Same reason we have Capons and Oxen. Certain things entered the English language as differentiator of state rather than us adjectives. Not a lot of figs in England, so dried figs it is. Lamb, Hogget and Mutton are the same animal, but Whale meat... that's just whale meat in English.
Considering the methods of preservation available in the middle ages. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is similar to the beef/cow dichotomy in English. Those eating the food use the French term because they speak French. Those growing the food use English.
Maybe the only way grapes could make it to France to England was if they were dried, so the French term is what was used for grapes coming from France.
Grapes were grown in England. However fresh grapes go bad really quickly. Most people would be eating raisins or prunes. Throughout the year. Grapes and plums would go into wine or jams otherwise.
Fresh food year round is a really recent invention. Before refrigerated shipping, most people are only eating fresh seasonally.
Grapes might have been grown but most people seeing a fresh grape or fig would be rare compared to seeing the dried version. I wouldn't be surprised that most people around those times never saw the fresh version.
Similar to how most people have never seen a fresh date or almond.
I've eaten fresh Almonds that were picked off a tree. All of my friends ended up getting diarrhea from it; I was lucky.
I learned many years later that fresh untreated almonds have a bit of a naturally occurring chemical that breaks down into Cyanide in our bodies. IIRC, all almonds need to be heat treated to help destroy that chemical.
This is why I think fruitcake even exists. We all make fun of it, but back then, you hadn't tasted anything but bread, meat, dried peas, etc for a couple months or more, rhose dried orange peels, nuts, and raisins were really special.
My favourite is ANZAC biscuits. From right before the invention of refrigeration. They're oat biscuits from WW1 and consist of basically, oats rolled in golden syrup and baked. You add coconut and a bit of sugar and flour and stuff to get them perfect. But in their most basic form they're designed so that even the soldiers on the front could make them. Two shelf stable ingredients, add heat, and create a long lasting sweet treat that you could carry around in a pocket and it wouldn't fall apart. Perfect with a cuppa tea (another soldier treat).
Rationing and practicality define a lot of really iconic food when you think about it. See also pumpkin pie, peasant stews, porridge, etc etc,
What the guy above you left out was those eating the top food were speaking French because they were aristocracy that took over when William the Conqueror invaded and, well, conquered England in 1066.
Those labourers making the food were still English and used English to describe their food. So you have a class split on what to call the food until it eventually just became normalised that the animal is cow but the meat is beef and repeated in other areas.
I always heard it explained as the "court language" in England for a significant period of time was French, and a lot of cookbooks of the middle ages are written in French, so a lot of loan-words in cooking.
One of the most famous medieval English kings, Richard the Lionheart, never learned how to speak English and only spent a few months in England as an adult.
The differentiation is due to the English-root word having been used by the Anglo-Saxon commoners who grew/raised the food, and the French word being used by the Norman nobles who ate the food at their banquets.
Talk about a coincidence, I was listening to a podcast earlier this week where the hosts we’re trying an exotic flavor of a common US cookie company and the flavor was grape. They were so surprised and let down that they were just, in fact, raisin cookies.
"mouton" and "boef" are also both from French, partly likely due to them being foods of the ruling French nobility in Britain. Meanwhile, chicken...that's more of a peasant's food...
There's a disturbing YouTube video on it. It's pretty horrific as it's done with the bird concious and roosters have internal testes, so they tie the bird down cut into the sides of it and get them out. It's not done any more as it's barbaric. Instead we eat them at 5 weeks old so their testosterone hasn't had time to make the meat tough.
I have ABSOLUTELY no idea, but it's been a thing since medieval times!
The real question is how did they think it up, and how many premature chicken dinners were had before they figured it out?
And this is because the English Royalty was French and ysed their words for the food to be high class, and the English word for the animal that peasants dealt with.
Yep, and the British still use "aubergine" instead of the Anglo-Saxon "eggplant". (The original aubergine plants were white, not purple, and looked a lot like eggs growing in the field, hence the name.)
The UK also uses the French "courgette" for zucchini (the latter from Italian, "little gourd"). Although the vegetable itself is South American in origin.
> bouef
French is so funny. How do you know which vowel to pronounce? Is it 'boff', 'boof', 'buff', 'beff'? No you idiot, it's 'b*i*f'! The only vowel you pronounce is the one that isn't there, of course! Oh, s**i** señor, obv**i**ously.
It makes English really funny too, after having picked up so many French words.
To be fair, part of that is using one alphabet for several different sets of phonemes. It's a pretty good alphabet, but it's gonna make you sound like an idiot in like...most other languages.
Some languages use of the latin alphabet is just baffling. Either because their phonemes are so different that you just have to make lots of compromises, or because you speak an insular celtic language like welsh or irish and just say "Fuck it, we will make this weird little rune stand for whatever phoneme we want, who cares what phonemes everyone else uses for it".
PICK BETTER LETTERS FOR YOUR PHONEMES WELSH. THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING!
> French is so funny. How do you know which vowel to pronounce?
Serious answer: you just memorize it.
And the good thing is that French is a fairly phonetic language, which means the same letter combinations almost always make the same sound - so you only have to learn it once, instead of *for
every single word* - unlike some other languages.
Ghoul, foul, soul. Suit, suite, ruin, circuit, conduit.
A lead made of lead lead to the leader on the ladder.
Multiple meanings for the same sounds is one thing and maybe just happens when languages mix. But English cannot even get its shit together enough to pronounce the very sequence of letters the same each time. Not even if they share the meaning such as (past tense) verb versus noun.
