Change one ingredient and write the change down in a sentence. Swapping an ordinary can of black beans for the low-sodium can moves a cup from 922 milligrams of sodium to 331, calculated from USDA's two canned-bean entries against the 2,300-milligram Daily Value the FDA prints on the label — a 591-milligram change to a dish nobody will call different. The condition that changes the answer: when the ingredient is the dish, change the portion instead and leave the recipe alone.

What the couscous inscription actually records

UNESCO added the knowledge, know-how and practices around producing and consuming couscous to its Representative List in 2020, on a file submitted jointly by Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. The description records the dish served with vegetables and meats that differ by region, by season and by occasion, and the tools made by potters and by family-run cooperatives (UNESCO, 2020).

Four countries, one element, and variation written into the inscription itself. That is useful the moment someone tells you a published recipe settles what a dish is. It does not authorize the opposite move either: a file recording variation across four countries is not permission to call any substitution equivalent to a particular household's version.

So the question is never whether your version is allowed. It is whether the next person can tell what you did. A dish carries two things at once — a source and a set of decisions — and they stay useful only while they stay distinguishable. The same care applies when a grain crosses a border with its name attached, which is the subject of one grain, several food stories.

Four lines that keep the change visible

Write these once, the first time you change something, and keep them with the recipe rather than in your head.

  1. Source. The person, book or page, with the name they use for the dish. A relative's account and a published recipe are different kinds of source; ask the relative before you pass their version on.
  2. Change. The exact ingredient, quantity, equipment or step. "Different beans" is not a record. "Low-sodium canned black beans instead of the regular can" is.
  3. Reason. Availability, equipment, cost, a household preference. A reason is not a verdict on the original.
  4. Name. A name that keeps both visible: "my version, with the beans changed."

Line four does the social work. At the table, "this is my version, with the beans changed" ends an argument before it starts, and it leaves the person who prefers the version they remember entirely in the right.

If a change affects cooking time or method, get the timing from directions written for the new ingredient. A provenance note explains a decision; it does not establish that an improvised method works.

A worked substitution, in milligrams

An example, using USDA figures for the beans. A family stew that uses one 240-gram cup of canned black beans. USDA records ordinary canned black beans at 384 milligrams of sodium per 100 grams, so the cup contributes 922 milligrams — 40 percent of the Daily Value before anything else is seasoned. The low-sodium can records 138 milligrams per 100 grams: 331 milligrams for the same cup. USDA's 2023 measurement of the ordinary can drained and rinsed lands at 218 milligrams per 100 grams, so a colander alone recovers about half the gap.

Split four ways, the swap changes one serving by roughly 148 milligrams. That is small against a single day, and CDC puts average US intake above 3,300 milligrams a day, with one teaspoon of table salt at about 2,400 milligrams (CDC). It is a real change all the same, and it is invisible in the finished stew, which is exactly the kind of change worth making to a dish that carries meaning.

The note for this one is a sentence: "Based on the stew in our family notebook; this version uses low-sodium canned beans because that is what the store had." No invented grandmother, no village, no tradition the household never documented. Where a change would alter what people came for — the sauce, the shape, the dish's whole point — leave it and serve less of it. Portion is the change that costs the recipe nothing, and the arithmetic for it is the same as reading a sauce label in the portion you use.

Sources and further reading

  1. Beans, black, mature seeds, canned, low sodium (FDC 175238)Accessed 2026-09-17
  2. How to Understand and Use the Nutrition Facts LabelAccessed 2026-09-17
  3. Knowledge, know-how and practices pertaining to the production and consumption of couscousAccessed 2026-09-17
  4. Beans, black turtle, mature seeds, canned (FDC 175188)Accessed 2026-09-17
  5. Beans, black, canned, sodium added, drained and rinsed (FDC 2644285)Accessed 2026-09-17
  6. About Sodium and HealthAccessed 2026-09-17