Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities

By Mark Morton and Mark Morton

Book Overview

"A whimsical, side-splitting, erudite, and sometimes cheeky book." - The Globe and MailFrom everyday foods to exotic dishes, from the herbs and spices of medieval England to the cooking implements of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0921368666
• ISBN13: 9780921368663
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Blizzard Pub Ltd
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 1.3" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Things you never knew you wanted to know

I just gave this book to a friend of mine who is about to become a professional chef, and it seems to be a hit! As mentioned by previous reviewers, this book investigates the origins and histories of words related to food and cooking. The words are organized alphabetically, the linguistic research is well done (I just took a course in linguistics), and the author has untangled all that gnarly word history and presented it in lucid, witty prose. The tongue-in-cheek comments are reminiscent of snappy columnist or non-fiction writing, epitomized by writers like Bill Bryson. Though that flippant humour can get tiresome if you're reading the book for extended periods of time, this book is still well worth getting if you're interested in either food or words - or trivia! It is best read in short stints, it is both educational and highly entertaining, and is certainly a great resource for cocktail party conversation. I was also truly impressed by the range of words, which included those from Asian cuisines as well.

Interesting reading for all food lovers

The original Cupboard Love was nominated in 1997 for a Julia Child award. Now, nearly eight years later, author Morton has released a new, expanded edition of the book, which delves deep into the meanings and origins of culinary word histories. If you are a culinary historian, or even your basic foodie looking for some information on favorite foods and their history, then Cupboard Love will be a much used book on your shelf. The book covers some words that your average culinary dictionary doesn't bother with, such as "poor boy"(a type of sandwich that gets it's name from the fact that it was all the "poor boys" - laborers - could afford to get for lunch), to popular phrases used in culinary circles, such as "piece de resistance" and "a la carte". It even covers words that you wouldn't normally think of as related to food, such as "mensa" , and even totally generic terms such as "eat". All words included in this tome are looked at in depth, and Morton goes into great detail explaining just how the words came to be, what they're related to, and sometimes, such as in the case of the aforementioned "mensa", why they became associated with food. Cupboard Love is filled with interesting curiosities, fun facts, and occasionally the disgusting (such as the term "all nations", the meaning and story behind which almost caused me to get seriously ill, it being a term for the leftover ale, saliva, spit, and more dumped out of used glasses and mixed together for servants to drink later). Anyone interested in the backgrounds and definitions of food will find it to be a very useful addition to their culinary library.

A must-have book for any lover of food (or language)

This book explains where food words and cooking words come from. It assumes that you already know what the food is (or, in the case of a recipe, how it's made) and focuses instead on telling you how the word originated (often many centuries ago), and how it has changed since it first entered the English language. Some of the food words that are covered have very old histories, like "aubergine," which Morton traces all the way back to ancient Sanskrit where the name originally meant "the vegetable that cures flatulence." But Morton also includes food words that have much more recent origins, like "funistrada," which orginated in the 1970s in the U.S army. A lot of geographic and cultural territory gets covered in this book, too, as Morton covers food words that English has taken from American Indian languages, Turkish, Farsi, Italian, and dozens more languages. All in all, the book covers more than a thousand food words and culinary terms, and every entry (with each entry being a good-sized paragraph in length) is totally interesting and often very humorous. The book comes with good references, too: Margaret Visser, on the back cover, calls it "erudite and entertaining" and I read a review of it by Corby Kummer (of the Atlantic) where he calls it an essential reference work for anybody interested in food. If you want a book that will tell you about an aspect of gastronomy that you may never have thought about before, then Cupboard Love, with its fascinating explanations of where food words come from, is a perfect book for you.

What a great book!

This book is perfect for anyone who likes two things: food and words. That's because it combines the two: it tells you where food words came from. And it's exhaustive -- I haven't been able to think of a food word yet that's not in the book. What I really love, in addition to all the good information about where food words came from, is the author's irreverent sense of humour. He's hilarious, but his humour never gets in the way of the information -- it just makes you want to read more. Get this book, and keep it in your kitchen -- you'll find yourself reading entries from it as you're waiting for water to boil, pudding to cool, and so on. (And by the way, did you know that "pudding" originally referred to sausages?!)

Keep this book by your breakfast table!!

A reference for people who love food and love words. I keep my copy beside the breakfast table and pull it out regularly to learn a little about what I am eating and how it came to be called by that name. I liked it so much I got copies to give away as gifts.