Racial Slurs in the Culinary Lexicon?

In writing about food, I sometimes find myself in a quandary.

On the one hand, I want to focus on just the food. On the other hand, I can't just turn a blind eye to linguistic (political, environmental, etc.) issues that have cropped up from time to time in the course of writing about food.

Case in point, Mr. @GarySoup recently tweeted: "Amazed that foodies still don't know (or don't want to know) that "kaffir" is a racial slur."

I recalled mulling over that issue a few years back.

It has been suggested that the kaffir in kaffir lime comes from the term كافر (kāfir), along with its plural form كفّار (kuffār) which features the reduplication of the second radical of the tri-literal root (hence the doubling of the f in kaffir, perhaps). Wiki has some information on this word.

Looking at a close relative of Arabic, while the cognate tri-literal root in Hebrew, כפר, primarily points to the idea of "to cover (one's sin)" or the propitiation of sin, it's been suggested that, at some point, the related form כופר has also come to be used to refer to those who have left the religion (source).



More lexical investigation is needed to establish firmly that the bumpy citrus fruit, heavily used in Thai cuisine, indeed comes from the derogatory kāfir. For now, let's assume that this is the case.

What am I supposed to do every time I write about dishes that contain that fruit? I certainly can't avoid it, especially when I write about Thai food. Do I always include a footnote? An apology? Do I, as has been suggested, refer to the fruit with its Thai name, makrut, and let folks figure out on their own what the heck I am talking about?

Do we go on calling the fruit "kaffir lime" as long as we use the term innocently?

Kaffir is far from being the only potentially racial slur in the culinary lexicon, though. Dig deeply enough and I'm sure you'll find a few -- if not a lot -- more. If we collectively change the way we refer to kaffir lime -- and I'm not saying we shouldn't -- we perhaps should also consider changing the names of many other things. Those who are offended by and campaigning against the use of the word "kaffir" in the context of "kaffir lime," -- and there's nothing wrong with that -- could be surprised that they, too, have been innocently using racial slurs to refer to other things.

As I'm composing this post, I have in the draft folder of my other blog a post on Thai fried bananas. This much-loved street food is commonly called in Thai, "kluai khaek" (กล้วยแขก). "Khaek"(แขก) is an old-fashioned catch-all Thai word for South Asian or Middle Eastern people. Sometimes, it even applies to fellow Southeast Asians of the Islamic faith. The term, "khaek dam" (แขกดำ), literally "black khaek," makes it more specific that the speaker is referring to certain sub-groups with darker skin color. Similarly, "khaek khao" (แขกขาว), literally "white khaek," refers to some sub-groups with fairer skin color. However you slice and dice it, we're tiptoeing in a very sensitive territory.

Personally, I have never sensed that it's being used by anyone I know as a racial slur, though. But that doesn't necessarily mean there will be people who find it derogatory or offensive.

Also, as any linguist/semanticist will tell you, meanings of words change over time. What wasn't derogatory (or used in an intentionally derogatory way) decades ago can become so in the current usage (based on this, it's not unfathomable that some words that are used derogatorily in the present were once completely benign (or even had positive meanings!).

So I am in a dilemma. Should I bring up the Thai name at all? Or do I pretend it doesn't exist?

The answer to my dilemma could be the use of the alternate term for these banana fritters, kluai tod (literally: fried bananas) which is more generic and politically correct. But it's not a common way to refer to this particular dish in Thailand and is quite inadequate as it fails to specify which of the various types of fried bananas is being referred to. Yet, even though I could manage to dodge the banana issue, more similar issues will soon crop up. For example, one of these days, I'm going to have to mention the Thai version of the Indonesian salad, gado-gado, salat khaek (literally: salad khaek-style) or a dish that has the Thai word for green beans, thua khaek (khaek's beans), to cite just a few examples.

And don't get me started on the term farang, used by the Thai to refer to Caucasian foreigners, (which could be derogatory or neutral, depending on whom you ask -- and, oh, this debate could go forever) and how often it is used in the culinary context.

Chewing gum (mak farang) = farang betel
Dill (phak chi farang) = farang coriander
Potato (man farang) = farang yam
Guava (farang) = just ... farang.
Etc.

