The boiled rice dish known as congee does congeal when cooled to make a kind of porridge, but those two words aren’t related. Congeal is related to French congelé, the past participle of French congeler, “to freeze.” Congeal and congeler share a Latin root with gel, gelatin, jelly, and gelato. Congee comes from Tamil (pronounced something like /kañci/), and variations of the name appear in most languages of India. The more modern spelling is kanji, and it’s also called jook or juk. The name jook comes from a Cantonese word 粥 that also inspired the Thai and Hawaiian names for this dish. In Japan congee is known as okayu (おかゆ), and in Sri Lanka, it’s called kenda. This is part of a complete episode.
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