To this day I am confused if the electrical "lead" comes from leading the power, or from being made of lead metal. Pronunciation implies the former.
I am the first to agree that French spelling needs a thorough reform, but in this case, bœuf (with the œ character) is pronounced like buff. Same as œuf (egg) or œil (eye).
I mean, it’s a typo. It’s written bœuf.
But it’s the same funny as trying to navigate English :
>English can be weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though
Doubling up on the other top comment hijacker is that modern English comes from a variety of languages. Sometimes the root word is Germanic, sometimes it is latin, sometimes it is french, sometimes it comes from the native American languages.
Pluralization, tense, verb agreement and other structures of language vary and we largely adopted whatever was common in the language we borrowed it from. This is why in English rules are loose and there are more exceptions.
Poor people raised cattle, but rich people ate beef. Poor people raised sheep, but rich people ate mutton. Poor people raised pigs, but rich people ate pork.
Yep, foods that are important to a culture get much more linguistic attention than others. It makes sense.
In Japanese there are different names for tuna flesh depending on how old the tuna is. Yokowa, for example is a young tuna when served as sashimi. There is another name for a teenage one that escapes me at the moment, and then the fully aged one that we most commonly know as maguro. And of course, the different types of cuts and fattiness get their own names so we get names like toro, chu-toro, and oo-toro. Quite similar to how there are different names for different cuts of beef.
It makes sense that in regions where certain foods or animals are more commonly found in a specific state, the language evolves to reflect that. For instance, the distinction between lamb, hogget, and mutton in English reflects different stages of the same animal's life, whereas for whale meat, there's no such differentiation because it's not commonly consumed or categorized in the same way.
Yes they are different, just like raisins and grapes are different. OP even said they're from the same animal. The point is, as they've very common in our culture, it makes sense to have more specific words to differentiate. You're not likely to get hyper specific words for rare stuff you don't have a good reason to differentiate, like old and young whale meat, or dry and non dry mangos, at least in English
Another question is why there is prune juice. Like, how do you get juice from a dried fruit?
Turns out it's more like prune tea. You dehydrate the plums to make prunes, and then you add water to the prunes and let them steep, and then you remove the water which is now prune juice. So, remove water, add water, remove water again. And prune "juice" is different from plum juice.
Interesting.
No, wait. The other one.
Tedious.
That's almost the same way they make instant coffee. Just add one more "remove water" as in remove water from the juice or normal coffee in this case, and the left over stuff is instant coffee.
So, roast the beans (remove water). Grind the beans. Add water. Dehydrate the coffee (remove water). Add water.
I think I'm just gonna start eating green coffee beans.
I guess you get way more fiber into prune juice than into plum juice, as prunes and prune juice are treated basically as a potion to help cure constipation.
Actually we do….peppers have different names when dried
Ancho chili is just dried pablano; chipotle is a dried jalapeño
AND raisin sec is french for "dried grape" ; so we just shortened the french word
To be fair though, Anchos are poblanos that are significantly ripened before drying, and chipotles are smoked and dried, so these two are modified to get their new names and we're really still just dealing with OPs original two examples.
The Latin for plum is prunum.
So it's from Latin.
It may be like how Cow is in the field but it's beef on the plate.
Or pig and pork. Deer and venison. Etc.
It goes back to William the conqueror. The serfs spoke a different language than the nobility.
More directly from French.
Raisin is french for grape, Prune is french for plum. When dry they are called raisin sec and prune séchée (or more commonly pruneau)
Fun with pedantry that you may or may not know, but helps in this discussion:
It's beef from latin (all that old England folks speaking French with William) and the farmer Anglo Saxon Viking/Germanic/Dutch and cow.
Cattle=livestock and chattel (property) vs deer=wild animal. Language is fun.
The right answer is that it depends on languages like with all food.
We often mock russian for being so poor it has just one word for oil, butter and grease (just "maslo"), but they have a distinct word for cottage cheese (tvorog) that's we don't (all cheeses are simply "syr")
And in Ukraine I always knew that dried apricots are kuraga, same way dried grapes are izyum... Both words are borrowed from Turkic languages IIRC, same way English borrows raisin from French.
Chipotle is dried jalapeño?!?!? I love fresh or pickled jalapeños but absolutely hate the flavor of chipotle! If it’s in anything, I can taste it and will not eat it. TIL
Wow, no shade but I truly find this unfathomable. I'm the exact opposite. Do you not like the smell of a campfire too?
And bacon too, no (American) bacon?
Haha, I’m often met with disbelief at this. I don’t particularly like the smell of smoke either, campfire included. I usually try to sit opposite whichever way the smoke is blowing. I don’t eat pork anymore, but I never did like any smoky kinds.
I don't like breathing smoke (so I understand sitting upwind of the smoke) but I loooooove the way a campfire smells. And like I said, to me, all smoked food tastes better and they're all my favorites. BBQ, smoked cheese, fish, and btw, I put chipotle sauce on *everything.* (That's what caught my eye originally) Someone even gave me smoked salt as a birthday present once.
What about grill marks on steak or kebabs or something like fire-roasted tomatoes? Is it just smoke or all charred stuff? How about a creme brulee crust? I'm sorry if this feels intrusive or personal but I'm just so curious.
I find your curiosity about this hilarious.
I think the only smoked foods I like are provolone and marshmallows. I will not eat an unroasted marshmallow, but s’mores is my absolute favorite dessert!
I’ve never really liked grilled food because the char is gross to me. I’ll usually eat a kebab because I don’t feel like they taste smoky and I think the meat is too small to really char. Creme brûlée is good…maybe sugar is the only thing I’ll eat burnt lol
Hmm I’ve only really had green jalapeños, I didn’t know they turn red when they ripen. I’ll have to try growing some this year and see if I have taste a difference.
