Chapter 12

Mealtimes

Just as English speakers are divided by their pronunciation of scone, so too are they by the terms used to refer to the daily meals. The midday meal is known to many as lunch—this word originally referred to a thick piece or hunk (of bread or meat) and is probably a borrowing of the Spanish word lonja, meaning ‘slice’. The longer form, luncheon, is recorded earlier with reference to the midday meal; the shorter form of lunch was first introduced in the 1820s. But while luncheon now sounds very posh, if not slightly affected, back in the 1820s it was the other way around—luncheon was the usual term, while lunch was considered a fashionable affectation. Dr Johnson suggested that the word originated in clutch or clunch, and referred to ‘as much food as one’s hand can hold’—not the most hygienic way of serving food. Others refer to the midday meal as dinner, from French dîner ‘to dine’. This word is ultimately from the same root as déjeuner ‘lunch’—its different form is a reflection of its greater age. But, while dinner may be used to refer to the main meal of the day—whether eaten at midday or in the evening—its use is socially loaded. Although first drafted in 1896, the relevant OED entry captures this shift in usage: ‘The chief meal of the day, eaten originally, and still by the majority of people, about the middle of the day, but now, by the professional and fashionable classes, usually in the evening.’ Even though it may sound like a very fancy affair, you should turn down an invitation to dine with Duke Humphrey, since this is a sixteenth-century phrase meaning ‘go without dinner’.

A widespread term for the last meal of the day is supper; the distinction between supper and dinner being one of size and formality—supper generally referring to a lighter and more casual affair. But the uses of these terms can vary considerably according to region and dialect—if you are invited to supper in Scotland make sure you have eaten beforehand, since to the Scots supper is a light meal before bed. Although it is a borrowing from a French word, supper is Germanic in origin—it is from the same root as sop, originally a piece of bread dipped in wine or soup, and now a bribe or peace offering. This contemporary usage derives from Virgil’s Æneid, where Æneas is able to pass Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the entrance to the Underworld, by feeding him a sop laced with honey and sleep-inducing herbs.

The feature of dining that is most likely to give away your social origins is that innocent square of fabric or paper that you place on your lap in case of spillages. For the aspiring member of the upper class, the correct term is napkin (from Old French nape ‘tablecloth’); the alternative term, serviette, is considered by many to be a middle-class pretension. This social distinction is a direct result of Nancy Mitford’s popularization of the concept of U and non-U; despite having been used in English since the fifteenth century, after 1950 serviette came to be seen as the linguistic equivalent of other middle-class affectations, such as fish knives, tea cosies, and napkin rings—serviette rings presumably being the ultimate social gaffe. If you want to sidestep this complex social minefield, the safest term to employ is meal (originally the name for the edible part of the grain), since this can be used at any time of the day and has few social connotations.

The standard working lunch is a sandwich, eaten while hunched over a desk or during a meeting. It was allegedly during a lengthy gambling session, during which he was unwilling to leave the table to eat, that John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (1718–1792), requested some cold beef between two slices of bread, with the result that his name has become synonymous with this ubiquitous bread snack. Whether the story is true or not, there’s no doubting that Montagu was on to something with this serendipitous gastronomic invention; whether he would be pleased to be remembered for his relentless gambling is less certain. The American beefburger was originally a Hamburger—the name deriving from the German city of Hamburg—but, since this connection was forgotten, the term beefburger has become equally popular. A colleague that you share a sandwich with is technically your companion, since the word derives from Latin com ‘together with’ and panis ‘bread’. The word mate is of a similar origin, since it shares a root with the word meat (which initially referred to all kinds of food), and was originally someone you split your food with.

Instead of a quick sandwich at your desk, you may prefer to go to a restaurant for something more substantial—if you are in a celebratory mood you might indulge in a feast (from Latin festus ‘joyous’). Be wary if your festive mood should prompt you to choose a banquet—while this may refer to a substantial meal comprising numerous courses, its origins are considerably more abstemious. The word is originally a French term meaning ‘little bench’ (as it still does in banquette), and was initially employed to describe a light snack enjoyed between meals.

