One of the most fun aspects of food is not eating it - surprisingly - but finding out its' origins. Where did the word barbecu ecome ffrom? Or something as ordinary as Romaine lettuce? Now there's a new book that explains allthat and it's a tasty read.
Regular contributor Kim Severson wrote about this in yesterday's New York Times Food section.The book is Romaine Wasn't Built In A Day (Voracious Press 2023) by medieval scholar and English professor Judith Tschann. This is not just the book for foodies but for word lovers too. It's chock full of interesting nuggets about food and food related words. Who would have thought that seersucker which comes from the Hindi word sirisakar whic derives from a Persian word meaning milk and sugar. The smooth stripes are the milk while the bumpy ones are the sugar. Our popular barbecue comes from the Caribbean Arawak word barbacoa for roasted meat on a spit.You know that Caesar salad is named after Caesar Cardini, anItalian chef who moved to Tijuana. and create this fantastic salad for the 1920's movie stars. Yet did you also know that Romaine lettuce originated from the medieval French laitue romaine, which arrived with the popes coming ot the then seat of the Church, Avignon. France. Although some words like avocado have spicier origins, ahucatl coming fromthe Nahuatl word from the Aztecs which was slang for testicles.
There are tons of delicious morsels. like this in the book. "Language is amusing,"said the book's author ."It has a playfulness to it and so does food." Yet some words have a weighted history like the word recipe. It derives from the Latin verb recipere to receive or take. IN Western medieval and early modern manuscripts it was used to instruct people to take medical prescriptions. The abbreviation Rx is a remnant of that. Another interesting fact is that the English language as a habit of sucking up foreign words and then making them its' own. Take relish for example. Again another word coming from Old French relaisser which means to release. The idea is that it releases flavor according to Dr. Tschann. Then there is mushroom which comes from the old Anglo-French word musherum and the central French word moisseron. We have the Yemeni port city of MUkha to thank for the word mocha. Their coffee originally had a chocolate-y flavor that we now used for a mix blend of chocolate and coffee. Surprisingly place names like Chicago are aasociated with food. the name cones from the word leek in the Miami Illinois language while Topeka means the palce for digging potatoes in the Dakota language.
Romaine Wasn't Built In A Day is the perfect book for food and word lovers. It's a tasty look into our word salad of cooking terms. Buy it for a good read.
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