The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu (38 page)

 
This word is likely a borrowing of the Portuguese noun
tempero
:
Irwin (2011), 34–35, and also the
OED
entry for
tempura
.

 
Manuel Brudo, a Portuguese crypto-Jewish doctor
: On Manuel Brudo, the Portuguese crypto-Jew who had lived in England, see Roth (1960). The origin of the pescado frito variant seems to have been a fish dish called
mu’affar
in Muslim Spain,
which appears in the thirteenth century in an Arabic cookbook written in Andalusia
. Charles Perry (2004)
tells us that the name
mu’affar
originally meant “dusted fish.” Further details on the relationship to Jewish food are in Marks (2010), “Peshkado Frito,” 454–56.

 
her recipe for battered and fried fish
: Glasse (1774), 378.

 
The Jews Way of preserving Salmon
: Image courtesy Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Library.

 
“Confined as the limits of Field Lane”
:
Charles Dickens,
Oliver Twist
, Chapter 26, “In which a mysterious character appears upon the scene,” paragraph 2.

 
“impregnated with the scents of fried fish”
: Endelman (2002), 152.

 
1846
A Jewish Manual
:
Montefiore (1846).

 
“Jewish” fried fish, by contrast
: In her recipe for “escobeche,” this same cold, fried, battered fish is simply soaked in vinegar with onions and spices.

 
“This is another excellent way of frying fish”
: Soyer (1855), 28.

 
Ashkenazi Jewish proprietor Joseph Malin
: Shaftesley (1975), 393; Roden (1996), 113;
Marks (2010), “Peshkado Frito,” 454–56.

Four: Ketchup, Cocktails, and Pirates

 
the large German contribution to American cuisine
: For more on the influence of German food on American, see Ziegelman (2010).

 
Fujianese immigration to the United States has increased
: See, for example, Keefe (2009).

 
traces of their languages in the old names of many rivers
: Norman and Mei (1976), Bauer Matthews (2006).

 
layering local fish in jars with cooked rice and salt
: The hypothesis that these rice-based fermented fish products were first developed in rice paddies along the Mekong was formulated in a number of papers by Naomichi Ishige, including some with his colleague Kenneth Ruddle. See Ruddle and Ishige (2010) and Ishige (1986).

 
“a Parma ham,” with a “distinct sourness”
: Hilton (1993).

 
When the Han emperor Wu chased
: This legend about the origins of fish paste come from the “Important Arts for the People’s Welfare” (
Qimin Yaoshu
), written in 544
ce
. The English translation, not to mention an enormous amount of further information, is from Huang (2000), 382–83. This 741-page book is the definitive work on Chinese food science and food history, and is a masterpiece drawing from Huang Hsing-tsung’s lifetime of work on food biochemistry. Huang was Joseph Needham’s secretary in Chongqing in the 1940s. For more stories about H. T. Huang and Needham, see Winchester (2008).

 
Fujian Red Rice Wine Chicken
: Adapted from Carolyn Phillip's terrific blog
Madame Huang’s Kitchen
.

 
Babylonians had a fish sauce called
siqqu
:
Curtis (1991); Bottero (2004), 61.

 
Anchovies from the gulf were mixed with salt
: A very comprehensive survey of fermented fish products is Ruddle and Ishige (2005).

 
Fujianese traders and seamen saw some of the same factories
: The hypothesis that fish sauce was a later innovation in Southeast Asia was proposed by Ishige; see Ishige (1993), 30. Huang (2000, 392, 297) gives further linguistic evidence about fish sauce’s migration up the South China coast, pointing out that the Chinese name for fish sauce,
yulu
(fish dew), is an innovation and not related to the names of any of the traditional Chinese fermented fish products.

 
Hokkien, Cantonese, and Mandarin are as linguistically different
: Hokkien is a subdialect of Southern Min, a Chinese dialect of 46 million speakers spoken in Fujian and Guangdong provinces, Taiwan, and throughout Southeast Asia. Southern Min variants and subdialects are called Hokkien, Taiwanese, Teochiu, and Amoy, among other names. I use the traditional word “dialect” to describe the regional spoken varieties of Chinese although, as mentioned, they are actually as different from each other as languages.

 
A Chinese oceangoing junk
: From Needham (1971), 405. Image courtesy of Cambridge University Press.

 
missionary dictionaries from the nineteenth century
: Penny Silva of the
Oxford English Dictionary
tells me that it was James Murray, the founder of the dictionary, who first figured out this etymology when he wrote the entry for this word in the Scriptorium in his back garden in 1889. Murray relied on an old dictionary, the 1873
Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken
Language of Amoy
, a Hokkien to English dictionary compiled by missionaries in 1873, which listed ke-tchup (written
) as the “brine of pickled fish.” A modern Chinese dictionary, the 1992
Putonghua Minnanhua Fangyan Cidian
(Mandarin-Southern Min Dictionary), says this word (written
) has become archaic, and the Chinese character is often now used to describe completely unrelated fish. For more on Murray, I recommend Winchester (1998; 2003).

 
Chinese sauce-making factories
: Anita van Velzen’s ethnographic research shows that until the 1950s, all these kinds of kecap were made only by ethnic Chinese families; Velzen (1990; 1992).

 
Edmund Scott, an English trader on Java
: Scott’s memoirs make somewhat difficult reading, for the fierce xenophobia and ubiquitous violence (including torture). But also on account of his evil spelling. Scott (1606).
An exact discourse of the subtilties, fashishions [
sic
], pollicies, religion, and ceremonies of the East Indians as well Chyneses as Iauans, there abyding and dweling.
LONDON, Printed by W.W. for Walter Burre. 1606.

 
“the original monarch of mixed drinks”
: Wondrich (2010).

 
“common drink”
: By 1704 Charles Lockyer called punch the “common drink” of all Europeans in Asia.

 
The cover of Charles Lockyer’s
: Image courtesy Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries.

 
“
Soy comes in tubs from Jappan
”
:
Lockyer (1711).

 
Lockyer would buy tubs of ketchup
: Lockyer advised anyone who wanted to make money on soy or ketchup to bring on the outbound trip to Asia as many reusable bottles as he could save. Nice to think of bottle recycling in the time of Queen Anne.

 
imitating the taste of the expensive imported original
: Ketchup consumers were aware of the Asian origins of ketchup; the 1785 sixth edition of Johnson’s Dictionary calls catsup “A kind of Indian pickle, imitated by pickled mushrooms,” and Hannah Glasse’s 1774
The Art of Cookery
, in a recipe for mushroom ketchup on page 309, promises that the result “will taste like foreign catchup.” Worcestershire sauce, a vinegar and anchovy sauce flavored with molasses, garlic, and tamarind, was developed in the 1830s by chemists Lea and Perrin from a recipe they advertised was brought back from Bengal.

 
To Make KATCH-UP that will keep good Twenty Years
: Eales (1742).

 
the household book
: Hickman (1977).

 
Tomata Catsup
: Recipe 443 from Kitchner (1817).

 
adding even more sugar and also lots of vinegar
: Smith (1996); Wilson (2008), 204–10.

 
Heinz originally chose the spelling “ketchup”
: See Harris (2013). You can see for yourself the recent rise in popularity of the spelling “ketchup” by using the Google Ngram viewer, which allows you to count the frequency of both words in British versus American sources over time.

 
bans were repeatedly rescinded
: See, for example, Frank (1998), Pomerantz (2000), Allen et al. (2011).