The Pantry Dispatch
Guides to the foods, makers and techniques behind what we stock.
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Showing 101 to 150 of 409 results
Complete GuideBBQ & Marinades
Dry Rub Guide: What the Salt and Sugar Do, and When to Apply
A dry rub is a seasoning that works on the surface of meat, where salt, sugar and spice each do a different...
Complete GuideBBQ & Marinades
BBQ Sauce Guide: How Each Region's Sauce Fits Its Meat
American barbecue sauce splits into vinegar, mustard and sweet tomato styles, and each one grew up around a particular cut and a...
Complete GuideBar & Beverage
Cocktail Book Guide: From Jerry Thomas to the Codex
Much of the cocktail's history lives in books. Bartenders before Prohibition wrote down what they poured, and later writers explained why those...
Complete GuideCookbooks
Cookbook Guide: Building a Kitchen Shelf That Gets Used
A cookbook earns its shelf space by being cooked from. This guide sorts cookbooks by the job they do: the reference book,...
Complete GuideGreeting Cards
Greeting Card Guide: Letterpress, Embroidery and the Square Envelope
A greeting card carries a lot in a small space. This guide covers the first commercial Christmas card of 1843, the stories...
Complete GuideWriting Tools
Pen and Pencil Guide: Fountain Pens, Cartridges and the Blackwing
A good pen is easy to overlook until it fails. This guide covers Kaweco and Lamy, the two Heidelberg pen makers, how...
Complete GuideTowels
Tea Towel Guide: From the China Cloth to the Kitchen Hook
The tea towel began in eighteenth-century Britain as a linen cloth for drying fine china. This guide covers its history, today's linen...
Complete GuideCandy & Other Sweets
Crispy Rice Treats Guide: Puffed Rice, Marshmallow and the Square
A crispy rice treat is two foams pressed together: oven-puffed rice and marshmallow. This guide covers how the cereal is puffed, the...
Complete GuidePopcorn
Popcorn Guide: The Grain That Carries Its Own Pressure Cooker
A popcorn kernel is a sealed vessel with a drop of water inside. This guide covers 6,700-year-old popcorn from Peru, the physics...
Complete GuideTea
Colombian Breakfast Chaï Guide: Three Crops in One Cup
Breakfast usually asks for a choice between tea and coffee. Mariage Frères' Colombian Breakfast Chaï puts Colombian black tea, cocoa bean and...
Complete GuideTea
Shanghaï Breakfast Tea Guide: Breakfast Tea Built on Oolong
Many breakfast teas are built from black tea. Mariage Frères builds Shanghaï Breakfast on fine oolongs of several origins, with ginger, anise...
Complete GuideTea
Mariage Frères Tokyo Breakfast Tea: Yuzu, Vanilla & a Very Different Breakfast Tea
Tokyo Breakfast is not Japanese tea dressed up for breakfast. Mariage Frères starts with full-leaf black tea, gives it malt and stewed-prune...
Complete GuideTea
Mariage Frères Breakfast Earl Grey: What Makes an Earl Grey a Breakfast Tea?
Breakfast Earl Grey sits exactly where its name suggests: between two tea families. Mariage Frères takes a full-bodied, finely broken black tea,...
Complete GuideTea
Mariage Frères Russian Breakfast Tea: Citrus, Black Tea & the Russian Tea Tradition
Russian Breakfast leaves the chocolate-and-malt side of the Mariage Frères breakfast shelf behind. It is a strong black tea shaped by citrus,...
Buying GuidePasta Sauces
How to Buy Tinned Tomatoes: The Label Read Line by Line
A tin of tomatoes is one of the cheapest things in the cupboard, and its label says a good deal before the...
Producer ProfileTea
Mariage Frères Rooibos Guide: Red Teas From the Cederberg
The Paris tea house sells rooibos as red tea, a name taken from the color of the cup rather than from the...
Buying GuideHot Sauces
How to Buy Harissa: The Label Is the Whole Contract
The word harissa sits on a Tunisian tube that is 87 percent chili and on a Belazu jar whose first ingredient is...
Buying GuidePickled / Brined / Oil Soaked Goods
How to Buy Cornichons: The Grade Is a Number
The grade of a cornichon is a number, not a word, and on one catering tin it is inked on the lid....
Storage and Shelf LifeGrains
Does Risotto Rice Go Bad? How Long It Keeps and What Age Does
Sealed white rice keeps for decades. In a lab study of waxy rice, aged grains cooked up firmer and less sticky, and...
Storage and Shelf LifeSalts
Does Salt Go Bad? Why It Keeps Forever, and What Clumps Mean
A box of salt bought a decade ago is still salt. Morton's guidance is that salt itself has no expiration date; what...
Storage and Shelf LifeTinned Fish
Do Tinned Squid and Octopus Go Bad? Shelf Life and the Ink
A sealed tin of octopus or squid keeps two to five years in a cool cupboard and three to four days in...
Buying GuideJams & Jellies
How to Buy Jam: The Label, Line by Line
The word jam is regulated on both sides of the Atlantic, and the two laws disagree about almost everything but the pectin....
Storage and Shelf LifePasta Sauces
From Tin to Pan: A Cook's Guide to Tomatoes and Passata
How long the open half of a tin of tomatoes lasts, whether it freezes, what passata is, whether the San Marzano tin...
