Customer Reviews

Words to Eat By: Five Foods and the Culinary History of the English Language

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Words to Eat By is an exquisite addition to the literature of food, elegantly integrating culinary history, our attitudes towards different foods and preparations, and a careful consideration of how the names used for certain foods impacts our preferences and impressions. Over the past years I've spent considerable time reading from the increasingly diverse array of books associated with food, whether those be works of culinary history, single food-focused treatises, social or political perspectives on the cooking and food industries, or the never-ending list of new cookbooks. Lipkowitz's book will quickly join the ranks of the best works in the food field, to be included with the exemplary recent works by the likes of Mark Kurlansky, Michael Pollan, and Tom Standage, and also with the classics by the greats like MFK Fisher and Elizabeth David.

Words to Eat By presents a wealth of information in a highly entertaining and engaging manner. Ina Lipkowitz has an uncanny gift in presenting culinary history in a fun and easily readable style, objectively sharing historical food perspectives from antiquity to the recent centuries while clearly demonstrating how age-old tendencies have led to both current day biases and longstanding eating and dietary patterns. This is a book that provides the reader with many valuable insights into why they might be predisposed towards certain foods with certain names, and why they may be too quickly inclined to reject others. Words to Eat By takes an important step in opening the door to changed inclinations in our culinary choices.

Lipkowitz's work is divided into treatments of five Old English or Germanic food words (Apple, Leek, Milk, Meat, and Bread), and teaches us how both the words for these foods and the foods themselves have evolved. In each section we gain an understanding of the history of that food, along with the developing patterns and language impacts as the food was either altered or eaten more naturally. We learn how the language and words associated with these food have established the foundation of our attitudes, tastes, and choices, driving how we think about, select, and prepare the food we eat today. These chapters all present a carefully crafted treatment of the concurrent culinary and language history of each food, demonstrating how we as English speakers developed our food choices and preferences. Finally, each chapter elegantly culminates with a back to basics or nature section, showing how attitidues are evolving, moving from a deep-seated public inclination towards the highly altered and complex preparations of southern European and Mediterranean cusines to an increasing awareness and desire for more natural or unaltered foods such as raw milk, wild vegetables, and artisan breads.

Words to Eat By is a compelling read, one that lovers of food literature and lovers of food will not want to miss.

Few books have encapsulated my favorite topics in one tome: linguistics, history and food. Ina Lipkowitz's scholarly and interdisciplinary approach transforms reading about apples, leeks, milk, meat and bread into delectable ingredients found in a winning blue-ribbon literary recipe. How many books compel you to constantly flip the pages back and forth to partake in the deliciously detailed richness of referenced footnotes? Too few!

Words to Eat By, is like an exquisite gourmet meal - full of substance yet not heavy. This book should satiate everyone's appetite for a good read. Enjoy!

Quick, lively style kept reader's interest, though I must say I enjoyed the first chapter on the apple the most. An off-beat subject, the history of certain foods and the language that describes them, filled in the quick and changing times we have arrived at even with regard to food. Hope this writer will give us more fun stuff!!!

The premise of "Words to Eat By" is intriguing; the book, however, is so riddled with foolish errors and a fundamental lack of understanding about cooking, as to be misleading, at best. The book tells us much more about Lipkowitz's own food biases than providing a "culinary history."

The author's basic premise, that things sound better in French because Anglo-Saxon/American cooking suffers from an inferiority complex traceable to the Roman Empire, harkens back to Steven Mennell's seminal work. Unfortunately, unlike Mennell, who knows his history, Lipkowitz has only the most superficial understanding of culinary history, clearly gleaned in large part from secondary sources. To say that Roman food is complex, and that the Romans abjured simplicity, shows huge gaps in her knowledge of the literature of Roman cookery. She should consult Cato, Galen, and others for clear examples of the simplicity that was an essentail part of quotidian Roman food. Even Apicius, frequently cited by the author as the epitome of complex cookery, has a great many recipes that are essentially salads in herbed vinaigrettes, hardly masking the basic foodstuffs.

To talk about printed cookbooks that were created in 14th century England is another howler-- the first printed cookbook is Italian, done in or around 1468. Such sloppiness calls into question much of the alleged scholarship. I could go on and on, but it is sufficient to note that there are many similar factual blunders.

Her lack of understanding of basic cooking techniques is another irritant. Notwithstanding common ingredients, there is a significant difference between an apple pie and an apple tart. Yes, both have apples and dough, but the similarities stop there, no matter how much she tries to torture them into being equivalents, save for the names and presumed sophistication of the dishes.

What could have been an interesting article on some of the literary associations we have with foodstuffs--in particular the chapter on milk, which points to interesting biblical passages-- is instead erroneous history. Her sweeping statements are a teetering structure whose argument collapses, given the shaky factual foundation.

The concept is interesting and I looked forward to reading it. This reads more like a textbook. The book seems to suck all of the joy out of the topic of the origins of certain commonplace foods. She seems to make the same point over and over again. In the first chapter she discusses fruit and, particularly, the apple. The first time she explains that the word apple might have been a more generic name for fruit, it was intellectually interesting. The tenth time she says that, you just wish she would get on with it. The book reads with no joy or interest or literary turn of phrase. I can't speak to the errors that others found since I'm not versed in the languages to the degree necessary. There just wasn't any there there.

In the section on leeks, she states that the vegetable is even lesser known than sea kale and goes on to explain why. Unknown may be in the eye of the beholder. A quick search on two food sites, Epicurious and Food Network yields 1300 recipes with leeks. Search Google for "recipe leek" and there are 5,400,000 hits. Unknown indeed. Almost as if she made the statement just to support the reasons why. Near the end of the leek chapter she makes two assumptions that stretch logic. First she states that one of the reasons that leeks are seldom used is that people are aware that it is, historically, a vegetable of the poor. I'll bet most of the home cooks using leeks never knew that, including me Then she mentions that leeks are more expensive. A quick talk with her produce person would have quickly made her realize that while onions have a shelf life of several months, leeks have a shelf life of one week. Therefore the spoilage factor is much higher for leeks and that is built into the cost of the product. It's these erroneous assertions and assumptions that she could have easily checked out that call into question the entire book.

I did finish the book; and have no idea why.

This is a very readable and entertaining book about the interaction between food, language, and culture. It is generally organized along certain foodstuffs in a manner reminiscent of Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire albeit with a different direction and focus (if you liked his book, you will probably very much enjoy this one). The writing style is engaging and shows an openness to how different cultures value and identify foods. The range of topics is very broad, covering subjects such as how the apple came to be recognized as the fruit on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden to how the public's accessibility of the Internet contributed to the demise of Gourmet Magazine. Not only is the material interesting, it leads you to thinking about what you enjoy about food, its role in culture, and how it is perceived within and among societies.