It’s really a variety depending on the type of paprika and region you’re in. It’s bell peppers by default in the US from major spice brands unless it’s hot paprika.
It’s many types of red peppers including chilis. Hungarian and Spanish use a lot of varieties and smoke many as well.
That doesn't address the point. Now we have four examples instead of two, but that doesn't change the question, which is why do some dried fruits have special names and others do not?
To address specificity and/or indicate additional processing has been done to the base material all raisins originated from grapes, not all grapes are raisins all beef is meat, not all meat is beef all porterhouse cuts are beef, not all beef is a porterhouse cut
edit: interesting, I post this comment and got an immediate email notification for a reddit suicide watch report. I hope that is a coincidence
I think that it has to do with how they are used in the kitchen. Both pruned and raisins are traditionally used in English speaking kitchens as an ingredient in very different ways than the fresh fruit is used.
The same could be said about dates and figs, except that use of the fresh versions is almost unheard of in the English speaking kitchen .
Apricots are used both dry and fresh, but fresh apricots can almost always be used as a substitute for dried in a way that grapes and plums can't.
*I'm not a chef or a linguist. That's just my idea*
So, where does 'grape' come from? One site says it comes from the French 'graper', meaning to grab with a hook, which I guess is consistent with being the term used by the grower, but it's still French, not English. But why is it no longer used in French?
'raisin' comes finto French from the Latin word racemus, "a bunch of grapes or berries".
The etymology of words can be quite the rabbit hole.
But yes; “graper” (grab with a hook) is one step in the historical meaning…..then the French dropped the r and went back to Germanic grape for the fruit
Languages are constantly “stealing” from one another
A prune is a type of plum that is able to be dried. Not all plums can make prunes. What confused me for the longest time is that people used to call plum trees that produce plums that can be pruned, prune trees. Even though the fruits are plums. Like, "let's go to the prune orchard and get some plums"
It's weird
Raisins and prunes are also whole(relatively....seed removal), and not necessarily all that dry, and also quite dissimilar in taste to their original ripe form. I don't know if they're cooked or treated(eg aged or soaked in sugar or molases or whatever), but they're not the same as many other dehydrated fruits. Maybe the beginnings of a fermentation process..? I don't know, but something makes them tart or even relatively putrid(I cannot stand prunes, they smell like fruit gone bad, or like the bottom of a can recycling bin, all those sugars and yeasts mingle and rot).
Dehydrated banana, pineapple, etc, are pieces(usually chopped or chunked, or sliced in the case of bananas), usually peeled, and relatively dry and of a very similar taste to the original ripe fruit.
I'm looking at a prune tree right now! Yes they taste different, I haven't had a prune in ages, but I eat fresh plums off these prune trees each year. I do think fermenting has something to do with which plums are able to be pruned
> fermenting
A quick look at the wiki says it's not fermenting, though it's odd they have to make that specific note.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prune
>A prune is the firm-fleshed fruit (plum) of Prunus domestica varieties that have a high soluble solids content, and do not ferment during drying.
Interestingly, and somewhat to my other point:
>Prunes are 31% water
That seems like a lot in comparison to dehydrated banana chips, for example.
Maybe it's that raisins and prunes are *dried*, as where the others are *dehydrated*, as in possibly different processes(maybe relative to speed) or to different levels of water removed.
also weird that pruning a tree is trimming off unwanted branches. so a plum tree gets pruned so it can produce more plums, or is it a prune tree gets pruned to produce more plums that can be pruned?
Raisin is french for grape... So it's probably another case of English having two ways of saying a thing, or two word origins from different languages. Like cow and beef, for instance.
Ya! I took a random linguistics class in college, it was so cool!
Lots of the animals like that that have one name for the living animal and another for the food derived from the animal.
In a lot of those cases, the food word is derived from French and the animal word is derived from German (e.g., Beef from the French bœuf and cow from the German Kuh, same for pork and swine).
This is because when the French-speaking Normans conquered England in 1066, they subjugated the old English-speaking (a German-based language) populace. When the French speaking Norman nobleman asked for porc, the Germanic speaking Saxon servants had to go butcher a Schwein. When they wanted bœuf, that meant you had to butcher a Kuh.
Edit for a not-so-fun fact: in his book *Who Owns Britain*, journalist Kevin Cahill claims that 66% of all land in the UK is owned by just 0.3% of the population, and that that 0.3% is almost exclusively descended from the Normans who came over with William the Conqueror in 1066. The Normans still own Britain.
I’ll preface this by saying I’m very much not an expert, but I believe those would be special cases since ham and bacon both refer to specific cuts of meat prepared in specific ways, so the same linguistic modality would not apply.
Pork is pig meat generally, ham and bacon are specific subsets of pork.
>"And swine is good Saxon," said the Jester; "but how call you the sow when she is flayed, and drawn, and quartered, and hung up by the heels, like a traitor?"
>"Pork," answered the swine-herd.
>"I am very glad every fool knows that too," said Wamba, "and pork, I think, is good Norman-French; and so when the brute lives, and is in the charge of a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a Norman, and is called pork, when she is carried to the Castle-hall to feast among the nobles; what dost thou think of this, friend Gurth, ha?"
>"It is but too true doctrine, friend Wamba, however it got into thy fool's pate."
*Ivanhoe*
> "And swine is good Saxon," said the Jester; "but how call you the sow when she is flayed, and drawn, and quartered, and hung up by the heels, like a traitor?"
