Child with a goose (Museo Capitolino, Rome)
When you cook a crane, make sure that the head does not touch the water, but is outside it. When it has been cooked, wrap it in a warm cloth and pull its head.
APICIUS (first-century CE Roman gourmet)
I'M SO HUNGRY!
If, in fact, we are what we eat, the American people are the most cosmopolitan nation in the world. Just as the English language is a mixture of Germanic, Latin, and Greek roots with a heavy seasoning of the Romance languages, with just a dash of Native American, African, and Caribbean, and a sprinkling of Asian vocabulary, so does our diet reflect the various linguistic ingredients that go into the melting pot of American cuisine.
The Normans conquered England in 1066 CE, and introduced, via French, Latin-based names for various foods; nevertheless, although English tastes and vocabulary were about to be expanded, the Germanic contribution to the English menu did not disappear. For example, Middle English mete made peace with the Old French boef, thus allowing both meat and beef on the dinner table, while the Germanic-based chiken nested quite comfortably with the French poulet. And if the English seemed to have lost theirappetiteafter the Norman Conquest, the French tempted their palates with the introduction of such foods as salmon, rice, and carrots. French pain, however, never replaced Old English bread. Perhaps they found that too painful to contemplate.
The Normans may have introduced the English to the finer points of French cookery, but the spread of the British Empire introduced the English language to a host of new tastes from Asia, Africa, and North America. In turn, the extraordinary ethnic diversity of the United States has added its own linguistic flavors to American cuisine.
WHAT SHALL WE HAVE FOR DINNER?
We can eat geographically, as it were, starting off with some Latin-based wine, Gaelic whiskey, or Russian vodka. The German cities of Hamburg and Frankfort give us two staples of the American diet, whose flavor we can enhance with Chinese ketchup, Frenchmustard, or a Dutch pickle. Or would you prefer Italian pasta: linguini, perhaps, or spaghetti, topped with some cheese from Parma, Italy? If we want to add a little spice to our lives, we can always order a curry at our local Indian restaurant, or call the neighborhood pizzeria.
Of course, a well-balanced diet needs a French salad filled with native and imported vegetables: the Native Americans of North and South America can provide tomatoes, potatoes, squash, and avocados, while the Arabs will contribute spinach. We can add a classical touch with onions, lettuce, and peas; even the lowly radish also has a Latin root.
And what is dinner without dessert? Some fruit, perhaps: an orange from Persia, or a banana from West Africa, or a much-traveled apricot, which passed from Latin into Arabic and then returned into Portuguese before making its way onto the English menu. If we crave something sweeter, however, what could be more American than apple pie? Or would you prefer some Central American chocolate, German cake or a pretzel, or perhaps a Dutch cookie? And you can wash it all down with some coffee from Turkey, or all the tea in China.
Vocabulary
appetite < Latin verb appeto = seek, desire
apple < Old English aeppel; cf. German apfel
apricot < the original form of the word in English, apricock, from the Portuguese albricoque, which, in turn, came from the Arabic al birquq. The Arabic word, however, was a transliteration of a Latin adjective, praecoquum (early ripening), a term that could be applied to any fruit.
avocado < Spanish aguacate (< Nahuatl ahuacatl = testicle)
beef < Old French boef (< Latin bos, bovis = cow); cf. Modern French boeuf
bread < Old English bread; cf. German brot, but Latin panis > French pain, Italian pane, Spanish pan
cake < Middle English kake; cf. Icelandic kaka, German kuchen, Dutch coek. Cookie is a diminutive form of coek.
carrot < French carotte (< Latin carota < Greek karoton)
cheese < Latin caseus
chicken < Germanic chiken
chocolate < Nahuatl chocolatl
coffee < Turkish kahve (< Arabic qahwah) cf. French cafe (coffee shop), and cafeteria
cuisine = French kitchen; cookery
curry < Tamil kari (sauce)
dessert < French desservir (to clear the table)
fruit < Latin fruor = enjoy
lettuce < Latin lactuca
meat < Old English mete
menu = French detailed list (> Latin minutus = small)
onion < Latin unio (pearl)
palate < Latin palatum = roof of the mouth
pasta < Latin pasta (dough) (< Greek pastos = sprinkled). Originally, pasta was a kind of porridge sprinkled with salt.
pea < Latin pisum (cf. Italian pisello, French pois)
pie < Middle English pie (shallow pit) < Old French puis < Latin puleus (well)
pizza < Italian pizza < derivation unclear, but perhaps Latin placenta (cake)
potato < Spanish patata (< Taino batata)
poultry < Middle French poulet (< Latin pullus = young of any animal); cf. Spanish and Italian pollo
pretzel < German bretzel (< Latin bracellus = bracelet)
radish < Old English raedic (< Latin radix = root)
restaurant < Latin restauro (restore)
rice < Old French ris (< Italian riso Greek oryzon (rice)
salad < French salade < Latin salata (salted)
salmon < Latin salmon, salmonis = salmon
spaghetti < Italian spago (cord, rope) linguini < Latin lingua (tongue)
spinach < Old Spanish espinaca (< Arabic isfanakh)
squash < Narragansett Native American askutasquash (“thing eaten green”)
tea < Chinese t'e (Amoy dialect); the more common Chinese word is the Mandarin ch'a.
tomato < Spanish tomate (< Aztec tomatl)
vegetable < Latin vegeo (grow)
vodka < Russian voda (water)
whiskey < Gaelic usqebaugh (“the water of life”)
wine < Latin vinum (cf. French vin, and Italian and Spanish vino)
Note: A polyglot is someone who speaks many languages. You will learn the roots of this word very shortly.