From Booklist
With his mental knife sharpened by wit and experience from his stint as "a hired belly," aka restaurant critic, for Gourmet magazine, Jay Jacobs carves up fresh insight into the vocabulary of food. He explains many everyday food-related expressions that pepper the English language and traces how basic foodstuffs like apples and corn, cooking methods like barbecue, and dishes like cioppino and lobster Newburg got their names. Jacobs also serves up many food-slang snacks. He even fills a plate with gastronomic names that belong to baseball players, noting that no other game seems as hungry. A well-seasoned glossary, dubbed "Alphabet Soup," rounds out the book. Culinary and food terms receive insightful, often humorous definitions. Oranges are "what-apples proverbially shouldn't be compared with" and tomalley is "the liver of a lobster, considered a delicacy by those who aren't put off by green slime." This is food fun and then some. Jennifer Henderson
