The phrase "cooking wine" conjures up horrid images from an era when such liquids were so bad that cooks wouldn't drink them.

But when a recipe calls for a cup of dry wine, what wine is best? Recipes almost never say. Will this lead to a good result in the food? Or make for flavors you might dislike?

Few cookbooks tell us anything about what kinds of wines to cook with. We can still find bottles that say "cooking wine," but are they a good idea? Such wines may contain salt, a practice that goes back decades to when mansions had cooks, and owners wanted to make certain cooks didn't take unauthorized swigs.

Moreover, most "cooking wines" are so poor that they wouldn't add desirable flavors.

The best wines to cook with are those you could drink, but for one reason or another, won't. I often find that when I'm cooking, I'm also sipping something. And that's often the wine I'll splash into the stew, especially if it's the right color.

So, pasta sauces calling for tomatoes won't be helped by adding white wines. I use a simple red. And when I'm stir-frying vegetables with ginger and soy sauce, a slightly sweet riesling seems perfect.

Recipes that call for deglazing a pan that has sauteed onions might call for a white wine, such as a light sauvignon blanc, but chardonnay with oak works less well.

One basic rule says you can always cook with a wine that was opened the day before and remains sound. If a wine begins to taste oxidized or vinegary, don't risk ruining the food by cooking with it.

And don't take cookbooks literally. Some older cookbooks that call for "a cup of sauterne" might be referring to a dry white wine. (There is no such thing as "sauterne." Real French Sauternes, with a capital first s and a final s, is a sweet dessert wine from France. But decades ago, "sauterne" was used here to mean "dry white.")

One key fact: in recipes calling for wine, check the cooking time! If a dish calls for the addition of wine that also has a long simmering time, reducing the liquid over hours, a modest wine is fine. However, if a dish is to be cooked only a few minutes after adding the wine, use a better-quality wine.

This was discovered 40 years ago by William Rice, the then food editor of the Washington Post. Rice staged a dinner party in which each of the four dishes called for wine to be used.

To test whether the quality of a wine was an issue, Rice prepared each dish three different ways (!), varying only one ingredient: the wine. In the first preparation, he used a cheap wine, the second had a moderately priced wine and the last a superb, world-class wine.

Rice discovered that in the dishes calling for long cooking, the kind of wine used was virtually immaterial. But dishes cooked for a short time needed excellent wines!

Adding wine to a recipe too late, allowing less time for it to cook down, might leave too winey a flavor. And using too much wine in a dish that calls for only a small amount could lead to the same result.

Finally, when cooking with any wine that has residual sugar, factor sweetness into the dish, especially if the recipe calls for dry wine. Sugar can be a nice addition to some foods, but it could also add an undesirable element that's hard to repair later.

Wine of the Week: 2020 J.Lohr Pinot Noir, Monterey County, "Falcons Perch" ($16): Plums, black grapes and blueberry aromas with a soft entry and mid-palate, and rich fruit without much tannin. Best consumed slightly chilled.

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