“Cornbread,” a poem by Kentucky writer Silas House, is thick with sensory memories of Appalachian cooking and family: scooping cornmeal by hand and “the splash of egg, the gallop of buttermilk.” The poet recalls his mother cooking after work, the...
Nathan in Raleigh, North Carolina, heard his grandfather, busy making Thanksgiving dinner for the family, describe the work as going steady by jerks. The expression means by fits and starts, with bursts of steady effort broken by pauses or...
When a youngster misreads cooking instructions, the slash mark in the notation for the fraction 1/4 turns out to be a recipe for confusion. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Forward Slash Mishmash” We’ve talked...
Brian in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, reports hearing an older person talk about getting the receipt for a dish, using the word receipt in the same way that others might use the word recipe. The use of receipt as a synonym for recipe, as in “a set of...
Carol in Williamsburg, Virginia, wonders why if you bake something and don’t rely on pre-mixed ingredients, you’re said to bake it from scratch. This expression originally referred to a line scratched into the ground to mark the starting...
Oriana, a biochemistry professor in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, uses aliquot for a chemical solution divided into equal portions. The verb works for the dividing, and the noun for each portion, whether it’s sodium chloride in a lab or, more loosely...