Some recipes include "store-cupboard ingredients." What does this mean?

These days we index every food ingredient in a recipe apart from salt and water. Older indexes are the exception: under our original rules we skipped basic pantry staples, so books indexed years ago may not list every ingredient.

The old exclusion list covered things like salt, pepper, baking soda and powder, flour, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, vanilla, common oils and vinegars, basic wine, Dijon mustard, stock, onions, garlic, and lemons, unless they were a main ingredient or used in a large quantity. The idea was that few people search for a recipe by “salt” or “water,” and skipping staples let us index more books faster.

Either way, check the recipe in your book for the complete ingredient list, especially for older books.