Early in the English M.A. program, I took a class entitled The History of the English Language and it turned out to be a good overview of the history but also included the study of linguistics. I struggled with linguistics, especially in the beginning when the focus was on Old English. I did much better with Middle English and while this was the most difficult of my classes and I got the worst grades of my program, I learned so much. I am including a B paper here, the best I did because it reflects how I used what I learned in the program and applied it to my interest in culinary research. I could have done better and (as my professor stated) included more history of the English language in this and less speculation. I bring this paper out often because it is a good example of what not to do. I let myself get so frustrated with linguistics that I did not pay attention to my citation format and ended up mixing ALA and MLA. I include this because I think my tendency would be to show only the best of what I’ve done or what I liked most. This class truly challenged me, I could have done better, and I got sloppy. Despite that, it was a pivotal class for me. I use the lessons I learned in it every day.

Gina Ruiz

Professor Naughton

LIN 517

28 February 2022

An Exploration of Culinary Language: High Cuisine Versus Daily Fare

Cuisine has its own language sometimes mysterious language. It is a language of weights and measures, strange processes like sifting, activating yeast, or coagulating proteins. Those processes often require a chemist’s precision, an artist’s eye, a sense of taste, and an understanding of how to read and follow a recipe. Professional cooks and bakers learn French alongside their recipes and techniques because French is the lingua franca of the culinary field. The modern-day perception of the culinary field is highly romanticized, and that view is played to by marketers, celebrity chefs, and television networks. The culinary lexicon is predominantly French and the processes, dishes, and ingredients using the dominant language are perceived as more elite and high cuisine. English culinary terms, and food words live alongside the French ones but are seen as having a lower status and often are used to describe ordinary, daily fare. This paper will explore the origins, history, etymology, and linguistics of both French and English culinary terms. Why French words have the power to influence diners into thinking they are high cuisine versus daily fare as illustrated by English culinary terms will also be explored.

This author has a background in cooking and professional patisserie, and comes from a family of cooks and chefs, as well as having a Venetian three-star Michelin chef as a life partner. Hence, culinary terms are very familiar, yet have always been a source of curiosity as to how and why they were so predominantly French. Further, another source of curiosity has been the classism promoted by the dominant French terms. For purposes of this paper, a selection of French culinary terms was obtained using Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of The Kitchen and compared against the Oxford English Dictionary to determine which words arrived into the culinary lexicon earliest. The focus here was on words that arrived during the time of the Norman Conquest, but some later terms are included to give a better overview of the hypothesis stated herein. The selected French culinary terms and their definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary is listed below in Table 1. In Table 2, there is a comparison of French loan words as compared to the English words that either work alongside them or took on a different meaning. Analysis and history follow each table in an attempt to illustrate and understand how these words came into the lexicon, how they have endured, and how they achieved their status, whether it be high or low.

Table 1 – Early French Culinary Terms

Culinary French Loanwords	Period	Etymology
Appetite	ME	From Old French, apetit, or a desire towards
Banquet	Late ME	From the Old French, bane or bench, corresponds to table or place food is set on
Biscuit	ME	Anglo-Norman borrowing bisquit
Cream	ME	From the French crème, which stemmed from the Old French, cresme
Dinner	ME	Dener, a borrowing from Norman French meaning first large meal of the day
Mustard	ME	Anglo-Norman mustarde, mostart
Omelette	Late ME	A Middle French borrowing meaning thin plate, or blade of a sword
Pudding	ME	Possibly a borrowing from the French, probably Anglo-Norman in origin (bodyn, bodin) meaning sausage
Raisin	ME	Anglo-Norman borrowing, meaning cluster of dried grapes
Sauce	Late ME	Late borrowing from Old French, sauce sausse
Sugar	Late ME	Old French, çucre, 12^th – 14^th century, medieval Latin zuccarum, Arabic sukkar.
Supper	ME	A borrowing from the Norman French, meaning evening meal.

Vinegar	ME	From the Old French, ven egre, Modern French vinaigre

Source: Word List from On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of The Kitchen (McGee) definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary Online.

As illustrated in the above table, the preponderance of French culinary words came from the Middle English period with many originating in the Norman French. Since these loanwords arrived so early, they have become standard in the English language and remain in frequent current usage. Later entries into the English culinary lexicon arrive in the late Middle English period, probably during the Hundred Years’ War and ongoing French contact over the centuries.

