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The Language of Food: "Mouth-watering and sensuous, a real feast for the imagination" BRIDGET COLLINS

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Bread and salt – where the lord and lady come from (loaf-keeper/kneader, Anglo-Saxon); same root for flour/flower; french toast; yep, the Swedish word for a flour bun comes through German and ultimately from semolina, which comes from Akkadian ‘samidu’. Salt: salad, sauce, slaw, salsa, salami. Coleslaw origins. England 1835. Eliza Acton is a poet who dreams of seeing her words in print. But when she takes her new manuscript to a publisher, she’s told that ‘poetry is not the business of a lady’. Instead, they want her to write a cookery book. That’s what readers really want from women. England is awash with exciting new ingredients, from spices to exotic fruits. But no one knows how to use them

Eliza had never cooked before but was now forced to. England has many exciting and new ingredients to use, and, in her experimentation, she was not afraid to try cooking foreign dishes with their spices and ingredients. I teach English. I listen to books like this as a kind of professional development that you can do on a bicycle, city bus, etc., because you never know what kind of language-related trivia may come in useful in the classroom. Told in alternate voices, this novel brings endearing friendship, the joy of cookery and creativity with food; and with limited options for spinsters, it also means certain independence.Ice creams, marmalade, sherbet, sorbet, and lemonade – ice cream’s original flavor (orange blossom); marmalade first flavor (quince); ways of freezing the ice better… A really charming historical fiction novel that's full of gorgeous recipies and descriptions of food. At its heart is the uplifting story of the friendship between Eliza and Ann Kirby, her kitchen help, which crosses the class divide.' Good Housekeeping

The idea behind this story is pretty good, but with the modern twists and the controversial characteristic features of the protagonists, there were too many things that irked me. And it’s the first book about food that did not urge me to eat or to try some new recipes. True, there were some recipes that I wanted to see how they are written down nowadays (with pictures and all), and some recipes reminded me of my first mouthful of that particular food, but I did not want to eat it again or make it.

Table of Contents

Eliza leaves the offices appalled. But when her father is forced to flee the country for bankruptcy, she has no choice but to consider the proposal. Never having cooked before, she is determined to learn and to discover, if she can, the poetry in recipe writing. To assist her, she hires seventeen-year-old Ann Kirby, the impoverished daughter of a war-crippled father and a mother with dementia. Toasting with drinks and why to health – putting toast in wine or ale (in Middle Ages); soap first came with toast in it; origins of wine (and the word too); on libations (thus hip-hops “pour one out” to the deceased) and cider (from the name for Akkadian honeyed beer). I spent 10-20 minutes trying to explain how cool it was to my manager and he nodded and said "Good for you" and kept telling me about New York Times news alerts so I guess it is probably not for everyone but as I said, A book about words and food! What's better than this!

The Language of Food by Annabel Abbs is definitely a book to savour, but be prepared to salivate as you visualise and imagine the dishes being tested, prepared and devoured. Abbs provides phrases to roll around your tongue and plenty of description so you can immerse yourself in the sensual writing and imagine yourself in the character's shoes. I particularly related to Ann Kirby, and enjoyed this section describing the first three days of her employment by Miss Eliza Acton: There isn't a lot here that really couldn't have been condensed into a magazine long-read. And it could have been edited much better. As noted elsewhere, "San Francisco" is misspelled (with another "s" vs. a "c" in the middle). His wife Janet is mentioned but it's not clear who she is at the first mention and seems like a rando name dropped into the text. The writing seems disjointed and while some of the information is really interesting (the origins of ketchup) the writing really isn't very good. It almost feels like more than one hand wrote this and everything was combined together in a sloppy effort to make a coherent narrative. Why should the culinary arts not include poetry? Why should a recipe book not be a thing of beauty?”A 2015 James Beard Award Finalist: "Eye-opening, insightful, and huge fun to read." —Bee Wilson, author of Consider the Fork For example (if I remember correctly), study of a large data set shows that a one-letter increase in median word length in the description of menu items correlates with a 19 cent increase in price. On the other hand, the average number of words used on menu descriptions, when compared with price, shows a normal-curve (i.e., inverted “U” shape) distribution, that is, both the cheapest and most expensive restaurant use very few words compared to the mid-range restaurants (wordy culprits are identified as TGI Fridays and Olive Garden, among others). there's basically two different avenues explored here. one is tracing food through time and place and learning how it evolved into the food we know today, both in name and ingredients. the second focus is the one that really got my brain juices a-stirring, and it's more about food and language with an advertising slant. one of the chapters focuses on the language used in menus throughout time and a mini-study on the relationship between the language used and the average price of the restaurant's meals. so many subtle manipulations at play - the length and number of the words used, the use of french terms, the inclusion of the protein's birthplace, the occurrence of "filler words," the level of complicity the diner has in their own meal (i.e. - "your way" or "your choice.") it's fascinating stuff. there are some unexpected, appreciated connections. i mean, how often do you think tupac turns up in linguistic tomes? So, yes, what he's saying is true, but as far as I can tell, the explanation has been simplified down to the point where it's hanging off an assertion that F0 and F2 are the same, which is not actually true. They are correlated, but they are not measuring the same thing at all. You know that meme that's like "I don't understand how, but you used the wrong formula and got the right answer?" That's what reading this chapter felt like.

I enjoyed reading about Eliza and how she got to to be a cook in the first place. She has to suffer many humiliations along the way and her father is bankrupt putting more pressure on the family. Eliza want to be a poet but is instead asked to write a cookery book for women. She is offended and doesn’t really know much about cookery but she gets an assistant in Ann who is 17 and caring for her parents She does want to be a cook and together the two of them cook up something (sorry not sorry) quite remarkable. This was the part of the story that I particularly enjoyed -seeing them try and fail, try something else, tinker with an idea and then come to a solution. It’s quite brilliant when you realise what they were up against and the time in history we are talking about.All in all, I really liked what the author was able to come with as it was a mix of facts and she used her creativity to fill in some of the blanks. I recommend this book if you like reading about food and are looking for something different in the historical fiction genre. I also like the chapter how the Chinese dessert but the whole book was good. Maybe the author did wander here and there to convey a message but it was a good read. Ann enjoys working under the guidance of Eliza, thriving in the kitchen, and even giving suggestions for mixing new ingredients when asked. Told from two perspectives, that of Eliza and a housemaid by the name Ann Kirby, the reader is soon swept into a world where the kitchen is the centre of the household. I found Miss Eliza's English Kitchen to be an interesting book. The book is loosely based on the life of Eliza Acton, a woman I had never heard of until reading this book.

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