Month: September 2020
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Zuppa inglese
Zuppa inglese literally means English soup, but this Italian dish is actually a rich dessert made by soaking a sponge cake in cherry brandy, filling it with custard, covering it with Italian meringue, and then browning it in an oven. The dish was invented in the nineteenth century by Italian ice-cream makers who called it…
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Zucchini
What North Americans call a zucchini, the British call a courgette. Although they derive from different languages, these two words are alike in so far as they are both diminutives of words meaning gourd: the Italian zucco and the French courge. Zucchini, however, is not only a diminutive but also a plural form: accordingly, if…
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Zarf
When you visit an insurance agency you don’t bring a coffee mug with you, and your smiling insurance agents hardly want your lips on one of their pristine mugs, so you are usually served coffee in a paper cup placed in a little plastic holder with a handle. That plastic holder is called a zarf,…
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Zabaglione
English has two names for the foamy dessert made by whisking together egg yolks, Marsala wine, and sugar: zabaglione and sabayon, both deriving from the same source but entering English via different routes. The common source of the words is probably the Latin sabaia, the name of a drink that originated along the eastern coast…
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Yam
Although you might think that you ate yam with your turkey last Thanksgiving, the odds are that you did not; instead, you probably had sweet potato, a tuber that is often incorrectly referred to as yam. In fact, despite resembling each other in size, shape, and taste, the sweet potato and the yam are not…
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Xyster
Not wanting to waste any of a chicken or turkey, many cooks will scrape and pluck the remaining pieces of meat from a carcass before they throw the bones into the soup pot or trash can. Most often, the implement used to cut these scraps of meat from the bone is a simple kitchen knife,…
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Xenia
Xenia, in ancient Greece and Rome, were table delicacies graciously presented to a tired stranger upon his or her arrival in the host’s home. The word derives from the Greek word xenos, meaning stranger. In the Middle Ages, the custom of the xenia was co-opted by royalty who turned it from a free act of…
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Xanthan
Xanthan is a gummy substance produced by a bacterium that takes its full scientific name—xanthomonas, Greek for yellow one—from the colour of the mould it produces. Xanthan has two uses: in the food industry it is used to stabilize emulsions—that is, it stops certain beverages or ready-made sauces from separating into a thick part that…
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Worcestershire sauce
Worcestershire sauce takes its name from the English county—or shire—of Worcestershire, the home of the condiment’s inventor, Sir Marcus Sandys. With the assistance of the English grocers, Lea and Perrins, Sandys began selling his sauce in 1838, which by the 1860s had also come to be known as Worcester sauce, Worcester being the town that…
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Won ton
In Cantonese, won ton means dumpling, which is exactly what a won ton is, whether it is served in soup or as part of a side dish. In English, won tons were first referred to by name in the early 1930s. A culinary dish that is similar in appearance to kreplach or ravioli is commonly…