Let us examine the word “pudding.” In American English, it refers to a specific kind of dessert made with dairy products. For the British, the word pudding can mean the whole dessert genre as well as a savory dish, such as Yorkshire pudding. When the British use pudding to indicate a specific dessert, it is always preceded by another word, i.e., the aforementioned Yorkshire, or a plum pudding. The American use of the French word dessert while the British use pudding for the same meaning is worthy of exploration as well.

Pudding is the one word on the above list that is has a comfort or daily fare perception as opposed to high cuisine. Pudding is a French loanword from the Anglo-Norman boudin, meaning sausage. The French word also could mean animal entrails, a person’s stomach, or intestines, a far cry from dessert. There is a possible alternate meaning from the Germanic, meaning boil or swelling on the body, but that is nothing like dessert either. Let us assume that the Norman French is the correct etymology, and later came to mean something boiled till it thickens, more like our modern-day pudding.

However, where did the come from and why do we not pronounce the French as in boudin? In the Old English, the was a voiced labial consonant, while the was a voiceless labial consonant. It does not make sense that the would be lost if the Old English was unvoiced. However, the Great Vowel Shift could be to blame. The rounded long sound in boudin softens after the GVS and becomes more like the <uh> sound in pudding. Perhaps the changed when the vowel did to better fit the word. The OED states that it could be the result of association with other words in English (pudding, n.). What is interesting about the word is that is one French loanword from the list that does not have a high-cuisine association, but rather, is that of comforting, ordinary fare, at least from an American English perspective. Why is that? This author believes that it is because the word lost its French characteristics and foreign sound in the GVS and the changing of the consonant to a voiced labial . By changing the sound and look of it to be so far from the French original loanword, it is imbued with English characteristics and thus, has lost its high-cuisine status. Further, in American English, the pudding is seen as something solely as a sweet dessert made with dairy products and having an ordinary connotation, while the word dessert implies something fancier and describes a whole range of sweet, after dinner dishes.

The Norman Conquest brought many culinary terms to the English language as well as the perception that French words belonged to a more elite class, i.e., a higher form of language, but in the late Middle Ages, that view was rejected by authors such as Chaucer, who wrote in the Middle English vernacular. While the Middle English language was infused with French words, by Chaucer’s time, they were considered part of the English lexicon. However, the English language continued to absorb words and increase the vocabulary. The following is a comparison of both French and English culinary words and will attempt to make sense of and answer the questions listed above.

Table 2 – Comparing Culinary Words

French Loan Words	English Origin Words
Omelet	Egg
Cream	Milk
Serve	Give
Plate	Dish
Appetite	Hunger
Banquet	Meal
Gammon	Ham
Aliment	Food
Nourish	Feed
Dine	Eat
Imbibe	Drink
Beverage Entrée	Drink First Course

In the above table, French loanwords appear as higher status words, while the English origin words are viewed as ordinary words. Why? The following is an exploration of the reasons those words on the English side are perceived as ordinary, or daily fare/language/words.

Both of the words “ham” and the word “egg” are from the Old English, inherited/borrowed from the Scandinavian, survive in Modern English, and were not supplanted by the French because “when Scandinavian came into contact with English, the latter borrowed the non-palatized versions” (van Gelderen, 2006, p. 52-53). If a person sees ham and eggs on a menu, that person perceives it to be a very ordinary breakfast dish. However, if that same person reads “gammon and omelet” on the menu, they see it as a fancier breakfast, when in effect, it is the same thing, with “gammon” coming from the French “jambon,” an Anglo-Norman borrowing, which means “the ham or haunch of a pig” (gammon, n.)[1]. Restaurants often use such manipulation of language to charge higher prices (Jurafsky, 2014 p. 7-20). If a person is offered a drink, it is ordinary, however, if they are offered a beverage, again, the word is seen as elevated or higher in status.

The same is true with hunger and appetite. Dickens never wrote about appetite, n., which is from the Old French apetit, (appetite, n.) meaning a desire towards something, rather, he wrote about hunger to illustrate the horrors of poverty in books like A Tale of Two Cities, or Oliver Twist. The word “hunger” is from the Old English hungor. The definition of hunger is to ache, or the uneasy and painful sensation of needing to be fed (hunger, n.). Desire versus need is illustrated in the two words, both used for different purposes, but also are used to illustrate the same meaning.

