Minced Words is Emily Brewster’s bi-weekly rumination on the language that we use to talk about food. Emily is a lexicographer for Merriam-Webster.

I had never heard of cloudberries until I came across the entry for cloudberry recently while browsing through the dictionary it’s my job to edit. When I read the definition (“a creeping herbaceous raspberry (Rubus chamaemorus) of north temperate regions; also: its pale amber-colored edible fruit”), my overactive imagination was transported to a faraway tundra in a northern clime where I was placing some golden magical raspberry on my tongue. This article demystified the berry for me, but it got me thinking about the heavenly language we use to describe certain foods.

There’s ambrosia, a dish named for the food of the Greek and Roman gods that is nevertheless comprised of canned orange slices, stale coconut and mini-marshmallows. Celestially named, light-as-air angel food cake. Angel-hair pasta, with its long, slender tendrils (only slightly thicker, vermicelli translates literally as the more earthly “little worms”). I’m not sure what heaven’s got to do with angels on horseback: oysters wrapped in bacon, skewered and broiled, and served on toast. But clearly marketing has something to do with it.

And while we often reach for biblical language when describing the qualities in a dish — “a heavenly dessert,” “the meal was divine,” “a mousse light as air” — don’t forget about angel food cake’s dark twin, chocolate devil’s food cake, which can only be described as “sinfully rich.”

Which foods sound heavenly to you?

Posted by emily in minced words | | Subscribe to this feed