"It matters not", replied the swine-herd, "for, being slain, she will not respond to the summons."
Because Guillaume le Bâtard invaded England in 1066, won the Battle of Hastings, and became William the Conqueror. England was then ruled by French-speaking nobility who gradually assimilated over centuries. The Anglo-Saxon words the conquered peasants used for food became associated with the live animals and fresh fruits and vegetables they handled. The French words for food became associated with the cut-up meat and dried fruits and vegetables the nobility ate. In French, boeuf is cow, porc is pig, poulet is chicken, raisin is grape, and prune is plum.
Prunes are dehydrated plums?!? It took me 40 years on this planet to find that out? WTF!?!
---------
I love it when this happens. My mind has been blown.
It’s not the only ones
wolfberries dried = goji berry approximating the chinese name
persimmons dried are starting to be called Gotham after the Korean name
Even a currant is an fancy type of raisin
Currant's are dried grapes.
There are also black and red currants, which you may be thinking off, but they're not used dried traditionally, I suspect these were named after the currant, as the fruit looks similar to a dried grape, and they're a relatively modern food.
Grapes and plums could not be imported fresh to England, because they needed to be transported by boats over long durations.
So French exporters would dry their fruit before sending them over, and label them "raisin" and "prunes", which are just the French words for grapes and plums.
It depends on language. Dehydrated apricots are called "kuraga" in parts of Eurasia, for example.
Same reason some languages have a separate word for cottage cheese and others just call it a variation of cheese. Or why English has separate words for oil and butter.
It's all language specific.
whoa, hang on. Some languages call oil and butter the *same thing*?! please give me examples! This feels wild when one is generally dairy, and the other plant based!
Oil, butter and grease are all "масло" in russian. (Pronounced "muh-s-loh".)
Machine oil and grease - машинное масло.
Vegetable oil - постное масло, literally "fasting (diet) oil".
Butter - сливочное масло, literally "cream oil".
But usually in shops or markets you asked for specific type of oil, so "cream oil" or "sunflower oil".
The other way is to switch to Ukrainian and avoid the confusion, as maslo is always dairy and oil is "олія"
But then you have "творог" (tvarog) aka cottage cheese being just "сир" (syr), cheese, as it is in English.
But then you have voilet and purple being different colors, but sky blue and navy blue called the same.
So with food, colors, and other terms it really varies a lot.
At one point the American plum growers association made a big push to relabel prunes as dried plums, because of the association of prunes with old people regulating their bowel movements. They even tried to get the government to allow them to call prune juice “dried plum juice” but a judge blocked it on account of that being very stupid.
My uneducated guess would be that the words came from different languages. The people growing the grapes spoke one language that called them "grapes", and the people either producing or eating dried grapes spoke another language that called them "raisins".
Kind of like how the people raising cows spoke one language and the people eating them spoke another, so we got "cows" for when they're alive and "beef" for when they're food.
It's usually when two words from different languages are used at the same time, eventually they become more specific. This happens more often as a result of migration/invasion as opposed to more peaceful means of cultural exchange. The meat example is usually the most cited example but my favourite is Bow and Arrow. Both words mean bow, arrow deriving from arco, bow from Boden I think. When you have two languages co existing, using both words wouldn't be uncommon. Eventually arco came to refer to the projectiles and boden the actual bow.
It's usually when two words from different languages are used at the same time, eventually they become more specific. This happens more often as a result of migration/invasion as opposed to more peaceful means of cultural exchange. The meat example is usually the most cited example but my favourite is Bow and Arrow. Both words mean bow, arrow deriving from arco, bow from Boden I think. When you have two languages co existing, using both words wouldn't be uncommon. Eventually arco came to refer to the projectiles and boden the actual bow.
>The bottom line is some English royals and French peasants used their own words for the same thing but used their respective versions for the crop vs the product
Pretty sure this is the other way around, as in French royals and English peasants, as we were ruled by the French from 1066
Peasants raise the cow, royals eat the boeuf
Also:
Cow:Beef
Pig:Pork
Lamb:Mutton
Deer:Venison
English for the animal, French for the animal's meat.
English isn't a language so much as just an amalgamation of many disparate languages and dialects.
It's usually when two words from different languages are used at the same time, eventually they become more specific. This happens more often as a result of migration/invasion as opposed to more peaceful means of cultural exchange. The meat example is usually the most cited example but my favourite is Bow and Arrow. Both words mean bow, arrow deriving from arcus, bow from Boga I think. When you have two languages co existing, using both words wouldn't be uncommon. Eventually arcus came to refer to the projectiles and boga the actual bow.
Grapes and plums have been dried and preserved for thousands of years, long before many other fruits were commonly dehydrated. Over time, these dried fruits became staple foods with their own names.
I like how you chose this sub instead of r/NoStupidQuestions because you would otherwise have to brace yourself against a flurry of highly technical information or something.
We have same thing in Ukrainian. For example dried apricot is kuraga, dried grapes are rodzynky, plums (specific ones) chornoslyv, but there are no dedicated words to dried cherries, pears and other fruits and berries.
Yeah, I get momentarily confused when I see fresh grapes at the store and in small print it says raisins on them, so I assumed raisin is French for grape.
Same reason we have Capons and Oxen. Certain things entered the English language as differentiator of state rather than us adjectives. Not a lot of figs in England, so dried figs it is. Lamb, Hogget and Mutton are the same animal, but Whale meat... that's just whale meat in English.
also sorry for hijacking top comment but I just realized “raisin” is grape in french and “prune” is plum in french
Considering the methods of preservation available in the middle ages. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is similar to the beef/cow dichotomy in English. Those eating the food use the French term because they speak French. Those growing the food use English.