Much of the vocabulary surrounding fine dining is French in origin—its continental origins still signalled by the pronunciation. Haute cuisine, literally ‘high cookery’, refers to food produced to a very high standard; the word cuisine is from the French word for a kitchen. Cordon bleu, ‘blue ribbon’, was originally a ribbon worn by the knights belonging to the order of the Holy Ghost, the highest order of chivalry. In England, a blue ribbon (or riband) made of silk was worn by members of the Order of the Garter. From these uses the terms blue ribbon or cordon bleu were subsequently applied to any first-rate practitioner who has achieved distinction in a particular field. The technical term for the art of fine eating is gastronomy, a French borrowing that draws upon the Greek word gaster ‘stomach’, and which has been given its own English twist in the 1990s formation gastropub. The Greek gaster also appears in gastropod ‘stomach foot’, the collective term for molluscs such as snails and slugs that have a broad ‘foot’ running along the underside of their stomach that propels them forward. For those of you who are Francophile foodies all this talk of snails—known on menus by the French name escargot—will be whetting your appetite (which is from Old English hwettan ‘to sharpen’). For others, this talk of edible molluscs will be having the opposite effect—perhaps even inducing another gastro term, gastroenteritis, an inflammation of the stomach.

The word restaurant is also of French extraction, originating in the verb restaurer ‘to restore, bring back to health’. On being seated in the restaurant, diners are presented with a menu—from a French word meaning ‘detailed list’ (Latin minutus ‘small’). You might choose to order from the à la carte, ‘according to the menu’, or the prix fixe, ‘fixed price’, options. In addition to your main course, you could select an hors d’oeuvre, a French term for an appetizer. Introduced into English in the eighteenth century, this term, meaning ‘outside the work’, was originally used to refer to something out of the ordinary, or additional. Its culinary use derives from the idea of a dish that is served as a supplement to the standard courses. From Italian cuisine English has adopted the term antipasti (the plural of antipasto), meaning ‘before the food’, from Latin pastus ‘food’. If you are not especially hungry, you may prefer a selection of canapés—bite-sized pieces of bread or pastry with savoury toppings. Canapé is the French word for a sofa; the idea behind its use here is that the toppings were thought to resemble people sitting on a sofa.

The tendency for French culinary terms to occupy a higher register than the equivalent English ones is perhaps clearest in the French origins of beef, pork, veal, venison, and mutton, that were taken from the speech of the French noblemen who settled in Britain following the Norman Conquest of 1066, whose only encounter with these animals would have been at the dining table. The Anglo-Saxon peasants who tended to the living beasts continued to call them by their Old English names: cow, pig, calf, deer, and sheep. This distinction was first popularized by Walter Scott in his historical novel Ivanhoe (1820), set during the reign of Richard I, where a jester explains to a peasant that ‘Alderman Ox continues to hold his Saxon epithet while he is under the charge of serfs and bondsmen such as thou, but becomes Beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him’. Although Scott’s depiction is something of a romantic simplification—Shakespeare has Shylock compare his flesh to that of ‘Muttons, Beefes, or Goates’ in The Merchant of Venice—it does capture the extent to which the language of English cuisine is indebted to French. Given this, it is somewhat ironic that the French term for the English is les rosbifs ‘the roast beefs’. The association of beef with the nobility is most apparent in the dubious etymology of the sirloin, in which a king, when served with a particularly fine piece of meat, supposedly took out his sword and knighted it ‘Sir Loin’. Instead the name derives rather more prosaically from its position as the upper part (French sur ‘above’) of the loin.

But, while the French may have had nothing to do with the lowly business of tending to these animals, there is evidence that they were involved in the gruesome task of slaughtering them. Indeed, a knowledge of the correct manner of butchering an animal, and the relevant terminology, were important skills in the Middle Ages. The word butcher is from buck, the term for the male goat and deer. Professional butchers plied their trade while seated upon shambles; from Latin scamnum ‘bench’, this term was later transferred to the stalls on which butchers displayed their wares. In a subsequent shift, shambles came to refer to the slaughter house (or abattoir, from French abattre ‘to beat down’), and then to any scene of carnage (also a meaty metaphor—from Latin caro ‘flesh’), or, more mildly, place of disorder and mess.

