I always wondered what creative writers did for a living if they didn't make it writing kids' books... and walking down the valentine's day aisle at the market yesterday, I found my answer- it looks like they work for chocolate companies, writing the descriptions for decadent treats like Lindt Excellence Intense Orange! Take a look at this description, and let's pull out a general list of words used: 

• gourmet
• high quality
• finest textures
• perfection
• ultimate union of force and finesse
• intense and elegant
• lingering taste
• rich color
• delicate fruity aroma
• duo of harmonious contrasts
• silky
• delicate crunch

Just as Lehrer points out in the wine wine descriptions, I noticed a distinctly gender-charged tone to these chocolate words. "Delicate," "elegant," and "silky," jumped out to me immediately as very feminine, but there is also a repetition of the idea of unions and duos with other traits. These two-part descriptors focus on what seems to be a masculine word with a feminine one- for example the "union of force and finesse" suggests an ideal balance of strong masculinity and subtle femininity. I found that formula an interesting reflection of the association of chocolate with sex and romance. Words like "silky," "lingering," and "intense" perpetuate that trend. Aside from gender, this description ascribed few explicitly human traits to the chocolate, unlike Lehrer's wine descriptions.

I'm going to make a new category of words, ones that fall under the intention to convey decadence. These are words that, to me, are intended to make the customer feel like this chocolate bar is an expensive and high-class item.

• gourmet
• high quality
• finest textures
• elegant
• rich
• delicate

This decadent diction is highly tied to marketing strategy, and I think an objective taster would be less likely to use it. It does, however, say something about the eating experience that Lindt is trying to capture in this product- an experience of indulgence.

Now let's look at the categories for descriptors that we used in class: Appearance, Aroma, Taste, Mouthfeel, and Finish.

Appearance:

• rich brown

Aroma:

• delicate
• fruity

Taste:

• intense
• elegant
• orange
• harmonious
• Force and Finesse

Mouthfeel:

• silky
• finest texture
• delicate crunch
• Force and Finesse

Finsh

• Lingering
• Force
• Finesse

Before this class, I had never really noticed that these descriptions were focused on anything other than the taste, but now I can see that they are definitely talking about food as a whole experience. They even emphasize that the consumer should "experience Lindt with all five senses."

I was sitting in the dining hall last weekend when the topic of Wilbur desserts came up- why are they always the same, when the rest of the meals vary so much?


The same cookies, raspberry tarts, pecan bars, and lemon bars show up every night, and they're pretty good, but everyone seems to be getting a little bored. However, I never put much thought into it until our Resident Fellow gave us a little insight.

"It's because those are baked, not cooked," he said. "It's union stuff- they are allowed to cook, but not bake, so they have to bring in all the baked stuff from other places."


Everyone was a little confused, and the general consensus was that the distinction was useless splitting of hairs. "Aren't they the same thing?" someone asked, and I remembered our discussion on the first day of class.  I hadn't yet read Lehrer's piece about the culinary triangle, so I couldn't precisely describe the difference technically. "No, baked things are sweet..." another friend tried to answer the question. "Well, except, like, baked potatoes... but they must be allowed to bake those, right?" It kind of became a bothersome mystery, and no one could arrive at a clean justification.

So I did some research, and found two unions that might be involved:

1. The Bakery, Confection, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers Union. Here's a link to their constitutional statement of purpose.

http://bctgm.org/about-us/history-purpose/    

2. UNITE HERE Food Service

http://www.unitehere.org/fs/



As much as I searched, I could find no information about these unions in relation to Stanford Dining Halls, but it certainly got me thinking about how cooking words are defined. Since the US doesn't have a commission like France's to standardize the meanings of words, the terms "cooking" and "baking" have a certain amount of ambiguity. However, the rights of labor unions are legal matters- other campuses like Harvad and Yale have undergone recent UNITE Here protests, and Stanford's bake/cook dispute is evidence of how definitions can effect more than the way we talk.

The BCTWGM union defines their domain as: "workers in bakeries, candy, cereal, sugar, grain mills, tobacco plants, food processing and manufacturing facilities and other related occupations related to these industries." So would Wilbur Dining technically be a "bakery" if they baked cookies instead of importing them? Let's take another look at Lehrer's table of cooking words:

Okay, so based on this table, we will have to refine the definition that Wilbur can "cook but not bake," because, according to Lehrer, baking is a hyponym of cooking. The best solution I can manage is that the Wilbur dining staff is allowed to perform all of the actions of cooking, except baking. But where does that leave roasting, as it partially falls under the baking category? And what about those baked potatoes?

