The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu
Page 20
Artemis turned them into guinea fowl, Meleagrides: A less melodramatic but more plausible etymology for meleagris is that it is a borrowing from a Phoenician word related to the god Melqart (from the Semitic melek, “king”), because of early Phoenician ships trading in exotic birds along with olives and wine while they spread the alphabet around the Mediterranean. But that’s a story for another day. See Thompson (1936), 114.
“turkey well drest”: Tusser (1573).
compared the “wilde Turkies” to “our English Turky”: Smith and Bradley (1910), 60; Forbush and Job (1912), 489.
owes more to the autumn harvest festivals: Baker (2009), Chapter 1; Smith (2006), 73; Ott (2012), ix.
Thanksgiving was linked in schools and newspapers with the Pilgrims: Smith (2006), 67–82.
By 1658 an English pumpkin pie recipe: Brook (1658).
Pompkin. One quart stewed and strained: Simmons (1796), 28. For a very engaging and comprehensive history of the pumpkin, see Ott (2012).
Texas Pecan Pie. One cup of sugar: Ladies Home Journal 15, no. 8(July 1898), 32. http://books.google.com/books?id=LKwiAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA36-IA36.
pie crust filled with egg yolks, cream: Recipe for “Pasteis de leite” in Newman (1964), 16; Austin (1964), 53.
Two pecan maps: Based on the research of Bert Vaux and Joshua Katz: Katz (2013), Vaux (2003).
African American chef and food writer Edna Lewis: Lewis (1976), 159.
archaeological evidence of pots from early slave settlements: Yentsch (1994; 1995).
Seven: Sex, Drugs, and Sushi Rolls
pails of hot chicken tamales: Peters (2013), 32.
sample from a positive restaurant review: I’ve subtly modified the wording in both reviews to preserve anonymity as much as possible.
my colleagues on the menu study: Jurafsky et al. (2014).
With computer scientists Julian McAuley and Jure Leskovec: McAuley, Leskovec, and Jurafsky (2012).
how much more often a word occurs in good reviews: The method we use, the weighted log odds ratio with informative Dirichlet prior (Monroe, Colaresi, and Quinn [2008]) involves a few other statistical tricks, like accounting for variance and controlling for how often we expect the words to occur by chance given their general frequency in English.
Linguist and lexicographer Erin McKean notes: Erin McKean quoted in Teddy Wayne, “Obsessed? You’re Not Alone,” The New York Times, March 22, 2013.
“The girls nowadays indulge in such exaggerated statements”: Montgomery (1915), 95.
more adjectives to describe pain than pleasure: Rozin and Royzman (2001), 311.
vocabulary to describe people we dislike: Leising, Ostrovski, and Borkenau (2012).
smaller vocabulary for smell: Ankerstein and Pereira (2013).
richer olfactory vocabularies: Another olfactory rich language is Aslian, spoken on the Malay peninsula: Majid and Burenhult (2014).
Cantonese is particularly rich in words for negative smells: The word list and definitions are adapted from de Sousa (2011).
“perhaps the world’s oldest extant gastronomic treatise”: Dunlop (2008), 106; Knoblock and Riegel (2000), 308–9.
“the variety of olfactory sensations experienced by their ancestors”: de Sousa (2011).
genes coding for the detection of specific odors: Gilad, Przeworski, and Lancet (2004).
grassy smell of sauvignon blanc: McRae et al. (2012).
ability to detect the sulfurous smell of asparagus: Pelchat et al. (2011).
biased to be especially aware of negative situations: Rozin and Royzman (2001), 311.
Linguist Douglas Biber has shown: Biber (1988; 1995).
the pioneering work of Texas psychology professor James Pennebaker: See Pennebaker (2011) and Pennebaker, Booth, and Francis (2007).
Pennebaker and his colleagues identified: Stone and Pennebaker (2002); Gortner and Pennebaker (2003); Cohn, Mehl, and Pennebaker (2004).
there are a lot of ways for things to go wrong in life: Peeters (1971); Unkelbach et al. (2008).
