An Eat-ymological Quiz based on Cupboard Love by Mark Morton

An "Eat-ymological" Quiz Based on
Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities

by Mark Morton (Insomniac Press)

ISBN: 1-894663-66-7

www.wordhistories.com

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ANSWERS can be seen by moving your cursor over the word or phrase in all caps that precedes each question.

CUPBOARD LOVE...

is love that you pretend to feel for the cook so that you’ll be given a snack.
is what mice do in your kitchen to make more mice.
is not recommended by chiropractors.

SMORGASBORD...

derives from a Swedish phrase meaning “some more gas,” alluding to the effects of that meal on the digestive system.
derives from a Swedish phrase meaning “butter-goose board,” referring to the table on which buttered, goose sandwiches were placed.
derives from a Swedish phrase meaning the “board of Smorgas,” Smorgas being a thirteenth-century Scandinavian king who loved huge meals.

KOPI LUWAK…

is the name of a coffee bean that is eaten by the Indonesian civet-cat, extracted from its excrement, and then sold at exorbitant prices.
is a cold beverage named after the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
is a Hawaiian dessert made from pineapples that have been buried in the earth for several weeks.

BARBECUE...

derives from the French phrase “barbe á queue,” meaning “beard to tail,” alluding to the fact that the animals were usually cooked whole, that is, from end to end.
is a word of Caribbean origin that originally meant “a frame for sleeping on.”
is closely related to the word “barbarian.” Both words derive from an ancient source that meant “strange”: barbarians were considered strange, and so was their customary manner of cooking meat on a long skewer instead of in a pot.

PANTRY...

arose as the name of a room where pans were stored.
arose as the name of a room where bread was stored.
arose as the name of a room where women hung their undergarments to dry.

BORBORYGMUS…

is a word Shakespeare invented to refer to a product we now call chewing gum.
refers to the grumbling noises emitted by a hungry stomach.
is the name of an ancient Macedonian king who insisted that table forks have four tines instead of three.

BUTTERY...

was originally the name of a place to keep butter.
was originally the name of a place to keep wine.
was originally the name of a two-seated outhouse.

CANAPÉ...

is a small cracker originally spread with a savoury paste made from a “can of peas.”
is a small cracker originally served to wealthy beach-goers who lounged under canopies.
is a small cracker whose name derives from a Greek word meaning “mosquito.”

BLOBSTERDIS...

is a seafood entree popular in Scotland: its name arose as a shortened form of “big lobster dish.”
is a medieval food whose name is obsolete, whose origin is unknown, and whose recipe is lost.
is a term used by modern chefs to refer to any “blob” of food stuck to the dish in which it has been prepared.

COCONUT...

gets its name because we get coco from it.
gets its name because “coco,” in Portuguese, means “goblin.”
gets its name because it contains minute amounts of cocaine.

PINGLE...

means to play absent-mindedly with your food rather than actually eat it.
is a French bread made with minced cod-bones. The name derives from “pain Gaul,” that is, “bread of the Gauls.”
refers to the effect of coffee (and other diuretics) on the human kidney. When you find yourself heading to the washroom every fifteen minutes, you are pingling.

SALT...

is related to the word “salary.”
is related to the word “celery.”
is related to the word “somersault.”

TURDUCKEN…

is a dish that has achieved moderate popularity despite the first syllable of its name.
is a dish made by stuffing pieces of chicken into a duck, which is then stuffed into a turkey.
is a dish that was introduced to the American public when a football commentator began to devour it during the half-time of a televised football game.

APRICOT...

derives from the Latin word “praecoquum,” meaning “pre-cooked.”
derives from the French phrase “apré chaud” because the fruit was considered a desert item eaten only “after the hot” dishes had been removed from the table.
derives from Arabic: the phrase “al proqak” is Arabic for “the savoury one.”

BAGUETTE...

derives from the woman who invented this long bread in the seventeenth century, Madam Sylvie Baguette; this surname, in turn, comes from the town of Baguette in northeastern France.
arose in the nineteenth century when English tourists balked at the French custom of carrying bread home in their bare hands. Instead, they insisted that the clerk “bag it,” which French bakers adopted as a name and respelt as “baguette.”
derives from same Latin source as “bacteria.”

FUNISTRADA...

is an Italian dish, similar to lasagne, made by placing different layers of pasta on top of one another.
is a word made up by the U.S. military to check whether soldiers who were filling out tedious food surveys were actually paying attention.
is a word that recently arose in New York cafes to playfully “catch” unsuspecting tourists: any customer who orders the “funistrada” will not be served until he or she has received a kiss from someone on the premises.

LASAGNE...

derives from a Latin word meaning “chamber-pot.”
derives from “sagino,” meaning “sage,” the seasoning originally used in lasagne.
derives from the same source as “lozenge” because that pasta was once thought to cure sore throats.

GUACAMOLE...

derives from the Nahautl language, spoken by Aztecs, and literally means “testicle sauce.”
derives from Portuguese, and means “greenish paste.”
derives from Navajo and literally means “You will not like it,” the answer given by a Native American to a French explorer who tried to ask the name of the sauce by pointing toward it. The French explorer assumed that “Gua cam ol e!” was the actual name of the food.

PUDDING PRICK...

arose in the sixteenth century when brewers put saltpeter into their beer to increase its effervescence; the medical name for the condition caused by drinking this insalubrious concoction was “pudding prick.”
arose in the fifteenth century as a name for a wooden skewer that chefs stick into bags of boiling pudding to test for doneness.
is an Australian slang name for a person who rudely helps himself to the last bit of dessert, leaving none for anyone else.

SKINKER…

is leftover meat used to bait a fish hook, as in “hook, line, and skinker.”
is an obsolete name for a bartender.
is a term used by New Orleans chefs to describe an unpleasant kitchen smell, such as the aroma of stewed possum.

DEIPNOSOPHIST…

is a “food coach” whom dieters call for support when they are tempted to snack.
is a person who eats nothing but fish in order to increase his brain power.
is an individual who excels at making dinner-table conversation.

PUTTANESCA…

is a pasta sauce whose name means “in the style of a whore.”
is a Mexican dish traditionally served to a golfer who has just made a hole-in-one.
is an Italian cheese made from the milk of poodles.