Back to the "kaffir" issue: if we stop using "kaffir lime," must we also stop using other derogatory (or potentially derogatory) words currently in use? Maybe we should. Maybe we must. This, however, will involve analyzing a lot of things, linguistically, religiously, ethnically, historically, socially, politically, etc. It's no small task.

On Foreign Words Used in the American-English Vernacular - Part Two: Confused Parts of Speech

While Part One discusses what I believe to be a futile attempt to apply the pluralization rules of the original languages to borrowed words that have entered the English vernacular, Part Two (uh, yeah, this one) suggests where that vigilant energy could be better spent.

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*As a food writer, I use the word "sauté" a lot in my writing. And every time I look at the word in all its variations (sauté, sautés, sautée, sautées, sautéd, and sautéed), I always feel there's something weird about it. The verb in its original French infinitive form,"sauter," has most likely entered the English vernacular in its passive participle form, i.e. sauté (when used with a masculine singular noun), sautés (when used with a masculine plural noun), sautée (when used with a feminine singular noun), and sautées (when used with a feminine plural noun). Then the forms became "frozen" or "fossilized" and regardless of their functions in English sentences, the French passive participle forms are used. This is the only explanation I can think of.

For those who know French, you already know what I'm getting at. For those who don't, let's just say that "sauté, sautés, sautée, and sautées" are all analogous to the English "fried" as in, "the mushrooms are fried," or "broken" as in, "the glass has been broken." In other words, passive participle.

Just as "fried" is an inflected form of the naked form "to fry" and "broken" is an inflected from of "to break," "sauté, sautés, sautée, and sautées" are inflected forms of the infinitive "sauter." Saying, "I am going to sauté that piece of meat,"therefore, is akin to saying, "I am going to fried that piece of meat."

Throw in the variants sautée with an extra e (which in French indicates its agreement with the feminine gender of the noun with which it is used), and you get deeper into confusion.

This is a different issue from the use of fiancé to refer to an engaged man and fiancée to refer to an engaged woman. In that case, it's just a matter of using an extra e to indicate the feminine gender; the way the words are used in English still retains the French syntax, i.e. fiancer (infinitive) --> fiancé/fiancée (passive participles used as adjectives, then as substantives).

Using sauté as an infinitive in English, i.e. to sauté is a bit bizarre. As I mentioned earlier, it's analogous to saying, "to broken" a glass. Using sauté as a verb in the past tense in English as in, "she sautéd/sautéed the vegetables," is like saying, "she brokened a glass," in light of the French syntax.

So weird. So unfixable. So pointless. Yet it needs to be brought up.

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Amandine vs. Almondine

This one is a personal pet peeve of mine. Amandine is a word that indicates the manner in which something is cooked, i.e. with almonds. Almondine is an illegitimate child of French amandine and English almond and not recognized as a word despite its prevalent use. I'm pretty sure it will be soon, though. You start using a word often enough, it will eventually be included in the lexica someday. Heck, it's even found on the White House menu for the dinner honoring Queen Elizabeth II and her husband back when George W. Bush was president.

Dover Sole Almondine. (sigh) If the sole was made with pecans, would you call it Dover Sole Pecanine? Peanutine? Cashewine? Maybe I'm being ridiculous for thinking this is ridiculous, but I think it's ridiculous.

Paninis or gelatos don't bother me that much. But almondine does. A lot.

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Au Jus

When something is served "au jus," it means that thing is served with its own juice which has been rendered in the process of cooking. "Au" is a preposition used in conjunction with its object "jus;" it's not part of the "jus" proper. When people say, for example, "a French Dip is served au jus," they mean the sandwich is served with the jus or "juice" of the beef (for you to dip your sandwich into). And saying something like, "the sandwich will be served with its au jus," is like saying, "the sandwich will be served with its with juice."

A crude example in English would be "burger with fries."

"Fries" and "with" are not of the same substance; their relationship is purely grammatical. Saying something like, "the au jus comes with the sandwich," is like saying, "the with fries come with the burger."

In short, I'd say a pizzelle maker instead of the more correct pizzella maker, but I won't say, "give me a beef sandwich with its au jus."

Ditto with au gratin.

