Month: September 2020
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Isinglass
The next time you are about to throw out all your old sturgeon bladders, resist the temptation. Instead, peel the outer skin from each bladder and wash what is left in cold water. Next, remove the bladder’s inner skin and squish it with a bowling ball until it becomes a nearly-clear ribbon. You can then…
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Irrorateur
If the stench wafting from a malodorous guest makes it difficult to appreciate the subtle fragrance of your almond chicken, you might address the problem by whipping out your irrorateur and discharging it over the dinner table. This culinary accoutrement, a kind of perfume-filled spray gun, was invented by an eighteenth-century gastronome, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. The…
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Invitation
After spending all of May traipsing from one friend’s wedding to another, you might be unwilling to attend the vernal equinox party being hosted by your sister-in-law’s accountant. Your frantic search for an excuse to decline the invitation—” I’m having my hedgehog spayed”—would not surprise an ancient Roman, whose word for an invitation—invitatio—bears a striking…
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Infare cake
Today, most brides and grooms cut their wedding cake in full view of their friends and family, and then slip away to cross the threshold of their new home—or hotel room—in private. Long ago in England, however, these two events were one and the same, as wedding guests crumbled infare cake over the head of…
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Impanation
Impanation is the Christian doctrine that the bread consecrated and eaten during communion actually becomes, or at least unites with, the body of Christ. The term is a compound formed from the Latin prefix in, meaning in, and the Latin panis, meaning bread, and was adopted from Medieval Latin in the middle of the sixteenth…
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Imam bayildi
According to Turkish legend, this dish of eggplants stuffed with onions and tomatoes is so tasty that when it was served to a Muslim priest, he fainted from gastronomic delight. Thenceforth, the dish was known as imam bayildi, meaning the priest fainted, a dish first referred to in English in 1935. Further back in history,…
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Hydromel
Several beverages and culinary concoctions derive their names from meli, the Greek word for honey, including hydromel, acetomel, and oenomel. Hydromel, as might be guessed from the first half of the word, is a beverage made by mixing honey with water. Likewise, oenomel is a drink made by mixing honey with wine (in Greek, oinos…
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Hungry
Hungary did not acquire its name from the renowned appetites of its citizens; rather, Hungary derives either from the Russian river known as the Ugra, or from the Asiatic tribes known as the Huns. In contrast, the noun hunger is a solidly Germanic word: its Old English form was hungur, which meant then what it…
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Humble pie
Although the expression to eat humble pie only dates back to the early nineteenth century, the actual dish called humble pie is ancient. A humble pie contained the parts of a deer known as the umbles: the heart, liver, and intestines. Although once prized by hunters as a revitalizing food, umbles fell in esteem as…
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Hot dog
The basic idea behind the hot dog—injecting a variety of minced meats into a pig’s intestine—is common to many cultures, and thus the hot dog has been known by many other names. Frankfurter and wiener, which appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, both derive from the European cities where they were made: frankfurter…