everything below is judged against that job. A swap that covers it is a swap; one that only looks similar is not.

39 of the 202 dishes here that mention butter list it as optional — 19% of them. In those, the correct substitution is nothing.

What to reach for

Instead · 1

olive oil

three quarters as much by volume

What it gets you
The fat, and in a savory pan almost all of the job.
What it costs you
The water and the milk solids, which is to say the browning. No beurre noisette, no shortness in a pastry, and a sauce made with it will not go creamy the same way.
Not here
Baking that depends on creaming butter with sugar — the air comes from the solid fat, not the fat.

Instead · 2

neutral oil plus a spoon of cream at the end

oil three quarters by volume, then a tablespoon of cream per two of butter replaced

What it gets you
Both halves back: the cooking fat and the dairy that makes a pan sauce read as buttery.
What it costs you
The clean flavor. This is a workaround that tastes like a workaround if the dish is quiet.

Instead · 3

coconut oil, refined

one for one

What it gets you
A solid fat at room temperature, which means it can be cut into flour and it can hold air.
What it costs you
It sets harder and colder than butter, so shortbread turns brittle and a frosting can go waxy on the tongue.

Where you can just leave it out · 39

These dishes list butter as optional. They were written to work without it, so no ratio is needed and nothing has to be bought.

Showing 30 of 39. The rest are on the ingredient page.

Where the swap will be tasted · 94

These need it and are short enough that nothing hides: 4 required ingredients or fewer, which makes butter a quarter of what is in the pan. Make the swap a decision rather than a repair.

Showing the 30 shortest of 94.

Check what else is in the pan

The company butter keeps in this library, counted off required ingredients. A swap that argues with the top two is the wrong swap, whatever a chart says.

What to make with butterRank what I can actually cookAll substitutions