. In the Central Mexican Spanish this author grew up learning from grandparents, for instance, this translates to tengo apetito (I have an appetite), or tengo hambre (I am hungry). The former is viewed as a more elegant and polite way to convey hunger, while the latter is considered low-class, or an impolite way to convey the same meaning. Tengo hambre was consistently discourage in favor of tengo apetito with the admonishment that if the former was said, then people would think we were uneducated peasants[2].

In the last example on the list above – entrée versus first course, entrée is a word first documented in 1552 in Middle French (entree, n.). It originally meant entrée de table, meaning a meal that is served prior to the first course. Here in the United States, we use both terms interchangeably, entrée and first course to indicate a starter. The original meaning is blurred and is no longer a meal before that first course. To give a little history of its usage, Auguste Escoffier[3], one of the first great restauranteurs and himself responsible for a lot of French being part of the culinary lexicon, recorded it in his 1921 Le Guide Cuilinare, in the traditional French as “hot meat dishes served in the classic sequence before a roast”. However, Julia Child’s recipes for entrees are light dishes such as quiches (Jurafsky, 2014 p. 30-31). The modern meaning has changed but the French word co-exists alongside the English term, first course. The word entrée, however, is the one perceived as high cuisine, while first course is just ordinary. The word was a marker of social prestige, but is being pushed out of that space by the “vast number of ethnic restaurants” in what is called “cultural ominvorousness” by sociologists Linguist Dan Jurafsky claims that the word entrée is in decline, as are other uses of what he calls “psuedo-French as a modern marker of status on menus” (Jurafsky, 2014, p. 33). If this is true, the vast majority of cuilinary terms are still in French, the cooking school most aspiring chefs want to go to is the Cordon Bleu, and French pastry still is seen as having elite status.

Take, for instance, milk and cream. The word “milk” is from the Old English mealc, meoloc, and is inherited from the Germanic. The word has cognates in Old Frisian, Middle Dutch, Old Saxon, Old High German, High German, Old Icelandic, Old Swedish, Old Danish, and others, indicating that it is a very old word (milk, n.). Cream, however, is a French loanword from the Middle French cresme. While the word milk is older and has more cognates, it is cream that is considered a more desirable dairy product. It is the French word that rises to the top of the ordinary English milk that has a quotidian association with breakfast and being healthy, while cream is richer, more caloric, and is used in dessert recipes, seen as unhealthy and fattening, but very desirable and attractive.

Dining is considered to be a high-cuisine word, while eating is just something that is done every day, three times a day. Dine, v. is a French loanword, which comes from the Anglo-Norman deiner defined by the OED as “to eat the first meal of the day” (dine, v.). Meanwhile, the word “eat, n.” is Old English, inherited from the Germanic aetmeaning “that which is eaten or food” with cognates in Old Frisian and Old Scandinavian (eat, n.). Again, the older word is seen as an ordinary word, while the French loanword is assigned a higher status. Why?

One reason is that the Scandinavian origin words “are not often seen as ‘foreign’ since they are very similar to words of English origin and are often ‘everyday’ words (Gelderen, 2006 p. 6) and “French and Latin loanwords are also usedin English to add formality to language” (Gelderen, 2006 p. 3). However, other internal and external factors also play a part. Invasion and eradication/supplantation of culture is one way that words enter a language. Somehow thought, the original language manages to survive in small areas, such as in Mexico where the Spanish actively tried to obliterate the indigenous languages. However, Nahuatl, Otomi, and other indigenous languages still survive and are used in Mexican Spanish and even in English and other languages. The word tomato for example, comes from the Nahuatl tomatl Though the OED says it arrived in English via the Spanish, the Spaniards borrowed it from the conquered Mexica people. At the same time, the Spanish supplanted their culture, religion, and language over the people of Mexico much in the way that the Norman French did with the Anglo-Saxon culture/language during the Norman Invasion. External changes to language often occur through violent means, while internal changes to language involve changes to endings or inflections. Another means of influencing language is through arbitrators of style, fashion, lifestyle trends, including gastronomy. In Modern English, currently, we call these people “influencers.” In Norman conquered English, the influencers would have been the nobility who spoke French, dined instead of ate, and brought their fashion, gastronomy, and culture with them from France. The human nature is to want to emulate or attain what is seen as desired. Thus French culinary terms in the English lexicon were then seen as more desirable and/or elite or high-status in the pecking order. This view has perpetuated into current times, helped along by influencers, trendsetters, marketing, and a very human desire to belong or achieve higher status in the pecking order. French continues to influence the English language; however, its dominance may be waning as other cultures make a place for themselves in the culinary world with new ingredients, dishes, and styles. In fact, Twentieth-Century borrowings from the French in the field of gastronomy are listed as 179 borrowings or 10.7% (Schultz, 2012) of the Twentieth-Century borrowings from the French language as a whole. While this is not an insignificant number, most of the borrowings from this era are in the scientific fields but also illustrates that French continues to contribute to the English lexicon in all areas and fields.

