a FOOD WORD weblog

Junk = salt meat: Monday's food quotation

Just then a man hailed us from the fire that breakfast was ready, and we were soon seated here and there about the sand over biscuit and fried junk.

1883 R. L. Stevenson, Treasure Island ch. 31

The inexorable spread of oleomargarine: Wednesday's food quotation

Speaking of manufactures reminds me of a talk upon that topic which I heard--which I overheard--on board the Cincinnati boat. I awoke out of a fretted sleep, with a dull confusion of voices in my ears. I listened-- two men were talking; subject, apparently, the great inundation. I looked out through the open transom. The two men were eating a late breakfast; sitting opposite each other; nobody else around. They closed up the inundation with a few words--having used it, evidently, as a mere ice-breaker and acquaintanceship-breeder--then they dropped into business. It soon transpired that they were drummers--one belonging in Cincinnati, the other in New Orleans. Brisk men, energetic of movement and speech; the dollar their god, how to get it their religion. 'Now as to this article,' said Cincinnati, slashing into the ostensible butter and holding forward a slab of it on his knife-blade, 'it's from our house; look at it--smell of it--taste it. Put any test on it you want to. Take your own time--no hurry--make it thorough. There now-- what do you say? butter, ain't it. Not by a thundering sight--it's oleomargarine! Yes, sir, that's what it is--oleomargarine. You can't tell it from butter; by George, an EXPERT can't. It's from our house. We supply most of the boats in the West; there's hardly a pound of butter on one of them. We are crawling right along--JUMPING right along is the word. We are going to have that entire trade. Yes, and the hotel trade, too. You are going to see the day, pretty soon, when you can't find an ounce of butter to bless yourself with, in any hotel in the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, outside of the biggest cities. Why, we are turning out oleomargarine NOW by the thousands of tons. And we can sell it so dirt-cheap that the whole country has GOT to take it--can't get around it you see. Butter don't stand any show--there ain't any chance for competition. Butter's had its DAY--and from this out, butter goes to the wall. There's more money in oleomargarine than--why, you can't imagine the business we do. I've stopped in every town from Cincinnati to Natchez; and I've sent home big orders from every one of them.' And so-forth and so-on, for ten minutes longer, in the same fervid strain. Then New Orleans piped up and said-- Yes, it's a first-rate imitation, that's a certainty; but it ain't the only one around that's first-rate. For instance, they make olive-oil out of cotton-seed oil, nowadays, so that you can't tell them apart.' 'Yes, that's so,' responded Cincinnati, 'and it was a tip-top business for a while. They sent it over and brought it back from France and Italy, with the United States custom-house mark on it to indorse it for genuine, and there was no end of cash in it; but France and Italy broke up the game--of course they naturally would. Cracked on such a rattling impost that cotton-seed olive-oil couldn't stand the raise; had to hang up and quit.' 'Oh, it DID, did it? You wait here a minute.' Goes to his state-room, brings back a couple of long bottles, and takes out the corks--says: 'There now, smell them, taste them, examine the bottles, inspect the labels. One of 'm's from Europe, the other's never been out of this country. One's European olive-oil, the other's American cotton-seed olive-oil. Tell 'm apart? 'Course you can't. Nobody can. People that want to, can go to the expense and trouble of shipping their oils to Europe and back--it's their privilege; but our firm knows a trick worth six of that. We turn out the whole thing--clean from the word go--in our factory in New Orleans: labels, bottles, oil, everything. Well, no, not labels: been buying them abroad--get them dirt-cheap there. You see, there's just one little wee speck, essence, or whatever it is, in a gallon of cotton-seed oil, that give it a smell, or a flavor, or something--get that out, and you're all right--perfectly easy then to turn the oil into any kind of oil you want to, and there ain't anybody that can detect the true from the false. Well, we know how to get that one little particle out--and we're the only firm that does. And we turn out an olive-oil that is just simply perfect--undetectable! We are doing a ripping trade, too--as I could easily show you by my order-book for this trip. Maybe you'll butter everybody's bread pretty soon, but we'll cotton-seed his salad for him from the Gulf to Canada, and that's a dead-certain thing.' Cincinnati glowed and flashed with admiration. The two scoundrels exchanged business-cards, and rose. As they left the table, Cincinnati said-- 'But you have to have custom-house marks, don't you? How do you manage that?' I did not catch the answer.

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

Po-boys =/= Subs

Can you tell the difference between po-boys and subs (hint: both are sandwiches)? If not, read this thread on alphadictionary .

Grits = White Polenta

If you're not sure whether what Italians call polenta is the same as what Americans call grits (it is, according to the majority) read this thread on Chocolate & Zucchini 

Anglo-Saxon Plant Names

Here's the Anglo-Saxon Plant-Name Survey and here's a thread discussing it in soc.hist.medieval

Heavenly bodies in Indo-European languages

In Linguistica Brunensia, year 2005, there are two interesting papers on Indo-European philology. One, by Vaclav Blazek, is a study of the names of heavenly bodies in Indo-European languages. It takes the form of a small comparative dictionary, dealing in turn with terms for sun, moon, star, Orion, Pleiades, Polaris, Sirius, Ursa Major. In the case of Orion, there is no clear Indo-European parentage for the Greek name, which may be a loanword ultimately traceable to Sumerian. In all other cases, astronomical names recorded in various early Indo-European languages appear to be cognate and to tell us something about the astronomical vocabulary of proto-Indo-European, though only three terms (for sun, star and moon) can be confidently reconstructed as common to Hittite and other Indo-European groups.

