It’s a scene that will be repeated thousands of times throughout the country over the summer months. The neighborhood picnic is planned, food duties are divided up among the guests. Your job is to make potato salad for everyone. You’ll wait until the day of the party to boil the potatoes and assemble the salad. After all, you know it will be better if served fresh and at room temperature. What you might not have known, however, is that your son and his friends cleaned you out of mayonnaise last night when they made their midnight cold cut sandwiches!

So you’ve got pounds of boiled potatoes, mounds of chopped celery, and the sounds of the gathering party. But you don’t have mayonnaise for your potato salad, and you don’t have time to run to the grocery store. Now what do you do?

Dee Brock, co-author of Food FAQs: Substitutions, Yields & Equivalents, says this very common scenario often ends in disaster when the cook mistakenly believes that there is never an appropriate substitute for a main ingredient.

"We’ve had people tell us that they will omit a spice or what they deem to be a minor ingredient in a recipe," Brock says. "But if they are missing a major ingredient, they believe they have no choice but to try another recipe or find time to go shopping again."

More experienced cooks certainly know that a substitute exists for most everything we use in recipes. But Linda Resnik, co-author of Food FAQs, says that even professional cooks don’t always know what the most suitable substitutions might be.

"The food editor at a major cooking magazine – a cook who works with recipes and ingredients every day of her life – was particularly pleased to find substitutes for pomegranate juice and fish sauce in Food FAQs: Substitutions, Yields & Equivalents," Resnik says. But, she continues, "For everyday cooks the more important substitutes are for ingredients like mayonnaise."

And that brings us back to the neighborhood picnic and the boiled potatoes without dressing! Do not despair, all is not lost. According to Food FAQs: Substitutions, Yields & Equivalents, several very good substitutes exist for mayonnaise. In the quantity specified in your recipe, use sour cream, plain yogurt, or cottage cheese pureed in the blender. And remember, you can use lower-fat or fat-free versions of these substitutes if you want to cut down on calories or fat intake.

In the recipe below for a traditional picnic potato salad (scaled down to 6 servings), the authors of Food FAQs use a combination of two of the substitutes in place of mayonnaise. This particular combination produces a surprising tangy taste.

• Dee and Linda's Traditional Potato Salad Without Mayonnaise

More Great Potato Salad Recipes (Both With and Without Mayo)

• Cheri's Potato Salad
• Asparagus & New Potato Salad
• Dilled Peas and Potatoes Vinaigrette
• French Style Potato Salad
• Potato, Broccoli & Fennel Salad
• Potato Cucumber Salad
• Grilled Potato Ratatouille Salad
• Quick Potato Salad for One
• Spring Potato Salad with Radishes