this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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Showerthoughts
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We have some oddly obtuse language for cooking in English.
We use the same phrase to describe foods that are high in temperature and contain lots of capsaicin (hot). We can use spicy, I suppose, but it gets a little odd describing foods with lots of spices that aren't chili pepper. I generally say "well-spiced" and that gets the message across. We hardly have a way to distinguish "types of spicy" flavoring, such as that from chili, horseradish or peppercorns. I've seen some people start to say mala (loan word, 麻辣) for numbing spice, but that's uncommon and new.
That's just a few examples.
Most of our more precise language for cooking comes from other languages, like French. To saute, to braise, bain-marie, julienne, sous vide, etc. I'm not sure why English has so many lexical gaps specifically around cooking.
It's gotten WAY better. Some recipes from, like, the colonial era, have instructions like "cook well in a cold oven until done", so progress has been made, it's still often imprecise and clumsy.
Have you seen British "cooking"?
Lol, have my upvote.
Now baking... The Brits seem to get that.
It's all a result of history.
Hell, Brits were still under austerity through the 60's, and didn't really recover financially from WWII until the 80's.
There are some great shows on Amazon done by historian Ruth Goodman and friends. Victorian Farm, Tudor Farm, etc. "War Farm" really shows how difficult the Brits had it until post-WWII. I'd watch them in sequence, because it's great insight to the different periods.