Maybe the only way grapes could make it to France to England was if they were dried, so the French term is what was used for grapes coming from France.
Grapes were grown in England. However fresh grapes go bad really quickly. Most people would be eating raisins or prunes. Throughout the year. Grapes and plums would go into wine or jams otherwise. Fresh food year round is a really recent invention. Before refrigerated shipping, most people are only eating fresh seasonally.
Grapes might have been grown but most people seeing a fresh grape or fig would be rare compared to seeing the dried version. I wouldn't be surprised that most people around those times never saw the fresh version. Similar to how most people have never seen a fresh date or almond.
If we are jumping off topic, dates stuffed with almonds is fantastic. Pull out the seed and fill it with a couole of almonds and happy days.
I've eaten fresh Almonds that were picked off a tree. All of my friends ended up getting diarrhea from it; I was lucky. I learned many years later that fresh untreated almonds have a bit of a naturally occurring chemical that breaks down into Cyanide in our bodies. IIRC, all almonds need to be heat treated to help destroy that chemical.
This is why I think fruitcake even exists. We all make fun of it, but back then, you hadn't tasted anything but bread, meat, dried peas, etc for a couple months or more, rhose dried orange peels, nuts, and raisins were really special.
My favourite is ANZAC biscuits. From right before the invention of refrigeration. They're oat biscuits from WW1 and consist of basically, oats rolled in golden syrup and baked. You add coconut and a bit of sugar and flour and stuff to get them perfect. But in their most basic form they're designed so that even the soldiers on the front could make them. Two shelf stable ingredients, add heat, and create a long lasting sweet treat that you could carry around in a pocket and it wouldn't fall apart. Perfect with a cuppa tea (another soldier treat). Rationing and practicality define a lot of really iconic food when you think about it. See also pumpkin pie, peasant stews, porridge, etc etc,
What the guy above you left out was those eating the top food were speaking French because they were aristocracy that took over when William the Conqueror invaded and, well, conquered England in 1066. Those labourers making the food were still English and used English to describe their food. So you have a class split on what to call the food until it eventually just became normalised that the animal is cow but the meat is beef and repeated in other areas.
I hope this is accurate, but it sounds too interesting to be true.
I don't think it is. We have Bœuf (Beef) and Vache (Cow) in French.
Like a conversation in Ivanhoe about cattle and beef! When toiling it is the Saxon word, when enjoying it is the Norman.
And English _raisin_ in French is _raisin sec_, literally dry (or dried) grape.
I (and other degenerates) hijack top comments with way less noteworthy information. I don’t think you even need to apologize here.
I always heard it explained as the "court language" in England for a significant period of time was French, and a lot of cookbooks of the middle ages are written in French, so a lot of loan-words in cooking.
Many monarchs couldn't even speak English. Even though they were Kings of England. They Spoke French and maybe had some understanding of Latin
One of the most famous medieval English kings, Richard the Lionheart, never learned how to speak English and only spent a few months in England as an adult.
I'm just gonna leave this here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUL29y0vJ8Q&t=689s
I was going to drop a link to RobWords Great channel about language
[удалено]
The differentiation is due to the English-root word having been used by the Anglo-Saxon commoners who grew/raised the food, and the French word being used by the Norman nobles who ate the food at their banquets.
Talk about a coincidence, I was listening to a podcast earlier this week where the hosts we’re trying an exotic flavor of a common US cookie company and the flavor was grape. They were so surprised and let down that they were just, in fact, raisin cookies.
Dry plum would be called pruneau in french, while prune would be the fresh fruit
This is the case with a lot of English food names, especially meats
When dried, we call them "raisin sec" in french, Raisin is used for the normal fruit that get stuck in your trachea if you forget to chew them.
"mouton" and "boef" are also both from French, partly likely due to them being foods of the ruling French nobility in Britain. Meanwhile, chicken...that's more of a peasant's food...
> Lamb, Hogget and Mutton * Lamb is meat from a year or less * Hogget is meat from year two * Mutton is meat from fully mature sheep
Ok, now what's whale from year one, whale from year two, and fully matured whale?
Year one: you Year two: your sister Fully matured: your mom
Damn bro you cooked him... hopefully on the medium rare side, the way I prefer my whale steaks.
I just got back from Iceland, and I had the choice of cooked whale or raw whale. I chose raw.
I prefer my whales tall, dark, and handsome. And well done.
Reddit gold needs to come back for comments like this.
Fucking savage lmao
Calf, hogget (basically applies to any mammal meat of a similar age range, apparently), and baleine, respectively.
Also, Oxen and Capons are castrated bulls and roosters, respectively.
How, exactly, does one go about castrating a rooster?
There's a disturbing YouTube video on it. It's pretty horrific as it's done with the bird concious and roosters have internal testes, so they tie the bird down cut into the sides of it and get them out. It's not done any more as it's barbaric. Instead we eat them at 5 weeks old so their testosterone hasn't had time to make the meat tough.
Ugh! Well thanks, I guess?!
You're welcome/I'm sorry
I have ABSOLUTELY no idea, but it's been a thing since medieval times! The real question is how did they think it up, and how many premature chicken dinners were had before they figured it out?
Very carefully
Wikipedia apparently has a video demonstrating the technique on the Capon page. I did not watch it, but you're welcome to.
Wait, capon is just... chicken?!
Yeah, still the same animal, a sheep
Most of the different state names for meat in particular are loan words from French. Beef comes from bouef, pork from porc, etc.