Blazek suggests that pIE sun is inherited from Nostratic, that pIE star might be borrowed from Semitic, and that pIE moon may represent semantic shift from a word meaning month. A quick glance at the list of abbreviations shows that forms from over 90 languages are cited in this 18-page article.

Here's the full set of on-line additions to Notes in the Margin.

What should I call my fizzy drinks?

They have been discussing this burning issue on Alphadictionary , but if you want more structured advice, you can go to the dedicated website pop vs. soda.

What, if anything, is Instant Postum? Tuesday's food quotation

You are a damned idle dog, why don't you send me the Latin tag on the Sparrow memorial that I want for my very good story? I tell you, you will regret it if you trifle with me. I have put you into it, a very agreeable character so far, reading the Decline and Fall and eating white currants. But it is well within my means to make you read the Encyclopaedia Britannica and drink Instant Postum.

1926 Sylvia Townsend Warner, Letter to David Garnett, 1 December [ Sylvia and David: the Townsend Warner / Garnett letters (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994) p. 31]. Note: The story, entitled 'The maze', was actually published in The Salutation in 1932. Mr Slumber remains aloof from the villagers, reading Herodotus and eating whitecurrants.

The question posed above has been miraculously answered by 'Stargzer', a regular contributor to the Alphadictionary forum:

It's a coffee substitute created by C. W. Post (of Post Cereals) in 1895. My uncle used to drink it when I was a kid. I had it once or twice, but don't remember much. I think it was vaguely coffee-flavored. As for me, I bought a used espresso maker for US$5.00 which I keep at work. A 12-ounce espresso can keep me going for the day.

Baker's cake: Monday's food quotation

The Monday of the Feast [Fordlow Feast] was kept by women and children only, the men being at work. It was a great day for tea parties; mothers and sisters and aunts and cousins coming in droves from about the neighbourhood. The chief delicacy at these teas was 'baker's cake', a rich, fruity, spicy dough cake, obtained in the following manner. The housewife provided all the ingredients excepting the dough, putting raisins and currants, lard, sugar, and spice in a basin which she gave to the baker, who added the dough, made and baked the cake, and returned it, beautifully browned in his big oven. The charge was the same as that for a loaf of bread the same size, and the result was delicious."

Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford (Penguin modern classics, 1975, p. 231)

Argan oil

What's argan oil? To find out, start here .

Slipcoat cheese: Sunday's food quotation

My Lady of Middlesex makes excellent slipp-coat cheese of good morning milk, putting cream to it.

c. 1648 Kenelm Digby, The Closet Open'd

Cheese, green cheese and spermyse: Saturday's food quotation

There is iiii. sortes of chese ... grene chese, softe chese, harde chese or spermyse. Grene chese is not called grene by the reason of colour, but for the newnes of it, for the whay is not half pressed out of it, and in operacion it is colde and moyste ... Spermyse is a chese the which is made with curdes and with the iuce of herbes.

1542 Andrew Boorde, Compendyous Regyment

The guga harvest: Saturday's food quotation

The occupants of Lewis rowed over to Sula Sgeir (sula is a Hebridean name for gannet and is also the generic name for many of the gannet's relatives) each autumn to take the fat young gugas, a right that they still maintain today, although the traditional guga harvests at other colonies have ceased.

2005 Christopher Perrins, review of Birds Britannica in the Times Literary Supplement (9 December 2005) p. 27.

In Europe, order from alapage.com

Chiscakes for Christmas: Thursday's food quotation

There was hardly any snow in the valley — all green with the yew-berries still sprinkling the causeway. At Ambergate my sister had sent a motor car for us — so we were at Ripley in time for turkey and Christmas pudding. — My God, what masses of food here, turkey, large tongues, long wall of roast loin of pork, pork-pies, sausages, mince pies, dark cakes covered with almonds, chiscakes, lemon-tarts, jellies, endless masses of food, with whiskey, gin, port-wine, burgundy, muscatel. It seems incredible. We played charades — the old people of 67 playing away harder than the young ones —and lit the christmas tree, and drank healths, and sang, and roared — Lord above. If only one hadn’t all the while a sense that next week would be the same dreariness as before. — What a good party we might have had, had we felt really free of the world.

1918 D. H. Lawrence, Letter to Katherine Mansfield, 27 December (Letters of D. H. Lawrence vol. 3 p. 313)

Note: Lawrence and Frieda were staying with his sister, Ada Clarke, at Ripley near Derby, from where this was written. According to the editors, the "chiscakes" were a Nottingham version of "cheesecakes" or "chiskets".

Silphium: the evidence for an extinct spice

The story of silphium, from its heyday to its extinction and replacement by asafoetida, told in extracts from Greek and Roman texts. A paper by Andrew Dalby first published in 1993

Food words in ancient languages: Dacian

I intended to add to Food in the Ancient World from A to Z the names of foods in other ancient languages -- beyond Latin and Greek -- but I had to give up the idea because it would have taken much too long to get them right. I will gradually add further information to this site.

I've seen discussion on the language forums YourDictionary.com and Alphadictionary.com about the names of two great kings of Dacia (roughly, modern Romania) before the Roman conquest: Decebalus and Burebista. This reminded me that the structure of these four-syllable names, especially Burebista, is reminiscent of some of the words for edible and medicinal plants in Dacian, as preserved by the Greek pharmaceutical author Dioskourides and in the Latin Herbarius attributed to Apuleius.

Extinct for nearly two thousand years, Dacian makes only rare appearances on the Web. So I've extracted the fifty-four recorded Dacian plant names from my database: they can now be found listed here.