Robert Parker began to emphasize the sensual pleasure: McCoy (2005).
Literature professor Sean Shesgreen says: Shesgreen (2003).
link between junk-food cravings and drug addiction: Rozin and Stoess (1993); Rozin, Levine, and Stoess (1991); Hormes and Rozin (2010); Johnson and Kenny (2010); Ziauddeen, Farooqi, and Fletcher (2012); Stice et al. (2013).
Adam Gopnik: Gopnik (2011), 254.
occur more frequently: Have a higher log odds ratio.
Strauss found that Korean food commercials: Strauss (2005).
The link between dessert and sex: See, for example, Hines (1999).
Chris Potts has shown that this skew: Potts (2011), Pang and Lee (2008).
the Pollyanna effect: Boucher and Osgood (1969).
positive words are (on average) more frequent than negative words: Rozin, Berman, and Royzman (2010); Augustine, Mehl, and Larsen (2011).
unmarked form is much more likely to be positive: Zimmer (1964), 83.
When people forward news stories: Berger and Milkman (2012).
Eight: Potato Chips and the Nature of the Self
“one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet”: Moss (2013).
craft authenticity: Carroll and Wheaton (2009). See also Beverland (2006); Beverland, Lindgreen, and Vink (2008); and Johnston and Bauman, (2007).
Pierre Bourdieu, whose famous book Distinction: Bourdieu (1984).
traditional authenticity: “Design Notebook: Peter Buchanan-Smith and the Urban Ax,” The New York Times, June 30, 2010. See also Gilmore and Pine (2007) and Potter (2010).
ordering a plate of ketchup as his entire meal: Roman (2010), 6.
“threw forty-seven raw eggs across the kitchen at my head”: Ogilvy (1963), 35–38.
“Don’t use highfalutin language”: Ogilvy (1963), 141.
“not just who they are, but who they want to be”: Peters (2012), xiv.
working-class –in’ suffix: Labov (1966).
appealing to more upscale voters: Lisa Miller, “Divided We Eat,” Newsweek, November 22, 2010. http://www.newsweek.com/2010/1½2/what-food-says-about-class-in-america.html; Torjusen et al. (2001).
What they call the interdependent self: Markus and Conner (2013).
Nine: Salad, Salsa, and the Flour of Chivalry
the Russian word for hospitality: Smith and Christian (1984).
thousands of years of salt taxes: Kurlansky (2002).
a grinding stone from Syria: One of the British Museum’s quern stones from Abu Hureyra, Syria: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pe/q/quern_stone_for_making_flour.aspx.
Anglo-Saxon hlaf-dige (loaf-kneader): OED entries for lord and lady.
bolting cloths: David (1977).
“White was his face as payndemayn”: Chaucer, Tale of Sir Thopas, line 35.
Payn purdyeu: Hieatt (1988), 79.
“receive the flower of all, and leave me but the bran”: Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Coriolanus, Act I, Scene I.
brown bread was looked down upon even by the poor: David (1977), 48–49. See also the Worshipful Company of Bakers website, http://www.bakers.co.uk/A-Brief-History.aspx.
samidu (high-quality meal): The exact definition of samidu and semidalis are still not clear; scholars disagree whether they both meant a finely ground flour or conversely one that was high quality by being dense and nourishing. See, for example, Sallares (1991), 323.
Yale Culinary Tablets: Bottéro (2004).
Yiddish word zeml: Marks (2010), 632.
“à la meunière”: OED entry for meunière.
borrowed from Provençal salada: OED entry for salad.
Salat (c. 1390): From the Forme of Cury, in Hieatt and Butler (1985), 115.
“If you eat it [cabbage] chopped”: Cato (1934).
cookie, cruller, pancake, waffle, and brandy: Van der Sijs (2009).
“has a very pleasing flavor and tastes better than one can imagine”: Benson (198
7), 609.
Apicius, a fourth-century Latin collection of recipes: Grocock and Grainger (2006).
and scholar Charles Perry tells us: Perry (1987), 501.
