{"id":6119,"date":"2014-09-11T20:20:24","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T03:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/first2board.com\/wanderlusty\/?p=6119"},"modified":"2014-09-11T20:21:51","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T03:21:51","slug":"dish-food-language-mysteries-explained-ketchup-chinese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/first2board.com\/wanderlusty\/2014\/09\/dish-food-language-mysteries-explained-ketchup-chinese\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dish on Food and Language — Mysteries Explained (Ketchup was Originally Chinese!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"smallbookcover\"<\/a>people who follow me on Twitter are probably sick of me sharing snippets of the book i just finished, but i can’t help it. it’s just so damn fascinating! those same people also know i love to eat, but what many of y’all might\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0know is that i was a linguistics major in college (and studied computational linguistics in grad school, more on this at the bottom!) and am someone who is fascinated by language and languages.<\/p>\n

so, when i heard about a book<\/a>\u00a0(thanks @wintersweet!) that discussed them both, how could i say no, despite the fact that i only read maybe a book or two a year?\u00a0The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu<\/em><\/a>\u00a0is a breezy but captivating and enlightening look at the history of food, cultural reflections of food (or vice versa), and how modern ways of thinking about food have evolved over time and what they can tell us about how we think about food.<\/p>\n

i don’t want to give too much away, but suffice it to say i’ve never highlighted a book so much — Kindle tells me i have 74 highlighted passages in a book that took me less than four hours to read. (i’d originally wanted to read it on a plane, but i couldn’t wait. so much for that.)<\/p>\n

when i lived in Germany, i thought this promotion McDonald’s had going on, where they mashed up “Asian” flavors with (“American”) burgers,\u00a0was at the very least odd, and at the worst, perhaps even a bit disparaging or pejorative.<\/p>\n

\"Einfach<\/a>

The names are punny, too. For example, Fernk\u00f6stlich =\u00a0<\/em>Fernost<\/em>\u00a0“Far East” +\u00a0k\u00f6stlich<\/em>\u00a0“delicious”<\/p><\/div>\n

but after reading this book, i think i have a new appreciation for the way food has constantly<\/strong> been mashed up and reappropriated through the millennia. like, indeed, how ketchup came, after many iterations, from what is now China and is a distant relative of Vietnamese fish sauce. YES.<\/p>\n

in any case, i highly recommend this book — you’ll find out the following, and more:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • what the words used on a menu can tell you about a restaurant — sight unseen<\/li>\n
  • how SO many of today’s foods that we take as “American” (or “British” or “Peruvian”…) can be traced back to Babylon or Persia.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
    \"Padr\u00e3o<\/a>

    The Monument to the Discoveries (Padr\u00e3o dos Descobrimentos) in Lisbon<\/p><\/div>\n

      \n
    • the Portuguese origins of tempura<\/li>\n
    • how “dessert” as we think of it is not a universal idea (Chinese cuisine traditionally never had a dessert course) — and indeed how the sweet course evolved and moved around in the order of meals in Western cultures. (i knew something was awry with this Air China ad!)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
      \n

      What does a cake have to do with anything? Also, I've never gotten one from them! pic.twitter.com\/x8e1iR1OAA<\/a><\/p>\n

      — Jonathan Khoo (@jonk) March 15, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n