Archive for Language and food
Pork Lion Bone
Seen by François Lang at the meat counter at The Great Wall in Rockville, MD:
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Chinese and Japanese Terms for Food Textures
Catching up on some oldish e-mail, I came upon this interesting one from Francois Lang dated 5/9/23:
According to an article in yesterday's NYT, "A 2008 report in the Journal of Texture Studies lists 144 Chinese terms for food texture".
The NYT article also says "In Japan, such terms number more than 400. 'Too many,' a team of Japanese scientists demurred in a paper presented at the 2016 International Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems".
It sure beats the old discredited trope about 100 Eskimo Inuit terms for "snow"!
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Oil separator / cooker
When I entered the Airbnb where I'm now staying, one of the first things that caught my attention was the following utensil:
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Tasting History
That's the name of a viral YouTube channel that I had never heard of, and now a popular book that Barbara Phillips Long called to my attention:
My son gave me a copy of Tasting History, by Max Miller, which takes very old recipes and gives modern approximations of them. The book is handsomely printed, well illustrated, and fun, with a wide range of random food trivia and loads of food history. You might find it intriguing.
There's a raspberry shrub recipe from 1911; I seem to recall Language Log having a post about shrubs and their origins.
There are also ten recipes credited to the Near and Far East, including recipes from Egypt, Baghdad, the Mughal Empire, India, China, Korea, and Japan.
So far, I have only read part of the book, although I paged through the whole thing. I did like this quote:
They say "history is written by the victors," but in my experience, history is written by those who write stuff down, and food is no exception.
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Use chili sparingly
From AntC:
Seen in a very typical (but delicious) corner eatery in downtown Hualien, Taiwan.
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Is it a rat's head or a duck's neck?
Main dish served as part of a college cafeteria lunch in Nanchang, China:
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Greater China Co-Prosperity Sushi and Ramen Kitchen
Shouldn’t that be Zhonghua Pan-Asian Kitchen Ramen Wok Premium Sushi? pic.twitter.com/tTUaWidjL3
— James Millward 米華健 (@JimMillward) June 4, 2023
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