The word smoke dates back in English to the eleventh century, but it was not until the beginning of the seventeenth century that it came to refer to the process of preserving meat by hanging it in a smoke-filled room. Before the seventeenth century, this ancient culinary technique was called reeking, and the final product was called reeked meet. This now obsolete culinary term seems odd to us because reek now means to emit afoul odour. Back then, however, reek simply meant to emit smoke: its smelly sense did not emerge until the early seventeenth century when its culinary sense was usurped by smoke. One reason why smoke replaced reek as a culinary term may be related to the introduction of tobacco to England at the end of the sixteenth century. Tobacco smoke was then thought to be of great benefit to one’s health, warding off all kinds of illness and plagues; accordingly, the word smoke acquired a positive connotation it never before enjoyed, and suppliers of reeked meat may have started to apply it to their wares in an attempt to benefit from the word’s new cachet. In origin, the word smoke derives from an Indo-European source that has given rise to “smoke” words in dozens of languages, including the German schmauch, the Dutch smook, and the Welsh mwg. Relatives of the word reek also exist in most northern European languages, including Icelandic where the name of the country’s capital, Reykjavik, literally means smoky bay.