French saulce vert was made of parsley: Scully (1988), 223.
Le Menagier de Paris: Greco and Rose (2009), 322.
Escoffier’s French sauce verte: Escoffier (1921), 31.
Green Goddess Dressing: Phillip Roemer, the Palace Hotel, San Francisco.
in a volume written over 800 years ago in 1190: Wright (1857), 102.
Westphalian hams from formerly Celtic regions of what is now Germany: Martial talks about the hams of the Menapians, a people in Flanders not far from the famous ham-producing region of modern Westphalia in Germany.
sausage, which we got from French, from late Latin salscia: Dalby (1996), 181.
corn in Old English originally meant a “particle” or “grain”: OED entry for corn.
Salt cod was a huge staple of the Middle Ages: Kurlansky (1997).
a book explaining how to preserve soups and stews: The book was called L’art de Conserver, Pendant Plusieurs Années, Toutes les Substances Animales et Végétales, and is available at http://gallicadossiers.bnf.fr/Anthologie/notices/01500.htm.
pastrami: According to the OED entry for pastrami, the word comes from Romanian pastram (pressed and preserved meat), from the Ottoman Turkish badirma (something pressed, forced down). See Dalby (1996), 201.
“Bacon serves no real purpose in a refrigerated age”: Wilson (2012), 216.
metal roller mills that completely removed bran: David (1977), 31.
Ten: Macaroon, Macaron, Macaroni
macaron delivery: See http://www.lartisanmacaron.com/#!from-our-kitchen-to-yours.
borrowed lauznaj from the Sassanid kings of Persia: Called lauzenag in Middle Persian; see MacKenzie (1971), 53. See Ullmann (2000), 1758, for lauzinagun.
the “best and finest” pastry: Husrav i Kavtn U Retak : The Pahlavi Text “King Husrav and His Boy.” Published with Its Transcription, Translation and Copious Notes. Being an English Version of the Thesis for the Degree of “Doctor of Philosophy” of the University of Heidelberg, Germany. With an Appendix and a Complete Glossary by Jamshedji Maneckji Unvala. Paul Geuthner, 1921. Available online at http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001357845.
Charles Perry’s translation: Perry (2005).
Some recipes for lauzīnaj: Nasrallah (2007), 411.
Roger II, from a mosaic: Image courtesy Matthias Süßen.
the rule of Roger I and Roger II of Sicily: Johns (2002), Houben (2002).
Marzapane . . . comes from the Arabic word mauthaban: Ballerini (2005), 87, footnote 10.
Marzipan. Peel the almonds well and crush: Ballerini (2005), 87.
caliscioni comes from the word for stocking: The word caliscioni comes from medieval Latin calisone, attested in Padua about 1170, which Battisti and Alessio’s Dizionario Etimologico Italiano 1, page 695, says was a flour and almond sweet.
How to Make Caliscioni: Ballerini (2005), 88.
Francesco Datini, a fourteenth-century merchant: Simeti (1991), 227.
The Greeks ate a dish made from sheets of fried dough called laganum: Perry (1981); Serventi and Sabban (2000), 14–15.
in the eastern Mediterranean that true dried pasta existed: Perry (1981).
the fifth-century Jerusalem Talmud: Talmud Yerushalmi, Beitza I:9 and Challah I:4.
itriyah was an Arabic word for dried noodles: Perry (1981).
It was thus in Sicily: For the history of the Arab invention of pasta and its European spread, see Serventi and Sabban (2000), 14–15, Wright (2007), and Verde (2013).
Muhammad al-Idrisi, the Moroccan-born geographer: Perry (1981).
the eleventh-century French scholar Rashi: Silvano and Sabban (2002), 30–31.
modern Yiddish word chremsel: For a modern recipe for chremslach (the plural of chremsel), see Schwartz (2008), 178.
the seer Nostradamus: Redon, Sabban, and Serventi (1998), 205; de Nostredame (1555), 202.
calzone: There were ravioli-like versions of this recipe too, some of them described by Jews who had emigrated north from Italy as well. For example, in the fourteenth century R. Moses Parnas of Rotenberg, Germany, wrote in the Sefer haParnas of “calsinos which are called kreplins,” referring to the dumplings now called kreplakh in Yiddish. See Weingarten (2010), 55.