In England, roasted meat is typically served with lashings of gravy, whose name probably originates in a simple scribal error. The word was originally grané, a French borrowing meaning ‘spiced’ (from Latin granum ‘grain’). The letters u and n were often indistinguishable in medieval handwriting—both were formed using two single vertical strokes called minims—so that it would be easy for a scribe to misread the word as graué. While the letters ‘u’ and ‘v’ are distinguished by the sounds they represent today, in medieval English they varied according to position: ‘v’ appeared at the beginnings of words (vntil ‘until’) and ‘u’ in the middle (loue ‘love’), irrespective of the sound. Given these differences, it is easy to see how the French word grané could have given rise to gravy. Another change in the form of a word that has arisen through palaeographical (Greek ‘ancient handwriting’) confusion is the shift from fnesen to modern English sneeze. Medieval handwriting employed several different forms of the letter ‘s’, an 8-shaped form, another resembling a kidney bean, the Greek sigma, and a long form—still found in printed books of the eighteenth century. This last letter closely resembled the letter ‘f’; it was confusion between the long ‘s’ and ‘f’ that resulted in fnesen becoming adapted to modern English sneeze.

Along with meat drowned in gravy, another English favourite is the stew. This word derives from Greek tuphos ‘smoke’ (via the Old French form estuve)—the same root as typhus. In English the word was originally used to refer to a cauldron in which something was heated, as well as a steam room or bath. The close association of the public baths (or stews) with illicit activity led to the word’s use to refer to a brothel. Only in the eighteenth century did the modern use of the word to refer to a slow cooked preparation consisting of meat and vegetables arise. Incidentally, the Latin word for a brothel was fornix—from which we get the English words fornicate and fornication. The word initially meant ‘arch’, the shift in meaning having been triggered by the tendency for prostitutes to hang around in archways when touting for clients. The Latin word for a prostitute was meretrix, which is the root of the English word meretricious, describing something that, while superficially attractive, has no real value or integrity.

To balance out the rather carnivorous (Latin carnivorus ‘flesh-devouring’) turn this discussion has taken, it is time to consider the origins of the vegetables that accompany meat dishes, or—if you are a vegetarian—replace the meat entirely. The term vegetarian, to describe those who abstain from meat, was coined in the mid-nineteenth century; its popularity may have been thanks to the Vegetarian Society founded in Ramsgate in 1847. Vegan, used of those who avoid all foods and products of animal origin, is a mid-twentieth-century coinage, based on the abbreviated form veg—but with a pronunciation that reflects its spelling rather than its etymology. Vegetables get their name from Latin vegetabilis, meaning ‘animating’ or ‘vigorous’; despite this, it may also be used describe a state in which one is capable of only the most basic features of life. This has given rise to a number of idioms describing those in various states of inactivity, such as couch potato and cabbage head.

Vegetables

The asparagus takes its name from the Greek word asparagos; despite this simple relationship, the word’s history is rather more complicated. The Greek word entered English via the medieval Latin form sparagus, which was subsequently anglicized into the more recognizable form sparrow-grass. Sparrow-grass was used until the nineteenth century, when it came to be considered an ignorant mistake and was replaced by asparagus. Also of classical origin is the cauliflower—ultimately from Latin caulis ‘cabbage’, which is also the source of kale. The word entered English via the French chou fleuri ‘flowered cabbage’; other historical spellings, such as collyflower, show the partial anglicization having been taken further still.

The cucumber is straightforwardly a version of the Latin word for the same vegetable—cucumis; the English spelling with a ‘b’ reflects the influence of the medieval French form cocombre (compare modern French concombre). The Greek word for the cucumber, angourion, is the ultimate source of the English word for the related gherkin—which was borrowed into English from the Dutch word augurkje. As with the word ghost (Old English gast), the ‘h’ in gherkin is a later addition—the word was originally spelled without, as in Pepys’s reference of 1661: ‘We . . . opened the glass of Girkins . . . which are rare things.’ In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the pronunciation of cucumber as ‘cow-cumber’ became popular, and the word began to be spelled cowcumber accordingly. In the nineteenth century, this pronunciation fell out of fashion and became associated with other non-standard markers (such as aitch-dropping) as evidence of illiteracy, as in Charles Dickens’s portrayal of Mrs Gamp’s speech in Martin Chuzzlewit (1842–4): ‘In case there should be such a thing as a cowcumber in the ’ouse, will you be so kind as bring it, for I’m rather partial to ’em, and they does a world of good in a sick room.’ The view that cucumbers are good for your health dates back to Roman times; according to Pliny, the emperor Tiberius was advised to partake of a daily cucumber by his physicians—apparently a cucumber a day kept the doctor away. But not everyone has been persuaded by the vegetable’s health benefits. Dr Johnson approvingly cited the view of English physicians that ‘a cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing’. Despite his enthusiasm for gherkins, Pepys would no doubt have concurred; an entry in his diary for 22 August 1663 records the demise of one Mr Newburne, who apparently died from eating ‘cowcumbers’.