Alan Gautier, in his journal article, “Cooking and Cuisine in late Anglo-Saxon England” discusses privileged foods and states that foodstuffs that were brought over long distances were considered privileged foods (Gautier, 2013). Thus, foods transported from France by the new French nobility after the Norman Invasion would have been considered elite or privileged foods by virtue of the transport as well as the elitism of the new language of the conquering people.

Cornelia Gerhardt argues that “one way to upgrade food is the use of (sometimes invented) original denominations” such as escargot versus snails (Gerhardt, 2013, p. 16-17). In other words, language morphology is utilized in order to add sophistication (or the illusion of it), exoticize, and create desire when it comes to food, thus increasing its value, perceived attainability, and status. Chefs and restaurants all over the world still use French predominantly in their kitchen language, i.e., culinary or gastronomical terms.

Food and identity are closely related. According to Gerhardt, “linguists and other social scientists have shown that identity is constructed through language” (Gerhardt). If that identity is one that aspires to be elite or perceived to be high-status, then naturally, people will absorb and adopt a language of the nobility or elite in order to try to fit in and achieve a desired status. This is probably one of the reasons French retains its dominance in the culinary/gastronomical field over a thousand years after the Norman Conquest.

French culinary words as perceived to be high-cuisine for a number of reasons. One is that they arrived with the Norman Conquest and asserted their dominance as did the people that brough the language with them. A second reason is that French has very good marketers in the culinary world. They have managed to dominate that industry and have been somewhat rigid in terms of keeping these culinary terms in French sacrosanct. Yet a third reason is that often, a foreign-sounding word imbues a sense of unattainability and status. French appears to be shifting from its previously uncontested elite status in the culinary world, but not its place in culinary terminology and in the culinary lexicon.

Works Cited

appetite, n. n.d. 26 February 2022. <https://www-oed-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/view/Entry/9643?rskey=i9M9jz&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid>.

dine, v. n.d. 25 February 2022. <https://www-oed-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/view/Entry/52985#eid6824248>.

eat, n. n.d. 25 February 2022. <https://www-oed-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/view/Entry/59130?rskey=02gtMd&result=1#eid>.

“entree, n.” n.d. Oxford English Dictionary. Website. February 2022. <https://www-oed-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/view/Entry/62979?redirectedFrom=entree#eid>.

gammon, n. n.d. 26 February 2022. <https://www-oed-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/view/Entry/76523?rskey=hpNaC7&result=1#eid>.

Gerhardt, Cornelia. “Food and language – language and food.” Culinary Linguistics: The Chef’s Special. Ed. Cornelia Gerhardt, Susanne Ley and Maximiliane Frobenius. John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2013. 20-67. ProQuest Ebook Central,. 23 February 2022. < https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/lib/asulib-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1316679.>.

hunger, n. n.d. 25 February 2022. <https://www-oed-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/view/Entry/89479?rskey=MimNPX&result=1#eid>.

McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of The Kitchen. NewYork: Scribner, 2004.

milk, n. n.d. 26 February 2022. <https://www-oed-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/view/Entry/118437?rskey=aAIJAm&result=1#eid>.

pudding, n. n.d. 28 February 2022. <https://www-oed-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/view/Entry/154127?rskey=5DXZRa&result=1#eid>.

[1] Gammon is not usually seen on menus here in the United States and is more of a British word in the United Kingdom.

[2] This information is from the author’s personal experience and is a fairly common one with the English-speaking children and grandchildren of Mexican immigrants in California.

[3] Much of Escoffier’s history and contributions to the French dominance in the culinary field can be found in the book Ritz & Escoffier: The Hotelier, the Chef & the Rise of the Leisure Class by Luke Barr,

Academic Portfolio

History of the English Language

Works Cited

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