The Pasta Bible Versus the Wicked Bible

On Saturday, I, along with the rest of the world, heard the news report on an embarrassing typo in an Australian cookbook, Pasta Bible, which contains a recipe for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto that calls for freshly ground black people as supposed to black pepper. I thought it was silly. I didn't pay that much attention to it. To be honest, it wasn't all that funny to me.

Surprisingly, it is still discussed and circulated in my Twitter feeds this fine Monday morning. And though I'm rolling my eyes and letting out a groan over what I consider to be undeserved attention given to a book which would have otherwise been ignored (I never trust any cookbook that is titled anything "bible"), I've started to imagine how people might be rushing to their local bookstores, trying to get their hands on an obscure cookbook containing this silly typo. It is, after all, part of history. The next edition of this book, if it's ever reprinted, will -- for darned sure -- not contain this mistake.

The book which could very well have been destined for dark inventory rooms of some used/overstocked book shops could now be selling at full publisher's price as a collectible item. Nice.

But it also got me thinking.

The Pasta Bible, eh? Hmmm ... Perhaps I'm being cynical or too imaginative. But I'm thinking of the so-called Wicked Bible (aka the Sinner's Bible or the Adulterous Bible) which leaves out the key word "not" from the 7th commandment, "thou shalt not commit adultery," thereby making adultery a divine endorsement as opposed to a prohibition.

According to Wikipedia (cited above), the publishers of the 1631 King James Bible were fined £300 and deprived of their printer's license. The majority of the Wicked Bible's copies were immediately canceled and burned, with only a few surviving copies left. These extant copies have since then become -- quite predictably -- priceless museum exhibits.

Isn't it funny, or interesting, that the cookbook in question, the one that calls for freshly ground black people, is named, "The Pasta Bible"?

On Foreign Words Used in the American-English Vernacular - Part One: Pluralization

This subject has been on my mind for quite some time now, but the complexity of it had kept me from tackling it even in the most informal manner. Until now.

Several weeks ago, one of my Twitter followers retweeted a frustrated-sounding tweet from someone who didn't like the word, "tamale." To paraphrase the tweet (since I didn't bookmark the URL and it will take too long to search): "There's no such thing as 'tamale,' only 'tamal' or 'tamales.'" 'Tamale' is a well-known corruption of the Spanish tamal (singular) and tamales (plural). If I were to guess how 'tamale' came into existence in the American-English vernacular, it would be that someone, somewhere, at some point in history looked at the plural tamales and figured that the singular form of tamales would be derived from removing the final S -- the common plural marker in English -- from the form; hence 'tamale.' Unfortunately, there's no such thing as 'tamale' in the Spanish language and the frustration over such a prevalent use of it is understandable.

As a food blogger, I often find myself in a dilemma. Do I go mainstream and say, "paninis," (panini is a plural form of panino and saying paninis is like saying childrens or mices to the Italians) "gelatos" (the plural of gelato is gelati), etc., along with most people? Or should I stick with the pluralization rules of the languages from which these word come and be that person everybody hates? Did I just buy a pizzelle maker or a pizzella maker? (Pizzelle is the plural form of the singular pizzella and just as you wouldn't say 'waffles maker' or 'pancakes griddle,' you wouldn't say 'pizzelle maker.') Should I refer to the dough with which you make vareniki (plural of varenik) and pierogi (plural of pierog) as vareniki/pierogi dough (analogous to cookies dough) or varenik/pierog dough (analogous to cookie dough)? I should go with the latter, but people would think I'm weird. I hate this.

Examples abound and the post would end up being much too long if I was to list just the ones I have come across.

In explaining my position on Twitter in response to the tamal/tamale/tamales issue, I used the South American sandwich cookies, alfajores, as an example of how complex I thought this whole thing was. In Spanish, alfajores is the plural form of alfajor. So, technically, you should say, "Pass me an alfajor, will you?" as opposed to, "Pass me an alfajores, will you?" But let's face it, the people who say "a tamale" will also say, "an alfajores" (which, now that I think about it, is a much worse offense than tamale. At least with tamale, an effort goes into removing the plural marker, S, from tamales to get to the form tamale.)

The reason I used alfajores as the example was because the word has, for lack of a better way to put it, two-tiered etymology. The word has entered the English vernacular via Spanish. That's one tier. Alfajor is, in fact, an Arabic word الفاخر which had earlier entered the Spanish vernacular. That's the other tier.