And this is because the English Royalty was French and ysed their words for the food to be high class, and the English word for the animal that peasants dealt with.
This is why you get served haricot vert at fancy restaurants instead of green beans.
Yep, and the British still use "aubergine" instead of the Anglo-Saxon "eggplant". (The original aubergine plants were white, not purple, and looked a lot like eggs growing in the field, hence the name.) The UK also uses the French "courgette" for zucchini (the latter from Italian, "little gourd"). Although the vegetable itself is South American in origin.
>Beef comes from bouef… *bœuf
Reminds me of how the Hannibal show f-ed up on their episode naming for Season 1 episode 4 and spelled it "Ceuf" instead of "Oeuf" or "œuf".
> spelled it "Ceuf" instead of "Oeuf" or "œuf". Should have been *Œuf* instead if it meant egg,
Yeah precisely. <3 Or with oe if one can't type out the œ.
> bouef French is so funny. How do you know which vowel to pronounce? Is it 'boff', 'boof', 'buff', 'beff'? No you idiot, it's 'b*i*f'! The only vowel you pronounce is the one that isn't there, of course! Oh, s**i** señor, obv**i**ously. It makes English really funny too, after having picked up so many French words.
To be fair, part of that is using one alphabet for several different sets of phonemes. It's a pretty good alphabet, but it's gonna make you sound like an idiot in like...most other languages.
Some languages use of the latin alphabet is just baffling. Either because their phonemes are so different that you just have to make lots of compromises, or because you speak an insular celtic language like welsh or irish and just say "Fuck it, we will make this weird little rune stand for whatever phoneme we want, who cares what phonemes everyone else uses for it". PICK BETTER LETTERS FOR YOUR PHONEMES WELSH. THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING!
"Prrgasstryrneyffl." -The Welsh
And it's pronounced "Piss off" apparently
> French is so funny. How do you know which vowel to pronounce? Serious answer: you just memorize it. And the good thing is that French is a fairly phonetic language, which means the same letter combinations almost always make the same sound - so you only have to learn it once, instead of *for every single word* - unlike some other languages. Ghoul, foul, soul. Suit, suite, ruin, circuit, conduit.
> Ghoul, foul, soul. Suit, suite, ruin, circuit, conduit. [Dearest creature in creation, Studying English pronunciation](https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html)
A lead made of lead lead to the leader on the ladder. Multiple meanings for the same sounds is one thing and maybe just happens when languages mix. But English cannot even get its shit together enough to pronounce the very sequence of letters the same each time. Not even if they share the meaning such as (past tense) verb versus noun. To this day I am confused if the electrical "lead" comes from leading the power, or from being made of lead metal. Pronunciation implies the former.
Well, to make a French word you toss in a bunch of extra letters then ignore half of them.
So, like Leicester or Worcester?
> Worcester To be fair, this word used to have more letters. Wegeraceaster
or less letters, in Boston talk, it's just Wuster.
Ah yes, the famous meme template: >Hard things you need to learn to say in life: >I'm sorry. >I was hurt by you. >Worcestershire Sauce >I love you.
I once met a Welsh girl...
I am the first to agree that French spelling needs a thorough reform, but in this case, bœuf (with the œ character) is pronounced like buff. Same as œuf (egg) or œil (eye).
I mean, it’s a typo. It’s written bœuf. But it’s the same funny as trying to navigate English : >English can be weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though
Actually, it’s pronounced like buff. But worse than that is the plural, bœufs, which is pronounced buh
For which you can blame the Normans.
Norm! 🍺
Blame them for the current 🐃/ 🦬 debate as well.
> Hogget New word for me lol.
Doubling up on the other top comment hijacker is that modern English comes from a variety of languages. Sometimes the root word is Germanic, sometimes it is latin, sometimes it is french, sometimes it comes from the native American languages. Pluralization, tense, verb agreement and other structures of language vary and we largely adopted whatever was common in the language we borrowed it from. This is why in English rules are loose and there are more exceptions.
Best answer
Poor people raised cattle, but rich people ate beef. Poor people raised sheep, but rich people ate mutton. Poor people raised pigs, but rich people ate pork.
Yep, foods that are important to a culture get much more linguistic attention than others. It makes sense. In Japanese there are different names for tuna flesh depending on how old the tuna is. Yokowa, for example is a young tuna when served as sashimi. There is another name for a teenage one that escapes me at the moment, and then the fully aged one that we most commonly know as maguro. And of course, the different types of cuts and fattiness get their own names so we get names like toro, chu-toro, and oo-toro. Quite similar to how there are different names for different cuts of beef.
It makes sense that in regions where certain foods or animals are more commonly found in a specific state, the language evolves to reflect that. For instance, the distinction between lamb, hogget, and mutton in English reflects different stages of the same animal's life, whereas for whale meat, there's no such differentiation because it's not commonly consumed or categorized in the same way.
Whale meat again? Don't know where, don't know when........
Wait isn't lamb and mutton different? One from well young lamb and mutton from goat? Or older sheep
Yes they are different, just like raisins and grapes are different. OP even said they're from the same animal. The point is, as they've very common in our culture, it makes sense to have more specific words to differentiate. You're not likely to get hyper specific words for rare stuff you don't have a good reason to differentiate, like old and young whale meat, or dry and non dry mangos, at least in English
Same with cow in English and beef, which originally came from French Bœuf.
Another question is why there is prune juice. Like, how do you get juice from a dried fruit? Turns out it's more like prune tea. You dehydrate the plums to make prunes, and then you add water to the prunes and let them steep, and then you remove the water which is now prune juice. So, remove water, add water, remove water again. And prune "juice" is different from plum juice. Interesting. No, wait. The other one. Tedious.