We don’t know whether maccarruni came from Arabic: For two proposals for Arabic etymologies see Wright (1996) and Nasrallah (2013), 268.
or even comes from the Greek makaria: OED entries for macaroni and macaroon.
the origin of the phrase “macaronic verse”: The OED entry for macaronic says that Teofilo Folengo described his 1517 macaronic poem Liber Macaronices as named for macaroni which was a “course, crude, rustic dish of flour, butter, and cheese.”
Sicilian maccherone was made of: Ballerini (2005), 70.
a list of fantastical desserts in Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel: Book 4, Chapter 59; the long list includes “Beuignetz. Tourtes de seize facons. Guauffres. Crespes. Patez de Coings. Caillebotes. Neige de Crème. Myrobalans confictz. Gelee. Hippocras rouge & vermeil. Poupelins. Macarons. Tartres vingt sortes. Crème. Confictures seiches & liquids soixante & dixhuyt especes. Dragee, cent couleurs.”
Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery: Hess (1996).
probably written in the early 1600s: Hess (1996), 462, concludes that this manuscript was written either in the 1650s or somewhat earlier, but was in any case a fair copy of an earlier manuscript.
To Make Mackroons: Hess (1996), 341.
the turning point in this transition: Albala (2007), 57.
Macaron (“La maniere de faire du macaron”): Scully (2006), 369.
food writer Cindy Meyers writes: Meyers (2009).
A macaron in the style: Image from Albert Seigneurie, Dictionnaire Encyclopédique de l’épicerie et des industries amexes (Paris: L’épicier, 1898).
what the Larousse Gastronomique calls: Larousse Gastronomique (2001), 706.
Name mixups persisted in English: For example, S. Williams’ 1834 “The Parterê of Poetry and Historical Romance,” page 227, has macaronies to mean “macaroons.”
use of coconut increased greatly: Zizumbo-Villarreal (1996), Dixon (1985). There is a recipe for “Cocoa-Nut Cakes” in the 1833 (twelfth) edition of Lydia M. Child’s The American Frugal Housewife. Available free online at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13493.
on the back of another recipe for the cake: Emily Dickinson museum. http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/cooking.
Dickinson’s own recipe: Food writer Tori Avey gives a nice explanation of how to make it on her blog The History Kitchen.
Cocoanut Cake: Recipe from a photograph of Dickinson’s original, from The History Kitchen blog and then courtesy of Poet’s House c/o President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Emily Dickinson: Image courtesy of The Emily Dickinson Collection, Amherst College Archives and Special Collections.
ambrosia: For example, there is an ambrosia recipe in Mary Newton Foote Henderson’s Practical Cooking and Dinner Giving (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1877), 286.
coconut macaroons, also appear first quite early: The earliest recipe I have found with the full name is “Cocoa-nut Maccaroons” in Leslie (1840). But there is a coconut macaroon recipe labeled “Cocoa-nut cakes” in her earlier 1830 book Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats; this book also has what may be the very first recipe for cupcakes.
matzo manufacturers like Streit’s: Personal communication from Alan Adler of Aron Streit, Inc.
Esther Levy’s 1871 Jewish Cookery Book: Levy (1871), 78.
A Parisian baker, Pierre Desfontaines: The Ladurée website credits Desfontaines: www.laduree.com. The Gerbet family is mentioned in an article by Frédéric Levent, “Pour l’Honneur Retrouvé du Macaron Gerbet,” L’Echo Républicain, August 24, 2010. http://web.archive.org/web/20100825182837/http://www.lechorepublicain.fr/pour-l-hon
neur-retrouve-du-macaron-gerbet-,697.html.
The Macaroni: Image courtesy of the Walpole Library, Yale University.
the Persians probably got the almond pastry: Perry (2005), 99; Nasrallah (2013), 59.