What are we going to do with this word now that it has entered the English vernacular? Can we say that since it has come to us via Spanish, the Spanish pluralization rules apply? Do we ignore its Arabic etymology? The word still exists and is in use in Arabic. Who's to say that alfajor is more Spanish than Arabic? And if alfajor is both Arabic and Spanish, which set of grammatical rules applies here? Do we pluralize it the Spanish way or the Arabic way? This has nothing to do with the cookie itself or the tradition according to which it's made, but the name.

Localization, more specifically Anglicization (English is still undeniably the lingua franca of our time), of foreign words is a natural force that cannot be stopped. You can try, but eventually whatever is more popularly used will end up being "correct." Those who are strict about things like this, I've noticed, are those who know the foreign languages from which these words come. Those who know Italian roll their eyes when they hear, "I want a panini." Likewise, those who know Spanish get frustrated at every mention of "a tamale." Those who know Hebrew laugh at people who say, "Oh, that baby is as cute as a cherubim!" (cherubim being the plural form of cherub). Blini, is the plural form of blin and anyone saying, "blinis" would illicit an eye roll from anyone who knows Russian. Most Classicist I know are completely unable to say, "a criteria." It's always one criterion and many criteria (no such things as criterias!), a phenomenon and many phenomena, a formula and many formulae not formulas, a schema and many schemata, etc. But this is because these people know Greek and Latin.

But how many languages are we expected to know? We may be able to keep the Italian pluralization rules because some of us know Italian. But do we all know French too? What about Hebrew? Arabic? Indonesian (which pluralizes a noun by reduplicating it)? We may be able to observe certain rules but unwittingly break the others. Good intention is noble and all, but it's not enough. Anglicization is not something done intentionally, xenophobically, or ignorantly; it's natural and it helps preserve our collective sanity. Anglicization is not inherently evil, and bullheaded insistence on applying the rules of the foreign languages of origin is, at best, futile.

When it comes to grammatical rules, especially the pluralization, we kind of have to let go. Do what you can according to what you know, but at some point, we all need to admit that we 1. don't know the rules of every single language, 2. can't determine every single foreign word's etymology, and 3. don't really have a clue on how to incorporate the grammatical rules of another language into English in any coherent, logical, or consistent manner anyway.

Arabic and some other languages in the Semitic family have 6 different endings number-wise: masculine singular, masculine dual, masculine plural, feminine singular, feminine dual, feminine plural. Assuming we ignore the Spanish etymology of alfajor and go all the way back to Arabic, how do you ask for one cookie, two, or three? Do we even know if it's masculine or feminine?

I'm going to blog about pizzelle in the near future and, to be honest, I don't even know if I should refer to the machine with which I make these pizzelle as a pizzella machine or pizzelle machine. I'm thinking I may make just one so as to avoid the agony of having to say pizzelles.

These things are a pain in the neck.

Supersized Last Supper - Interesting But So What?