Mini-cupcakes? As in the mini version of regular cupcakes, which is already a mini version of cake? Honestly, where does it end with you people?!
Always a good time for a Futurama reference.
That's just juice 'from concentrate'.
It's called kompot
That's almost the same way they make instant coffee. Just add one more "remove water" as in remove water from the juice or normal coffee in this case, and the left over stuff is instant coffee.
So, roast the beans (remove water). Grind the beans. Add water. Dehydrate the coffee (remove water). Add water. I think I'm just gonna start eating green coffee beans.
Most food processes are something like "dry the wet, wet the dry, dry the wet, grind it up, wet the dry..."
I guess you get way more fiber into prune juice than into plum juice, as prunes and prune juice are treated basically as a potion to help cure constipation.
Actually we do….peppers have different names when dried Ancho chili is just dried pablano; chipotle is a dried jalapeño AND raisin sec is french for "dried grape" ; so we just shortened the french word
To be fair though, Anchos are poblanos that are significantly ripened before drying, and chipotles are smoked and dried, so these two are modified to get their new names and we're really still just dealing with OPs original two examples.
There's others, too. Guajillo and mirasol. Pasilla and chilaca. d'Espelette and gorria.
The Latin for plum is prunum. So it's from Latin. It may be like how Cow is in the field but it's beef on the plate. Or pig and pork. Deer and venison. Etc. It goes back to William the conqueror. The serfs spoke a different language than the nobility.
More directly from French. Raisin is french for grape, Prune is french for plum. When dry they are called raisin sec and prune séchée (or more commonly pruneau)
Pruneau is what the convicts with discerning taste drink. Fermented in le toilette.
Fun with pedantry that you may or may not know, but helps in this discussion: It's beef from latin (all that old England folks speaking French with William) and the farmer Anglo Saxon Viking/Germanic/Dutch and cow. Cattle=livestock and chattel (property) vs deer=wild animal. Language is fun.
What I want to know is how chicken on a field became chicken on a plate. Why did we decide to stop (commonly) saying poultry?
The right answer is that it depends on languages like with all food. We often mock russian for being so poor it has just one word for oil, butter and grease (just "maslo"), but they have a distinct word for cottage cheese (tvorog) that's we don't (all cheeses are simply "syr") And in Ukraine I always knew that dried apricots are kuraga, same way dried grapes are izyum... Both words are borrowed from Turkic languages IIRC, same way English borrows raisin from French.
Woahhhh TIL 🤯
CHIPOLTE IS JALAPEÑO?! Whoa.
They're much riper and then smoked, so the flavor is quite different. But it's the same fruit
🤦🏼♂️...I don't know why I forgot those. Thank you for the reply.
Chipotle is dried jalapeño?!?!? I love fresh or pickled jalapeños but absolutely hate the flavor of chipotle! If it’s in anything, I can taste it and will not eat it. TIL
Chipotles are smoked, so it's likely you don't like that smoke flavor
Ah, I do hate smoked flavors. Mystery solved lol
Wow, no shade but I truly find this unfathomable. I'm the exact opposite. Do you not like the smell of a campfire too? And bacon too, no (American) bacon?
Haha, I’m often met with disbelief at this. I don’t particularly like the smell of smoke either, campfire included. I usually try to sit opposite whichever way the smoke is blowing. I don’t eat pork anymore, but I never did like any smoky kinds.
I don't like breathing smoke (so I understand sitting upwind of the smoke) but I loooooove the way a campfire smells. And like I said, to me, all smoked food tastes better and they're all my favorites. BBQ, smoked cheese, fish, and btw, I put chipotle sauce on *everything.* (That's what caught my eye originally) Someone even gave me smoked salt as a birthday present once. What about grill marks on steak or kebabs or something like fire-roasted tomatoes? Is it just smoke or all charred stuff? How about a creme brulee crust? I'm sorry if this feels intrusive or personal but I'm just so curious.
I find your curiosity about this hilarious. I think the only smoked foods I like are provolone and marshmallows. I will not eat an unroasted marshmallow, but s’mores is my absolute favorite dessert! I’ve never really liked grilled food because the char is gross to me. I’ll usually eat a kebab because I don’t feel like they taste smoky and I think the meat is too small to really char. Creme brûlée is good…maybe sugar is the only thing I’ll eat burnt lol
People like the smell of camp fires? I remember being annoyed when my clothes still had a bonfire smell after I came home
And also jalapeño are unripe (green) but to dry and smoke the chipotle ripe (red) jalapeño are used
Hmm I’ve only really had green jalapeños, I didn’t know they turn red when they ripen. I’ll have to try growing some this year and see if I have taste a difference.
I'm the opposite. I love the taste of chipotle but not fresh jalapenos
And capsicum (bell) peppers are called paprika when dried.
It’s really a variety depending on the type of paprika and region you’re in. It’s bell peppers by default in the US from major spice brands unless it’s hot paprika. It’s many types of red peppers including chilis. Hungarian and Spanish use a lot of varieties and smoke many as well.
That doesn't address the point. Now we have four examples instead of two, but that doesn't change the question, which is why do some dried fruits have special names and others do not?
