Category: H
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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…
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Hot cross buns
Hot cross buns acquired their name from being indented with a cross commemorating Good Friday, the only day they were eaten; originally known simply as cross buns, they became hot cross buns in the early eighteenth century because of a rhyme shouted by street vendors: “One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns, butter…
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Hollow meat
Unlike large animals such as cows or deer, small animals such as chickens, rabbits, and ducks can be cooked whole, meaning that before they go into the oven they have a “hollow” where their innards once were that can be filled with stuffing or forcemeat. These small, “hollow” animals were not originally sold by butchers,…
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Hollandaise sauce
The egg-and-butter sauce known as hollandaise takes its name from the country where it originated. In turn, the name Holland probably derives from a Dutch source meaning hollow land, so called because the topography of the country is flat and low, some areas even lying below sea-level. Similarly, Holland’s other name—The Netherlands—means lower land, the…
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Hogwash
Nowadays, the most familiar sense of hogwash is the figurative one: an implausible explanation is hogwash, synonymous with hooey, humbug, baloney, fiddie faddle, blarney, codswallop, horsefeathers, bullshit, and poppycock. In the fifteenth century, however, hogwash referred to the slop or swill produced by a kitchen. The water used to boil the turnip, the carrot scrapings,…
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Hogshead
A hogshead is a liquid measure that varies in capacity depending on what is being measured. Thus, a hogshead of wine is 63 gallons, of beer 54 gallons, of ale 48 gallons, of molasses 100 gallons, of claret 46 gallons, of port 57 gallons, of sherry 54 gallons, and of Madeira 46 gallons. These varying…
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Hogo
In the mid seventeenth century, the English borrowed the French phrase haulgout—literally meaning high taste—and applied it both to foods with a pleasantly piquant flavour and to foods that stink to high heaven. Sometimes the English spelt the term as hogo, representing how they actually pronounced the French term, but the new spelling never completely…