104
One reason is simple appearance, I think - opaque white liquids or saps have long been called "milky", including nut milks, coconut milk, dandelion or milk thistle saps, and several other white substances. Nut milks get called milk because they look like milk to the eye.
Another reason is that nut milks behave like milks in recipes - they are emulsions ...
79
There is considerable overlap between cupcakes and muffins.
Method
From a technical point of view, muffins are made by the muffin method, making them small quickbreads. In the muffin method, the wet ingredients are combined in one bowl; and the dry ingredients are combined in another bowl. Then the two are quickly incorporated together with minimal ...
62
Found in this wiki article , is the following information:
"Fancy" ketchup
Some ketchup in the U.S. is labeled "Fancy". This is a USDA grade, relating to specific gravity. Fancy ketchup has a higher tomato solid concentration than other USDA grades.
USDA Ketchup Grades
Grade Specific Gravity Total Solids
Fancy 1.15 ...
59
There are several terms which you can use, depending on the context of writing (or speaking).
A very simple one is "the starch". It is mostly used in the context of meal planning, such as "What starch are we going to serve tonight" or "When planning a vegetarian meal, it is best to first decide on the starch and then select sides that complement it".
"...
55
I suspect it means "ditto (the above line)":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ditto_mark seems to indicate that "do." was an old way of abbreviating before the ditto mark (") became widespread.
47
Conversationally, "oniony". Everyone will understand that, and tend to say it naturally.
In a more serious cooking context, you could also get away with "allium flavor", though likely not in everyday conversation. There are a lot of alliums, including onions, garlic, scallions, shallots, leeks, and chives, so if you refer to the whole group, you're pretty ...
46
Short answer? Not a damn thing. The term is pretty much meaningless in the US; at best it only means that the product doesn't have added colors, artificial flavors or synthetic "stuff". From the FDA:
What is the meaning of 'natural' on the label of food?
From a food science perspective, it is difficult to define a food product that is 'natural' ...
44
There is no real black and white definition of that difference, because where the line is drawn varies from crowd to crowd.
Botanically speaking, a fruit is a seed-bearing structure that develops from the ovary of a flowering plant, whereas vegetables are all other plant parts, such as roots, leaves and stems. By those standards, seedy outgrowths such as ...
44
A broader category, including things like potatoes, would be carbs (carbohydrates). This is a common category when considering feeding for exercise, and tends to mean starchy foods. It's not a perfect term as "carbs" strictly includes sugars, but the carb component of a meal is the (usually fairly plain) bulk accompaniment to the tasty bits.
35
I consider "Milk" to be the substance excreted from living being to sustain their young, whether they be human, cow, dog, etc...
Therein lies your problem. Other people consider "milk" to have a wider definition than this. The Oxford English Dictionary (subscription required) gives a number of definitions of "milk" that are relevant to cooking:
1a. A ...
35
Given the variabilities in "buttermilk" from place to place and time to time, you should get sufficiently equivalent results by substituting modern cultured buttermilk. That's the job it was designed to do.
Recipes from the early 19th century and before are notoriously vague. They were generally written more as reminders of something you already knew ...
32
Liqueur is essentially a flavoured distilled spirit, with the important distinction of added sugar. Vermouth is not distilled, which is why it's referred to as a fortified wine. Flavoured vodkas usually have no added sugar, and so are not classed as liqueurs. Campari uses both distilled alcohol and sugar, and so is a liqueur.
Have a flow chart:
And a Venn ...
30
I'd argue that 'massage' is the right word in this case.
I've this technique a lot in japanese cooking -- you cut up the vegetables, sprinkling with salt as you go (so there's layers of salt in between layers of vegetables), then you really get in there and basically massage (knead?) the pile of vegetables with the salt, so that the salt not only is spread ...
28
"Fancy," when used in the labeling of foods, is almost invariably tied to USDA standards for the classification and grading of the foods. Foods traded on the wholesale market are not required to grade their foods - the use of the system is voluntary. The USDA grading names tied to different food types aren't always consistent or intuitive.
Examples: ...
28
These pans (sometimes called chafing dishes) are designed to fit into a frame above water and a heat source to keep food hot. They are advertising that their pans won't get stuck (jam) in the frame.
As evidence, see this video (and this), which shows how even after pressure is applied the pan does not require effort to remove from the frame. (I found the ...