I wrote this in 10 minutes when I was very hungry. Excuse the convolution. The web version of The Daily Telegraph reports today of a finding by a group of Cornell University researchers indicating that, based on the sizes of the bread and plates shown in The Last Supper, food portion sizes have "progressively grown by up to two-thirds" in the last millennium. The group has cited the portion sizes shown in da Vinci's famous painting as one piece of evidence leading to the finding. "Using a computer, they compared the size of the food to the size of the heads in the depictions of Jesus Christ and his disciples at their final meal before his death," reports the Telegraph. The study concludes, based on what's shown in the painting, "... the size of the main dish grew 69 per cent, the plate by 66 per cent and the bread by 23 per cent, between the years 1000 and 2000." [Source] Although the study has indeed shown what we all already know that today's portion sizes are bigger than what our forefathers were used to, the main point of the study, from what I have deduced from the article, is that the supersize phenomenon is actually a long and gradual process that has taken place over the past millennium and not something recently introduced by greedy fast food companies as many have suggested; it's just more noticeable these days. I don't have a problem with that conclusion. It's kind of interesting, actually. Not earth-shatteringly enlightening, but interesting nonetheless. What kind of bugs me is how people's attention is wrongly focused on the theme of the paintings (the Last Supper) and the characters found therein (Jesus and his disciples) instead of the real objects of the study, i.e. the perceptions of the painters. I'm not writing this in response to the Cornell group or the Telegraph; I'm writing this in response to all the "Jesus got supersized" tweets. People should not automatically assume that the oldest of the 52 paintings -- the one that portrays the smallest amount of food -- is the most historically accurate (or, worse, more moral) than the newest of the 52 painting that portrays the biggest amount of food. More importantly, nobody should ever think that the smallest amount of food shown in the oldest of the 52 paintings more accurately represents the amount of food divinely prescribed to mankind. These things may be true, but they are not what this particular study intends to show. The Last Supper itself is irrelevant. Jesus and his disciples are irrelevant. What is being studied is how much food the painters of these 52 paintings, painted in the course of a millennium, imagined to be present at the Last Supper and how the amounts changed over time.* This study does not say that the portion sizes of the oldest painting more accurately represents the amount of food served at the Last Supper, and that the degree of accuracy gradually decreases over time with the newest painting being the least accurate. This study is about a group of different (European?) painters and how the amounts of food they imagined being served at the same event vary according to the time in which they (the painters) lived. Who really knows what and how much was served at the famous supper? Painting #20, painted at the mid-point between 1000 CE and 2000 CE may actually portrays more historically accurate amounts. Nobody knows. It's all imagined. The smallest portion sizes are imagined. The largest portion sizes are also imagined. Everything else in between is also imagined. Who is Leonardo da Vinci but an Italian artist who tried to imagine what a group of Palestinian Semites ate at a Passover meal circa 30 CE? At risk of sounding like a broken record, the focus of the study is on 1. the painters, whose works were produced between 1000 and 2000 CE, 2. how their perceptions of portion sizes influence the amounts of food they imagined to be served at that event, and 3. how those perceptions might have been influenced by what their contemporaries considered to be the norm. By the way, am I seeing things or does the bread in da Vinci's The Last Supper look more like dinner rolls than the flat, unleavened bread one would expect at a, uh, you know, Passover meal? *Why the Last Supper? Because the study is about food and portion size and what food-centric historical scene is as consistently portrayed as the Last Supper? If the biblical scene of, say, how Esau traded his birthright for a bowl of lentil stew, were portrayed in a painting as often as the Last Supper, I'm sure those paintings would have been studied to see how the size of the bowl shown in the earliest painting has grown over time.

Calf's Head Recipe

Calf's Head

"Soak it in cold water for an hour, take out the brains, scrape the head, pin it lightly into a floured cloth, and boil it in six quarts of water. Tie the brains up separately in a cloth. Boil the head two hours, then add lights, liver, and brains and boil two hours more. The large bones will now come out of the head.

Put into a quart of the boiling liquor half the liver chopped fine, the brains mashed with a spoon, a pint of cream thickened with half a teacup of flour, salt, sweet marjoram, and a little mace, and boil them all together. Then add the juice of two lemons, or two spoonfuls of vinegar. Skin the tongue, divide the liver and head, pour part of the gravy over them, and put the rest in a butter boat.

Scraped horse-radish and sliced lemons are the garnishings for this dish."*

Bon appétit!


*Christianity in the Kitchen: A Physiological Cookbook, Mann, Mary Tyler Peabody, 1838, Boston: Ticknor & Fields, pp.138-9.

Symbols and Figures of Speech in Cross-Cultural Communications

As I was drafting my post on Lemon Pudding Cake, my thought drifted to the use of "lemon" as a symbol.

Not that there's anything wrong with it, but I find it a bit amusing that, just as many people can't introduce a madeleine recipe without invoking the name of Marcel Proust*, many feel compelled to preface a recipe featuring lemons with one version or another of the expression, "When life hands you lemons, ..."

Like I said, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that to some of us, it makes sense only because we've become accustomed to the American culture wherein "sour" has a negative connotation. I have come to understand what it means when someone describes a relationship as having turned "sour," but that took some learning through observation on my part.

Where I'm from, tartness is just as desirable as sweetness. (What would Tom Yam be without the sour flavor?) In other words, though "sweet" is universally understood to be a positive thing, "sour" is not necessarily understood across the different cultures to be the opposite of it. In the Thai culture, a relationship gone awry is described as having turned "tasteless/bland"(จืด or จืดจาง) or "bitter" (ขม) in case of animosity, but not "sour" (เปรี้ยว).

