Interesting Origins of Food-Related Words Quiz

Answer: The name of a Portuguese bogey-man

In sixteenth century Portugal, it was common for parents to threaten their children with tales of the "Coco," who would come for them if they didn't behave. Although no one knew what it looked like, any Portuguese child could describe its face and head perfectly; the term "coco" derives from a Latin word meaning "skull." When Portuguese traders first made it as far as the Pacific islands, they saw their first palm trees. The men observed the large brown fruit in the palms, each nut with three black marks, and remarked upon their resemblance to the imagined head of that old childhood horror, the "Coco." The fruit was later introduced to Europe as the coconut.

Samoan has two words for head, the formal "ao" and informal "ulu." In Tagalog, rock is "bato," (with an acute accent on the "a"). Finally, Thai cattle are known simply as Thai cattle.
(Thanks to www.samoalive.com and www.tagalog-dictionary.com)

Answer: A plant with showy pink flowers, native to the British Isles

The mallow is a hardy plant, able to live in salt marshes. It was considered a weed until medieval herbalists concocted a medicine from the roots of the plant, and mallow syrup proved to be effective in suppressing coughs. Later, gum arabic was added to the syrup to make a confection, and it became so popular that a substitute was mass-produced using gelatin and sugar.

The name stuck, but the real mallow is long gone today!

Answer: Count Plessis-Praslin

One of the duties of an aristocrat's chef during the 1600s would have been to produce innovative dishes, and so bring glory to his employer. Count Plessis-Praslin had a chef who made a candy of almonds coated in sugar, and the treat made its way to New Orleans with the French. The abundance of pecans in the area encouraged confectioners to change to a new nut, and local pronunciation changed the spelling to today's "praline."
I made up all the other names, bien sur!

Answer: A previous pope's country estate, outside of Rome

The word comes from "Cantalupo," the name of a papal estate near Tivoli, Italy, and not far from Rome. The seeds were brought to the estate from Armenia, and the fruit cultivated during the 1700s. Pope Innocent XII, who was Pope from 1721 to 1724, often imbibed port wine from a "cantalupo" half as an aperitif.

The peach-fleshed fruit that we know today as "cantaloupe" is a kind of muskmelon, brought over to the Americas from Europe by Christopher Columbus, on his second voyage across the Atlantic in 1494.

Answer: Greek

In Ancient Greece, cows and oxen were known as "bous." The milk from the "bous" didn't remain as smooth as goats' milk when agitated; bits of hardened fat rose in the milk, and the substance became known as "boutyron," after the animal it came from. Roman soldiers under Julius Caesar adopted the term when they conquered the Greeks, and brought it north when they invaded Britain. Once there, "boutyron" replaced the native word ("smeoru," in Old English) and became "butter." Although the early English did not keep many cows, they made butter from ewes' milk.

When salt was added, butter became an important foodstuff on ships at sea, and by the 1300s, butter was a common item, found in most households.

Answer: Portuguese

In the days when Rome was still a small village, a Greek gardener grafted wild quinces with apple trees. The resulting fruit of the hybrid tree was so sweet it became known as the "melimelon," which translates as "honey apple." After making the trip through Latin, the name of the fruit emerged in Portuguese as the word for quince, "marmelo." The confectioners of Lisbon were soon boiling the quince with sugar to make "marmelada." The English, ever intrepid travelers, enjoyed the "marmelada" and brought it to England; King Henry VIII himself enjoyed a box of the confection.

In England, the word became "marmalade," and now denotes a preserve usually made with citrus pulp and rinds.

Answer: Cheese

The Romans ate "caseus," so named because it was made by hanging the milk in a thin bag or case. The soldiers took their "caseus" to Britain, and the word had several forms ("ciese," "cy'se," "ce'se")before settling on modern English's "cheese." Cheese became one of the first foods sold by retail methods, after cheese-makers learned how to mold the cheese into balls or cakes. This caused a rind to form, which in turn allowed the cheese to be shipped long distances.

"Cream" comes to English as an Old French blending of 2 Latin terms, "chrisma" meaning ointment, and "cranmum," the word for cream; "cresme," "craime" and "creme" in Old French led to the Old English "creyme." "Whey" and "milk" both have their origins in Proto-Germanic, as "hwaja" and "melkanan," respectively.