Apple Sage Jelly

I found a 1940s recipe for Apple Sage Jelly, published as a "Recipe for Your Scrapbook," and compared it with a modern Cooks.com recipe. The actual ingredients and methods differed very little, but there is a marked change in the format and kind of language used.
Take a look at the 1940's recipe:

Note that the ingredients are not listed first, but rather throughout the recipe, and the tone of language used is one of narrative. It is as if Ms. Harvey was talking to you herself, just telling you how she makes the jelly.













Now compare it to the Cooks.com version:

APPLE SAGE JELLY

Printed from COOKS.COM

---

2 1/2 c. apple juice
3 1/2 c. sugar
6 tbsp. liquid fruit pectin
1 1/2 tsp. sage

Bring apple juice and sugar to a boil in large pan. Stir until sugar dissolves. Add pectin and boil one minute. remove from heat, skim foam. Stir in sage. Process in sterilized jelly jars, adding sprig of fresh sage to each jar.

This one is much more familiar to us, and uses a more formal, removed tone to impart the directions. If I were preparing the jelly, I would be more likely to use a detailed version like this, but the older one still seems a little more fun!

A Shrinking Inner Circle

Fisher writes about how older recipes used much vaguer language, their authors assuming that cooks would know the "little secrets" of the trade. These idea of elite limited knowledge reminded me of our discussion about "secret menus" at In-n-Out and Jamba Juice; maybe cooks, like modern fast-food patrons, took pleasure in belonging to a skilled club of experts with the same inferred vocabulary. In a way, it also reminds me of the way we interacted with our childhood friends, inventing secret code names that only we would understand, sometimes even trying to create a secret language altogether. Adults do it too, hardly more subtly; professionals in any field sometimes use jargon or advanced vocabulary in order to assert their belonging in a particular group.  There is something about language that encourages a feeling of inclusion, and it certainly extends into the vocabulary of recipes.

However, the demographic of the people reading recipes seems to have been changing dramatically since the days of Sir Kenelm Digby's Herring Pie. I think the "club" of professional cooks reading recipes has shrunk, and has often been replaced by non-experts, like working moms making casserole for Christmas breakfast and bachelors trying to make a roast chicken. For many people, cooking is not their primary occupation, but rather an additional skill they use from day to day. So, many of us who buy cook books and look up recipes online are not actually members of that inner circle, and we lack the ability to interpret vague or esoteric instructions. Instead, we require more the detailed, specific vocabulary of measurement and order.

Tasty Propaganda: War, French Toast, and American Cheese

After reading and discussing the New York Times article about the renaming of French fries and toast, I decided to look up whether those dishes were even from France to begin with. While neither of them were indeed French, the name of French toast was tied to politics long before Congress's announcement in 2002. Prior to World War I, "French toast" as we know it today may have actually been called "German toast" in the US. As anti-German sentiments built, it is said that Americans adopted the name of their ally France for the breakfast dish, thus attaching patriotic attitudes to the foods they ate and talked about.

The historical and current meanings of American cheese take a similarly political connotation, although they remains truer to geographical origins. When America was first establishing itself independently (1790ish), its inhabitants made and exported some cheese, usually a mix of Colby and cheddar cheeses. It was known as American cheese in Europe because, well, it came from here. In America too, the term was readily adopted, in order to distinguish the local cheese from European cheese, patriotically encouraging Americans to support their nation in the marketplace. Many years later, the use of the term was again encouraged, this time during World War II. In 1942, a ban was set against buying any cheese that was not "American." This title was used as support for the war effort from the home front, bolstering local morale and commerce. However, at the time, "American cheese" was still actual cheese; by 1950, the use of that term had changed, to mean the packaged, orange processed food cheese we are more familiar with today. Now, the term "American cheese" does not popularly have to relate to a product that was actually made in America, although that is the legal definition. Instead, all such processed (fake) cheese is termed as American, especially abroad,  perhaps because the processed nature of it seems characteristic of American food culture.

Why I'm Here

For as long as I can remember, I've been a huge foodie, and almost as much of a word nerd. I love to experiment with cooking and (especially) eating new foods, and I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about what I eat, or want to eat anyway. My mom is a pretty amazing cook, and I've been her little sous-chef since I was a pudgy elementary schooler, helping her make dishes from all different countries. We never made very much Asian food though, so when my high school friends introduced me to sushi and pho and curry.... oh boy! It sparked a whole new curiosity to explore the culinary world.

As far as languages, I can only speak one fluently, but I'm really passionate about mastering more, especially Portuguese and Japanese. Before I came to Stanford, I had intended to major in Linguistics or Communication to become a speech pathologist, because I'm extremely interested in the roles that sounds and  words play in human life. This class seems like a perfect intersection of my two passions, and I'm excited to see where it takes us.