To understand the expression, "when life hands you lemons," you have to first buy into this "logic":

A. Good is the opposite of bad.
B. Sweet is good.
C. Sweet is the opposite of sour.
D. Therefore, sour is bad.

Some regard C as a priori whereas some regard C as a posteriori. I'm in the second group, and that's where things break down.

So if some of us give you a blank stare when you say, "When life hands you lemons," it's not that we're rude or stupid; we're just not sure what the heck is so wrong with the idea of being given something not only edible but also delicious like lemons.

While many symbols or figures of speech are universal**, I've found that people who have limited exposure to people outside their culture are often oblivious to the fact that a symbol that means one thing to them either doesn't mean anything or points to a completely different thing to others.

In graduate school, I was involved in a class activity where we took turns telling the stories of our lives through figures of speech and symbols. We would pretend each of us was a tree and share our stories from the perspective of a tree using tree-related metaphors. (It was a wacky class, enjoyable only in retrospect.) I once shared with a group of fellow students that when I was growing up, though my mother worked outside the home even on weekends, this seedling was never lonely as she had her grandparents around all the time. "Grandpa was like the sun," I said, "and Grandma was like the rain --"

Laughter erupted, and I paused mid-sentence wondering what was so funny about what I'd just said.

Then I realized that, at that moment, my predominantly Caucasian American audience thought that I was slyly suggesting that while my grandfather was a source of happiness, my grandmother was a source of trouble or nuisance. As the story progressed, they came to understand through the context that they had misunderstood. I simply used "sun" and "rain" as a merism. My grandparents -- the sun and the rain -- form two bookends that held my life, as a seedling, together. Together they provided the totality of the sustenance I needed.

The cause of miscommunication lies in both my assumption that "rain" means to people outside my culture the same thing it does to me and the audience's assumption that "rain" is always used metaphorically to refer to something negative. We both learned something new that day.

Rain is a positive thing -- a very positive thing -- in many cultures. It means abundance, fertility -- both in the agricultural and reproductive sense --, sustenance, divine favor, etc. Rain brings forth life. When dark clouds form and thunders roar, people rejoice. All things that have life get ready to drink deeply.

Is it any wonder that some sort of benevolent rain deity exists in the pantheon of every ancient culture where lives depended so much on agricultural yields?

Only through learning have I come to understand that a "rainy day" in the American culture is associated with nuisance, gloom, and misfortune. My audience laughed upon hearing me use "rain" to symbolize what my grandmother was to me, because they understood my use of merism as humorous juxtaposition of my grandparents' characters.

Uh, nope.

In case you're still not convinced that symbols are not universal, check this out.


This woman, ladies and gentlemen, is the beautiful lady described in the book Song of Solomon (also known as Song of Songs) in the Hebrew scriptures. Ever heard of King Solomon? Yeah, this chick turns him on.

Well, of course, I've never seen her. Geez. I'm just reconstructing this woman based on what purports to be Solomon's description of his bride. This is beauty and its related metaphors in the context of ancient Jewish culture.

How beautiful you are, my darling,
How beautiful you are!
Your eyes are like doves behind your veil;
Your hair is like a flock of goats
That have descended from Mount Gilead.
Your teeth are like a flock of newly shorn ewes
Which have come up from their washing,
All of which bear twins,
And not one among them has lost her young.
Your lips are like a scarlet thread,
And your mouth is lovely
Your temples are like a slice of a pomegranate
Behind your veil.
Your neck is like the tower of David,
Built with rows of stones
On which are hung a thousand shields,
All the round shields of the mighty men.
Your two breasts are like two fawns,
Twins of a gazelle
Which feed among the lilies.

(Song of Solomon 4: 1-5 NAS)

When I say symbols are not universal, that's what I mean.



*Who meditates on Proust when making or eating madeleines?

**For example, the heart is almost universally used to represent the seat of emotions. The "bitter" flavor is connected to unpleasantness or woefulness. Mother-in-law jokes are, to the best of my knowledge, universal. Also -- have you noticed? -- the most vulgar and obscene cusses in most languages often involve someone's mother.