Salad, now used to describe a mixture of raw vegetables, was probably originally a dressing using salt, since the word derives from Latin sal ‘salt’. A salt-cellar was formerly a saler; it was altered to cellar on the assumption that it was related to the word meaning ‘storehouse for provisions’, to which the word salt was added. The result is a rather tautologous (Greek tautologos ‘repeating what has been said’) formation, meaning ‘salt salt-cellar’. The traditional placement of a salt cellar at the centre of the dining table gave rise to the expressions above the salt and below the salt, referring to seating positions of greater or lesser honour. In French the word salade is also used of the lettuce, alongside laitue, the source of the English word, going back to the Latin word lac ‘milk’—a reference to the plant’s milky juice.

From further afield is the potato, introduced to English from the Spanish patata, itself from the Caribbean word batata ‘sweet potato’—the earliest type of potato known in England. The avocado is a borrowing from the Aztec language Nahuatl; the word was originally ahuacatl—the Nahuatl word for a testicle, so called because of its shape. Another plant that gets its name from a word for testicle is the orchid (Greek orkhis)—a name that derives from the shape of the tubers in many species—a comparison that lies behind the sixteenth-century alternatives bollock grass and dog stones.

A balanced diet (from Greek diaita ‘way of life’) also involves eating nuts and pulses. The word nut goes back to the Old English hnutu—the initial ‘h’ was dropped early in the word’s history. The walnut, a particular favourite at Christmas, is from the Old English word wealh, meaning ‘slave’, or ‘foreigner’ (also the origin of the name of the Welsh). A walnut is thus a ‘foreign nut’, a name that was intended to distinguish this Italian import from the nut of the native hazel. Almond is ultimately a form of the Latin name for that nut, amygdala; the Latin word is now the medical term for an area of grey matter in each hemisphere of the brain, whose shape resembles an almond. If that seems an unlikely comparison, it’s nothing compared to the hippocampus, which gets its name from its apparent similarity to a sea-horse (Greek hippos ‘horse’ and kampos ‘monster’). The high-protein pulse known as the lentil takes its name from Latin lenticula ‘little lens’—lens being the Latin word for a lentil. This word is also the root of the English word lens, a seventeenth-century borrowing used to refer to a curved piece of glass, on account of the similarity of its shape to that of a lentil.

If you want to boost your brainpower then seafood is the ideal choice—although in England the potential health benefits are mitigated by coating it with batter and deep-frying it. Fish is usually accompanied by potato chips, also known as chips or French fries. These may be soaked in vinegar, whose name is from the Old French vyn egre ‘sour wine’. Egre is derived from Latin acer, also found in the English words acerbic, something that is ‘sour tasting’, and acrid ‘bitter’. Vinegar is also an ingredient of ketchup, now chiefly made from tomatoes, but originally an Asian fish sauce known in Chinese as ke-chiap. Ketchup is first recorded in English in the seventeenth century, alongside variants such as catchup, katchop, kitchup, ketsup, and catsup—the last of these is now commonly used in the USA. As an alternative you might prefer mayonnaise, whose name may be derived from Port Mahon, the capital of Menorca, captured by the French in 1756. But other explanations have been suggested, including a corruption of bayonnaise (after the French town Bayonne), and a derivation from the French verb manier ‘to handle’.

For a more upmarket seafood experience you might choose to try a shellfish or crustacean (from Latin crusta ‘shell’—the same word is used for the crust on a loaf of bread). These include the lobster, which is etymologically related to the much less tasty and considerably less filling locust—both go back to Latin locusta. Despite its name, the crayfish is also a crustacean; its name is an anglicization of the Old French crevice, with the second element reflecting a popular assumption that an animal that lives in water must be a type of fish. The Greek word for shell, ostrakon, lies behind the name of the oyster (Greek ostreon). Ostrakon is also the root of ostracize, the term for excluding somebody from a group. This is because Athenians used to write the names of people they wished to see expelled from the city on a tile, or piece of pottery known as an ostrakon; Athenians who were exiled using this method were said to have been ostracized.