25
I'm pretty sure it's just crushing the husks a bit so they crack open - that's how I do it when I see "lightly crushed" for cardamom pods. It gives access to the seeds inside so flavor can infuse out of the pod and into the dish. The whole pod should be visible in the recipe, and removed before eating (would be a woody bite, else).
If you crush the husk ...
24
Not really.
For a start there's no milk in it (there's cream, but milk is the defining factor in a milkshake). Second, egg isn't a normal ingredient in a milkshake, and neither is alcohol. Of course they can be added, but they take you away from what's normally meant by the term. When that happens it's normally reflected in the name.
In general, trying to ...
23
An enchilada is a corn tortilla wrapped around some filling (often meat and/or cheese), covered in sauce. The sauce is really defining here: the word is derived from a verb meaning "to season with chili". The sauce usually involves chili peppers, but doesn't always, especially for Tex-Mex and American Variants. Since it's covered in sauce, you eat it off a ...
23
Don't read too much into the "sea"; there's no rule that every word in the language has to stick precisely to its etymological roots.
Seafood just means edible aquatic life, i.e. fish and shellfish in general. It's a food word, not a biology word, and fish on your plate looks pretty much the same whether it's freshwater or saltwater fish, so generally it ...
22
Graphics and quoted text from: Whole Grains Council
Grains, by definition, have 3 major parts: the germ, the endosperm, and the bran.
Whole grains are those that have all of the parts of the natural seed, or kernel (not including an exterior husk that is generally inedible).
To be called "Whole Grain" the product must still have all of the bran, ...
22
To expand on Jolene's answer, there is not only no official definition, but the only definition which fits its common usage is A food which a certain group of persons is not afraid to eat.
Philosophically, "natural" is the opposite of "artificial" or "man-made", but philosophy doesn't give us a limit of interaction under which something stays "natural. ...
22
Spiciness is a taste perception, and as such, it is simply subjective. There is no way to create an objective scale for rating it.
I read your comment about "objective spiciness", but it is not something that can exist. It is based on the erroneous assumption that the spiciness you perceive is a 1:1 measurement of some quality of the food. This is not true....
22
The part that handles the food is comparable, as you noted: A container for the hot oil plus a basket to lift the food out again.
But the difference is in the periphery:
A chip pan is just a pan (or what you may also call a pot), but the heating is done on the stove, like for all other pots.
A deep fryer has its own heating system, either via a heated ...
21
According to the University of Minnesota Extension (emphasis added):
What causes the wild or gamey taste in venison?
Venison refers to the
meat of antlered animals such as deer, moose, elk and caribou. The
'wild' flavor of venison is directly related to what the animal eats.
Corn fed deer will have a milder flavor than those that eat acorns or
sage. The '...
19
It's nutmeg.
The author of that blog is from Switzerland, so I imagine that term is used there, but I had never heard used culinarily until now. I Googled "Grated Musk", and still had to look around to be sure. Thanks for teaching me something.
EDIT As of an hour after the question was posted: Click the "Grated Musk" link now! This question is now the top ...
19
In the end, it seems that what the usage is, determines the product being called for.
I found an interesting Slate article about buttermilk. Apparently, over the years, the word "buttermilk" has referred to three different products:
So, prior to the 20th century, buttermilk could refer to at least three different categories of beverage: regular old milk ...
19
This is a translation from the Italian of perle di parmigiano. It is a mixture of egg whites and grated parmigiano formed into balls ("pearls") and deep or shallow fried. Youtube recipes (in Italian) are shallow fried here and deep fried here.
19
What you're describing - a material being broken down by its own enzymes - is usually referred to as "autolysis".
18
Marinara is a style / kind of a sauce that originated in Napoli usually made with tomatoes, garlic, herbs, and onions. A spaghetti sauce only says where to sauce is used (obviously on spaghetti) but doesn't say anything about what the sauce is exactly like.
There are many dishes which are basically spaghetti + sauce:
Spaghetti alla marinara – which ...
17
Cooking terminology is vague and has evolved to suit the avilable ingredients in various places at various times. This means that the categories are not clearly defined. Here are some examples to indicate the continuum between bread and cake.
There's a whole range of unsweetened soda breads (note: most yeast bread isn't completely sugarless). Many ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
