Cooking instructions of course have a vocabulary of their own: bring to a boil, simmer, remove from heat, a heaping tablespoon. You’d go crazy thumbing through a dictionary just to make sense of one recipe.

So here’s a two-page Cheat Sheet with 120 of the most common words and phrases that you’ll find on French cooking instructions, plus a conversion table for metric measures.

Now you can try making that easy sauce béchamel, court bouillon, sauce au poivre, or couscous using the packages and mixes in the French grocery stores:

For extensive lists of foods and ingredients words and shopping phrases, see the Food chapter in FRENCH FOR CRUISERS.