Answer: A Cuban beach and nearby iron mine

Daiquiri, with an acute accent on the final "i," is the name of a beach outside of Santiago, Cuba. The nearby iron mine shares the same name, and legend has it that an engineer from the mine first made the fruity concoction at a local cantina. The drink was ostensibly given the name "daiquiri" in honor of the mine.

Disclaimer: There are a couple of other stories, but this is the one I hold to be correct.
(Thanks to www.sciencedaily.com)

Answer: Sho-yu

Traders were looking for many things in the Far East - trade routes, precious metals - but few were looking for the wonderful new foods and seasonings they found. Among them was a liquid, made from salted local beans and oil, that Chinese cooks called "sho-yu." After traders of various nationalities mangled the Chinese version, "soy" emerged as the popular term for the salty sauce. It was later applied to the bean from which it was made, as well.
The other words are made up.

Answer: False

While "Lutece" is indeed French for "Lutetia," lettuce is so called from the Latin "lactuca," or "milk-giving plant." Many other vegetables were named for particular qualities they possessed, such as broccoli, which comes from "bronco," Italian for "little spike."

Answer: True

It was from the Romans that the French received the term "seison," or "sowing time." The term eventually came to denote any unspecified length of time. Meanwhile, people had learned that certain foods could benefit from a bit of aging, and in French the process became the verb "saisonner." Brought over to England by William the Conquerer in 1066, "saisonner" became "season." Since seasoning food was meant to improve its flavor, the term was soon applied to anything that made food taste better, such as salt, pepper, herbs, sugar or spices. Any type of spice or condiment was known as "seasoning" by the 14th century.

Answer: True

Both terms began as the Latin "florem," the nominative of "flos," or "flower." In France the word became variously "flur, " "flour" and "flor," and passed into England as "flur," the blossom of a plant. During the Elizabethan Period, the term "flower" came to indicate "the best." Millers of the era were still using a crude process to grind and sift the meal, and only the finest meal was able to pass through a cloth sieve.

This top-quality wheat was reserved for the gentry and royalty, and was known as the "flower of wheat." English was flexible in its spellings early on, and in this context the term was often spelled "flour." It wasn't until the 1830s that the two words were officially differentiated.

Answer: Okra

For example, in the language of the Bantu-speaking Mbundu tribe of northern Angola, okra is known as "ngombo." During the slave trade of the 17th and 18th centuries, hundreds of thousands of Africans arrived in the United States, and many were Bantu. Some brought over seeds of their "ngombo" plant, and it was cultivated as the shorter "gumbo." However, the dominant white society at the time frowned upon the use of "Negro words," and the plant and its fruit became known as "okra." Despite this, the name of the thick stew made from okra re-emerged as "gumbo," as has persisted ever since.

The word "onion" comes from the Latin "unionem," a kind of onion, and "celery" from the Greek "selinon," or "parsley." The Old English words "gar" (spear) and "leac" (leek) give us the modern "garlic."

Answer: Testicle

The Aztecs had named the fruit after the body part they felt it resembled. The Spanish originally called the fruit "aguacate," a form that is closer to the original, until it mutated into "avocado," an older form of the modern word "abogado," meaning lawyer. Today, the word "aguacate" is once again in use to denote the fruit. The Nahuatl word for turtle is "ayotl," rock is "tetl," and moon is "meztli."
(Thanks to www.acoyauh.com)

Answer: Apricot

Apricot comes from the Arabic "al-birquq," or "the early ripener," and had nothing to do specifically with apples. Pomegranate originates with the Medieval Latin "pomum granatum," meaning "apple having grains." The pineapple was so-called because of its resemblance to the cone-shaped fruit of the pine tree, known to Europeans as a "pine-apple." Finally, peach trees were imported from Persia by the Greeks, who passed their "Persikon malon," or "Persian Apple," to the Romans, where it became known as "Persicum malum." Late Latin shortened the name to "pessica," and Old French made it "pesche," "peske," and finally "peche."

Many thanks to Webb Garrison and his book "445 Fascinating Word Origins" (Barnes and Noble Books, NY 2000) for providing additional information on these delightful tidbits. "The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology" (Robert K. Barnhoff, Ed. Harper Collins, NY 1995) provided invaluable assistance with additional clarification.