Regional GuidePasta
Venice and the Veneto in the Pantry: How to Cook from the Jars
Venetian cooking starts from food that keeps: stockfish brought home from the Arctic in 1432, rice that by the European Commission's account...
History and CraftSpices
Whole and Ground Spice: A History in Dated Steps
Peppercorns turn up in the nose of a pharaoh, in Pliny's price list and in the ransom of Rome. Later come London's...
Regional GuideTinned Fish
The Basque Country in the Pantry: Its Jars and How to Cook Them
The Basque pantry comes out of the Bay of Biscay and out of the pepper fields behind it: salt-cured anchovies, the summer...
History and CraftOther Chocolate
Drinking Chocolate: A Three-Thousand-Year History
Chocolate was a drink long before it was a bar. The record runs from cacao residues in Honduran pottery more than three...
Complete GuideCandy & Other Sweets
Torrone and Nougat: The Complete Guide
Italy calls it torrone, Spain turrón, France nougat, and all three are the same idea: honey and sugar cooked to a set,...
Complete GuideNuts
Nut and seed oils: The Complete Guide
Walnut, hazelnut and pumpkin seed oils are pressed from the kernel and bottled to taste of it. Two of the three have...
History and CraftJams & Jellies
From Roman Quinces to Mason Jars: A Short History of Jam
A jar of jam is fruit, sweetener and heat, and each had a long history before they met in one pan. The...
Complete GuideSpices
Saffron: The Complete Guide
A gram of saffron is 150 to 170 crocus flowers, picked by hand in a few weeks of autumn, each giving up...
Complete GuideGrains
Polenta: The Complete Guide
The word polenta once meant barley meal, and it still covers buckwheat and chestnut porridges. Maize reached the Veneto in the middle...
Complete GuideSweet Bakery
Shortbread Guide: Butter Biscuits From Scotland to Brittany
Shortbread is flour, butter and sugar, and very little else, and that is why it is worth understanding. This guide follows it...
Kitchen Know-HowSweet Bakery
Cooking with Shortbread: The Uses That Earn a Place in the Pantry
This piece starts from what shortbread is: flour, butter, sugar and salt, baked dry, and roughly a quarter fat by weight. That...
Complete GuideJams & Jellies
Marmalade: The Complete Guide
Marmalade has its own legal definition. The word began with a Portuguese name for quince, and the preserve took its best-known commercial...
Complete GuideMustards
Mostarda, Membrillo and Fruit Pastes: The Complete Guide
Mostarda looks like candied fruit until the mustard heat reaches the nose. This guide traces the word back to grape must and...
Kitchen Know-HowCandy & Other Sweets
Cooking with Pâte de Fruit: The Uses That Earn Their Place
A box of pâtes de fruits usually ends up on a plate with the coffee. It can do more than that, and...
Complete GuideDried Fruits
Dried Fruit: The Complete Guide
Grapes laid on paper between the vines near Fresno. Apricots dried in the dry summer air of Malatya. Figs left on the...
Complete GuideTea
American Breakfast Tea Guide: Mariage Frères' Vanilla, Malt & Caramelized Chocolate
American Breakfast sounds like another place name on a breakfast tea until you read the label: Mariage Frères lists vanilla in this...
Complete GuideSpices
Dried chiles and chile flakes: The Complete Guide
A dried chile carries heat and it carries flavor: tomato and honey in one flake, cut hay in another, papaya and roasted...
Complete GuideDrink Syrups
Syrups and Cordials for Cocktails: The Complete Guide
Nearly every mixed drink that is not straight spirit depends on a sweetener nobody thinks about: a jar of sugar syrup in...
Kitchen Know-HowSwedish Candy
Cooking with Swedish Candy: Uses That Earn a Place in the Pantry
A bag of Swedish pick-and-mix is usually eaten from the bag. This piece is a method. Three things on the ingredient list...
Complete GuideOther Cooking Sauces
Colatura di alici: The Complete Guide
Colatura di alici is the clear amber liquid that drips from anchovies packed in sea salt for months in small wooden barrels...
Regional GuideSweet Bakery
Tuscany in the Pantry: Its Jars and How to Cook Them
Tuscany's cooking rests on a short list of things that keep: olive oil protected across the whole region since 1998, white beans,...
History and CraftBaking
Sugar: From Luxury Spice to the Commodity That Changed the World
For most of its history sugar was a spice: rare, costly, measured out by apothecaries and shaped into sculptures for feasts. This...
Buying GuideGifts
The Care Package That Keeps
A care package sits on porches, in trucks and in mailrooms before anyone opens it. Four foods take that well: tinned sardines,...
History and CraftSpices
Pepper Built Venice: The Spice Trade Before the Cape
Venice never grew a peppercorn. It built galleys, a gold coin and a set of treaties around standing between the pepper coast...
Buying GuideGifts
The Housewarming Pantry: A Gift Guide for a New Kitchen
The Emily Post Institute says a housewarming gift is optional, and its short list of ideas includes a great olive oil. This...
History and CraftHot Sauces
The Chile Pepper's Conquest of Asia and Africa
Sichuan, Hunan, Goa and Tunisia cook with a plant first domesticated in central-east Mexico. Portuguese ships carried the chile from Brazil to...
History and CraftChocolate Bars
The Columbian Exchange on a Plate
Before 1492 there was no paprika in Hungary, no tomato sauce in Italy, no chile in an Indian curry and no polenta...
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