103. Food Into Words

The Allusionist

Helen Zaltzman

Arts, Education, Words, Linguistics, History, Entertainment, Helen Zaltzman, Etymology, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2019

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When recipe writing is done well, the skill and effort involved might not be evident. But explaining the different steps clearly so that people of varying culinary abilities and equipment can cook it, and indeed want to make it, and translating flavour and physical actions and sensory experiences into words - all that takes work.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the illusionist in which I, Helen Salzman, burn language to a crisp.
0:08.8	Coming up in today's show, FOOD!
0:11.5	How do you put food into words so that some stranger can read the words and make the food?
0:17.8	Good recipe writing can be invisible work.
0:20.3	What are the verbal ingredients of a well-written recipe?
0:25.7	On with the show.
0:31.0	Yes, it was pain ever-acking because people spend money on ingredients.
0:37.0	They may be cooking it for a special occasion.
0:39.0	They're trying to impress the date to whatever.
0:41.0	This is not what can go wrong with food.
0:43.0	It's quite a way to responsibility to be responsible for someone's dinner or their birthday cake or whatever.
0:50.0	It's a big deal.
0:51.0	So if it's a cookbook for families, you're going to write it differently than if it's a cookbook for expert bakers.
0:58.0	And figuring out how to get the recipe that's right for that.
1:02.0	It's very different from cooking in real life, I think, which is weird because you're trying to tell people how to cook the dish.
1:09.0	It would be really easy to show you, but it's hard to describe in language.
1:12.0	Yeah, it's a complete nightmare.
1:14.0	There's so much that you do and you assume that people understand what you're saying.
1:19.0	My name's Mimi A and I'm the author of Two Cookery Books.
1:22.0	The first one is called Noodle, 100 Great Recipes and the second one is called Mandalay.
1:28.0	Even things like cover with a lid rather than just saying cover.
1:33.0	You have to say with a lid.
	...

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