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Although Google now has "about 27,700 results" for seacuterie, this word doesn't seem to have made it into any of the standard dictionaries yet. But already in 2017, Fine Dining Lovers announced ("Seacuterie, When Salami Rhymes with 'Sea-lami'") that "today’s latest craze is 'seacuterie'", and went on to survey the gastronomical metaphors involved at greater length, e.g.

Markus Glocker's octupus [sic] pastrami at Bâtard in TriBeCa (New York) is unanimously decreed to be a masterpiece which, at first sight, looks like a soppressata, but in actual fact is much more involved. This leads us into deeper waters, where fish, shellfish and mollusc-based dishes are united under the banner of seacuterie which, more often than not, draws inspiration from cold cuts, such as ham, mortadella, sausages, soppressata, n’duja [sic], and cured fatback.

Web searches turn up some earlier uses of the word, e.g. in Fodor's Florida 2016 (published in 2015), and a 2014 article in the Shropshire Star, announcing that "The food world was filled with epicurean delights in 2013":

Seacuterie – charcuterie has become ubiquitous in recent years. Air-dried ham, bresaola, artisan salami and chorizo have replaced the pork pie and sausage roll. Such products are locally available – Maynards Farm, in Shropshire, makes a sensational chorizo, for instance. Seacuterie is next. Octopus cured in molasses, sea bass with cilantro and peppercorns and salmon pastrami are next up.

However, I was disappointed to learn that the footnote in Brill's Companion to Camus: Camus Among the Philosophers,  linking "themes and problems of Camusian thought" to the suggestive URL

https://www.lettresmodernesminard.org/camus-seacuterie.html

is apparently a typographical error (though of course the Camusian version should be mercuterie, which does actually exist,  though without any apparent existentialist connections).

Despite this failed philosophical precedent, it seems to be time for seacuterie to get its Word Induction Ceremony.

Most readers will recognize seacuterie as a blend of sea and charcuterie. Fewer will know that charcuterie comes from the French for "cooked meat" — I certainly didn't. The Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française gives

xv^e siècle, chaircuicterie. Dérivé du radical de charcutier.

and for charcutier in turn gives

xv^e siècle, chaircuitier. Dérivé de chair cuite.

There's a good discussion of blends and similar word-creation devices in Ryan Lepic's 2016 article, "Lexical blends and lexical patterns in English and in American Sign Language."

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Note: If 'nduja is not in your lexicon, Wikipedia has an article about the dish, and Wiktionary explains the pronunciation (in IPA-ish):

/ˈndu.ja/, /anˈdu.ja/

and the etymology:

From Old French andoille, ultimately from Latin indūcō (“cover, overlay”).

 

April 22, 2023 @ 8:00 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Words words words

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