Corduroy Orange

Cooking Terms to Make Your Food Sound Fancier
Sometimes, part of a food’s appeal is what it’s called. “Sweetbreads of Veal,” for instance, (which incidentally are very tasty) sound much more desirable than “Thymus Gland of Calf.” You don’t have to be cooking varietal meats to be able to spice up your nomenclature, though. Much of the art of menu writing lies in describing dishes to make them sound more desireable than they would otherwise. There are a wide variety of ways to refer to ingredients you already use in hoity-toity terms. Just by using these words to describe dishes you already make, you can turn your casseroles into haute cuisine. It’s a fun game to play at home with your family or at potlucks, dinner parties, and the like.

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The more I visit them, the more amazed I am at the amount of information available on various U.S. government web sites. They can be somewhat convoluted and often tough to navigate, with many lists of links to various publications whose very titles invoke a yawn (Thermally processed low-acid foods packaged in hermetically sealed containers, anyone?). On the other hand, if you poke around long enough, you’re bound to find something that’s at least curious, if not downright enthralling. Two such examples found within the FDA’s information labyrinth detail what is permitted to go into your bottled drinking water and what level of defects (amount of rodent fur, mamalian excreta, insect matter, etc.) are deemed intolerable for your food.

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Beauties from the indispensable White House Cookbook

I rarely endorse cookbooks, but this one is a must for any gourmand’s shelf. I know I can trust the book to give me good advice because, as the publishers say in their preface, “Every recipe has been tried and tested, and can be relied upon as one of the best of its kind” (p. iii). This is the book I consult whenever I’m wondering how To Roast Beef Heart (”wash it carefully and open it sufficiently to remove the ventricles, then soak in water until the blood is discharged…”, p. 119) or if I’m in the mood to make Baked Calf’s Head (the secret is to boil it first, then split it in half and bake it. For ideal presentation, bake only the better-looking half; dice the meat from the other half and fry the pieces in lard to present around the edge of the platter, [p. 127]). (more…)

How a skirmish between the Normans and the Saxons affects what you call what you eat today.

Perhaps we don’t always realize the way our lives are influenced by our language and how we refer to things. The relationship in our minds between our words and the objects they represent is so strong that we often forget how malleable thing language is. Even if we don’t realize it in day to day life, our tongue is in a constant state of change. Whether it’s the addition of a word (such as sandwich to describe a simple object that had henceforth been called bread and meat or bread and cheese) or, as is often the case when an invading force takes political control of a region, a shift in the root of the language itself.

The Old English language went into decline 940 years ago today: the day after William the Conqueror of Normandy (France) defeated King Harold of Saxony (England). Previously the English were speaking a guttural, Germanic tongue written with a 28-letter alphabet, as exemplified by the following passage from “Christ III,” a poem attributed to the venerable Bede and written sometime between the years 1000-1050:

Daga egeslicast
weorþeð in worulde, þonne wuldorcyning
þurh þrym þreað þeoda gehwylce,
hateð arisan reordberende

1025

of foldgrafum, folc anra gehwylc,
cuman to gemote moncynnes gehwone.¹

Then, the French swept in with their Latin-influenced tongue and changed the entire character of the language. The ruling class spoke French, and they expected that everyone else should speak French, too. But, as one of my French professors once said, “French is but bad Latin in the mouths of Gauls.” Likewise, English is bad French in the mouths of disparate Germanic tribes.

The upper tiers of society adopted French more completely than did the lower tiers, and “the linguistic influence of the Normans tended to focus on matters of court, government, fashion, and high living Meanwhile, the English peasant continued to eat, drink, work, sleep, and play in English.”² Therefore, many of the more humble aspects of the English language changed little while the more refined aspects adopted new vocabulary.

As a result, when an animal is in the field and attached to its hoof, we still call it by a word derived from its Old English name; but once slaughtered, prepared, and brought to the table, it is known by a French-influenced vocabulary: “English calf, ox, sheep, and swine, but French veal, beef, mutton, and pork.”³ Were it not for the Norman invasion so many years ago, we would be speaking a vastly different language today. I take such evidence to be proof that our actions have a direct and resounding effect on the future of the planet, though I fear our influence in this age of disposability will be less kind to our descendants than a shift in vocabulary.

Our tendency to buy everything in layers of plastic packaging that have been shipped ’round the world with the help of billions of barrels of petroleum is having devastating effects on the health of our planet, as very effectively described in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Therefore, I encourage everyone to do their part to help preserve the planet by recognizing and embracing regional variations on cuisine: cook with what is native to your part of the world, with minimally-processed and packaged ingredients that have traveled as short a distance as possible before arriving on your plate. Though not a total solution to all the world’s ills, it is a meaningful step: each of us eats two or three times a day. That gives us all a chance to act locally over 1000 times a year, which, combined, can add up to a global change. Doing our part will help ensure that 940 years from now, the human race has descendants, whatever language they may speak. (more…)

Be safe in the event of extreme hunger calling for desperate measures regarding Fido’s status as a member of the family: “…the risk of trichinosis makes it imperative for hounds to be cooked thoroughly.”

Schott’s Food & Drink Miscellany. New York: Bloomsbury, 2004. page 120