Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

With more than one thousand culinary "word-histories", Mark Morton takes us on a journey of from where that word came. He discusses herbs and spices, everyday food and exotic food, from medieval times and abroad!

Mark Morton is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Winnipeg in Canada. This is his second book.

Cupboard of Love has been updated from its earlier 1996 version. It was nominated for a Julia Child Award in 1997. Here, you can be taken on a journey to find where the originations of certain food and food terminologies have come from. This book is like a mini-historical tour across the globe telling us that croissants originally came from Turkey (not France) and that butteries were designed to hold wine not dairy.

This is not a cookbook. There are no recipes inside. Nor are there photographs either. This book is literally a dictionary.

If you are curious where your food has come from, or perhaps where the term "hodgepodge" has come from, then check out this book! It is really quite interesting!

`Cupboard Love' by Canadian linguist and professor of English Mark Morton is in a Second Revised Edition, based on a volume that was in its original edition nominated for a Julia Child award in 1997. The author makes it very clear in his original preface that this is a work of etymology, which is a study of word origins, not, like CSI Gil Grissom's subject, the study of insects. This rather trivial distinction is not nearly as important as the difference between etymology (word origins and transformations) and the meaning of words. My Merriam-Webster 3rd Edition clearly distinguishes the two by saying that a dictionary commonly provides both types of information. Even though this book is subtitled `A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities', it is not truly a work of a lexicographer like Samuel Johnson or Noah Webster. It is much more a work of philology as done by the Brothers Grimm (when they weren't writing fairy tales) and H. L. Menchen (when he wasn't scorching the boobiesee with his newspaper columns and other writings).

What all of this means in practical terms is that while the book does an excellent job of explaining the origins of words such as `barbecue', `chowder', and `Caesar Salad', it says very little about what these things are. As such, the book is much more something to be read for entertainment than as a kitchen reference like the great `Larousse Gastronomique' or Alan Davidson's `The Oxford Companion to Food'. Aside from being a pleasure to read, the book is primarily a source for writers of cookbooks who wish to provide entertaining headnotes to recipes for aubergines, rocket, and ramps. But wait, `rocket', the UK name for arugula, and `ramps', the name of a wild garlic does not appear in this book. The work `ramps' does appear, but with a reference to a different word which has nothing to do with wild garlic.

I am never quite sure what to think about reference books that happen to overlook a subject I expect to find in the book. The thing which makes this issue doubly vexing is that there are simply no other books on this subject in print in English, that I know of. Therefore, I pretty much have to use my best judgment on whether or not this book should have included an entry. On balance, I think that rocket / arugula is such an interesting word pair that I believe leaving it out is a significant oversight.

In fact, I think this book's primary weakness is that it falls into a crack between trying to be a scholarly work and trying to be an embassy from the academic world of language study to the layman foodie and reader. If the book were intent on academic content, it would have cited its sources for its histories so that the interested reader or, more likely, the interested writer using the book as a source, could get more information on the subject. The author cites many scholarly works in his introduction, but no systematic reference to sources is made in the individual articles.

To redeem the book, I will say that I found nothing in the book that I could counter with any authority, which is no surprise as my linguistic training is more in the study of meaning than in the study of history. I am, however, aware of some dissenting opinions on some important topics. John Thorne, for example, has written extensively on chowder, its origins, and the origin of the word `chowder'. And, although he repeats Morton's etymology based on the French name for a big pot, he does cite a very different and equally plausible origin from the Cornish work `jowter', an itinerant fish hawker. This was published in Thorne's `Serious Pig' in 1996. So, since Thorne is one of the most respected writers on the history of food preparations, I'm surprised that Morton did not take Thorne's finding into account.

This is a specific symptom of the fact that the culinary content of this book is very light. The book gives the generally recognized origin of the word `barbecue' from a cooking method of a tribe of Caribbean natives, but the article on this word says virtually nothing about the technique of barbecue. It makes no mention whatsoever of the fact that strictly speaking, it should be applied to a technique that involves very long exposure to low heat plus smoke. Similarly, I found the culinary content of the entry for `Caesar Salad' to be very light. Instead, the author spends a page on the story of the name `Caesar' and its influence on the German `Kaiser' and Russian `Czar'. This article, for example, makes no reference to the use of egg or anchovies in the recipe. Thus, anyone looking for either culinary substance or reliable synonyms for unfamiliar words will probably be disappointed.

I was also just a bit disappointed at the absence of certain important culinary terms such as `ceviche', `carpaccio', or `ragu', even though the words `sushi' and `ragout' are covered.

I sense that I have probably been a bit hard on this book. In spite of all my nit-picking, the book is very entertaining to read. My only concern is that people see the word `Dictionary' in the title and mistake it for something it is not. This is purely and simply a collection of entertaining stories about the origins of some culinary terms. So, if you love words or you love food or you love both, this book will be a delight to read.

Highly recommended as an entertaining read for foodies.

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.