Throw a bunch of ingredients in a pot, add liquid, heat it up, and what do you get? That’s actually a harder question to answer than you might think. Dishes made in this way can be labeled soup, stew, broth, bisque, or chowder. When it comes to food, people have strong preferences not only about taste but also about what things are called. In this …
One recipe says to roast the chicken breasts in the oven at 400° F. Another recipe calls for the chicken breasts to be baked … in the oven… at 400°. What’s going on here? Are roast and bake really interchangeable, or are there subtle differences? The answer is both. In this article, we’ll break down the multiple meanings of both roast and bake, what the …
Trying to classify what’s a fruit and what’s a vegetable isn’t always cut and dry. In fact, the debate about it can get pretty juicy—seedy, even. This all stems from the fact that some things we eat are technically fruits but are almost always called vegetables (and treated like vegetables, too). Some people make a distinction based on the level of sweetness, but the difference—from …
You don’t hear the word pangs too often. When you do, it’s often in specific contexts, and after certain words, especially birth and hunger. But what is a pang, exactly? And is it different from a pain? In this article, we’ll satisfy your hunger for answers to those questions and to the question of whether the proper phrase is hunger pangs or hunger pains. A …
More and more people are following vegan or vegetarian diets. And you’ve probably noticed a lot of restaurant menus marking whether a dish is vegan or vegetarian. But what exactly is the difference? The difference involves more than just whether a person eats cheese. We’ll break down what each word means, what vegans and vegetarians do and don’t eat, and what the word vegan means …
Pizza is one of the most beloved dishes in the world. Yet ask 10 people from 10 different places what pizza is and you’re likely to get more than a couple different answers. Look back on the history of pizza as a term, and you can see why there’s more than a little ambiguity. At its heart, pizza has crust, a sauce of some kind, …
Few things travel across borders as easily as food recipes and ingredients. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that there are so many foods named from where they originally come from. Sometimes the name comes from a specific ingredient like a fruit or vegetable that’s grown in a place, like Sichuan peppers or Fuji apples, while other times the name comes from a …
Let’s be honest: desert vs. dessert is a spelling issue, not a definition issue. It’s easy to tell the difference between the Sahara and a chocolate cake (even a dry chocolate cake). But when should you use one S and when should you use two? That extra S could be the difference between mounds of sand and mounds of ice cream—and that’s an important difference! …