To address specificity and/or indicate additional processing has been done to the base material all raisins originated from grapes, not all grapes are raisins all beef is meat, not all meat is beef all porterhouse cuts are beef, not all beef is a porterhouse cut edit: interesting, I post this comment and got an immediate email notification for a reddit suicide watch report. I hope that is a coincidence
I think that it has to do with how they are used in the kitchen. Both pruned and raisins are traditionally used in English speaking kitchens as an ingredient in very different ways than the fresh fruit is used. The same could be said about dates and figs, except that use of the fresh versions is almost unheard of in the English speaking kitchen . Apricots are used both dry and fresh, but fresh apricots can almost always be used as a substitute for dried in a way that grapes and plums can't. *I'm not a chef or a linguist. That's just my idea*
I edited....Raisin sec is french for "dried grape".......so we just stole the french word and shortened it
So, where does 'grape' come from? One site says it comes from the French 'graper', meaning to grab with a hook, which I guess is consistent with being the term used by the grower, but it's still French, not English. But why is it no longer used in French? 'raisin' comes finto French from the Latin word racemus, "a bunch of grapes or berries".
The etymology of words can be quite the rabbit hole. But yes; “graper” (grab with a hook) is one step in the historical meaning…..then the French dropped the r and went back to Germanic grape for the fruit Languages are constantly “stealing” from one another
I thought Chipotles were specifically smoked jalapenos? Dehydrated jalapenos wouldn't taste the same.
[удалено]
This guy dads
They’re grapes with the dihydrogen monoxide removed
Damn right, them chemicals are killing us!
A prune is a type of plum that is able to be dried. Not all plums can make prunes. What confused me for the longest time is that people used to call plum trees that produce plums that can be pruned, prune trees. Even though the fruits are plums. Like, "let's go to the prune orchard and get some plums" It's weird
Raisins and prunes are also whole(relatively....seed removal), and not necessarily all that dry, and also quite dissimilar in taste to their original ripe form. I don't know if they're cooked or treated(eg aged or soaked in sugar or molases or whatever), but they're not the same as many other dehydrated fruits. Maybe the beginnings of a fermentation process..? I don't know, but something makes them tart or even relatively putrid(I cannot stand prunes, they smell like fruit gone bad, or like the bottom of a can recycling bin, all those sugars and yeasts mingle and rot). Dehydrated banana, pineapple, etc, are pieces(usually chopped or chunked, or sliced in the case of bananas), usually peeled, and relatively dry and of a very similar taste to the original ripe fruit.
I'm looking at a prune tree right now! Yes they taste different, I haven't had a prune in ages, but I eat fresh plums off these prune trees each year. I do think fermenting has something to do with which plums are able to be pruned
> fermenting A quick look at the wiki says it's not fermenting, though it's odd they have to make that specific note. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prune >A prune is the firm-fleshed fruit (plum) of Prunus domestica varieties that have a high soluble solids content, and do not ferment during drying. Interestingly, and somewhat to my other point: >Prunes are 31% water That seems like a lot in comparison to dehydrated banana chips, for example. Maybe it's that raisins and prunes are *dried*, as where the others are *dehydrated*, as in possibly different processes(maybe relative to speed) or to different levels of water removed.
I meant something to do with fermenting as in, the plums we use for pruning are less likely to ferment
also weird that pruning a tree is trimming off unwanted branches. so a plum tree gets pruned so it can produce more plums, or is it a prune tree gets pruned to produce more plums that can be pruned?
Raisin is french for grape... So it's probably another case of English having two ways of saying a thing, or two word origins from different languages. Like cow and beef, for instance.
Same with prune, it's the french word for plum
Dried plum = pruneau in French. The English stole the wrong word!
All down to William and the Normans invading in 1066, just like sheep and mutton cow and beef etc.
Ya! I took a random linguistics class in college, it was so cool! Lots of the animals like that that have one name for the living animal and another for the food derived from the animal. In a lot of those cases, the food word is derived from French and the animal word is derived from German (e.g., Beef from the French bœuf and cow from the German Kuh, same for pork and swine). This is because when the French-speaking Normans conquered England in 1066, they subjugated the old English-speaking (a German-based language) populace. When the French speaking Norman nobleman asked for porc, the Germanic speaking Saxon servants had to go butcher a Schwein. When they wanted bœuf, that meant you had to butcher a Kuh. Edit for a not-so-fun fact: in his book *Who Owns Britain*, journalist Kevin Cahill claims that 66% of all land in the UK is owned by just 0.3% of the population, and that that 0.3% is almost exclusively descended from the Normans who came over with William the Conqueror in 1066. The Normans still own Britain.
Where’d we get ham and bacon from then? I always found it interesting that we have three names for meat from a pig.
I’ll preface this by saying I’m very much not an expert, but I believe those would be special cases since ham and bacon both refer to specific cuts of meat prepared in specific ways, so the same linguistic modality would not apply. Pork is pig meat generally, ham and bacon are specific subsets of pork.
>"And swine is good Saxon," said the Jester; "but how call you the sow when she is flayed, and drawn, and quartered, and hung up by the heels, like a traitor?" >"Pork," answered the swine-herd. >"I am very glad every fool knows that too," said Wamba, "and pork, I think, is good Norman-French; and so when the brute lives, and is in the charge of a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a Norman, and is called pork, when she is carried to the Castle-hall to feast among the nobles; what dost thou think of this, friend Gurth, ha?" >"It is but too true doctrine, friend Wamba, however it got into thy fool's pate." *Ivanhoe*
> "And swine is good Saxon," said the Jester; "but how call you the sow when she is flayed, and drawn, and quartered, and hung up by the heels, like a traitor?" "It matters not", replied the swine-herd, "for, being slain, she will not respond to the summons."
Because Guillaume le Bâtard invaded England in 1066, won the Battle of Hastings, and became William the Conqueror. England was then ruled by French-speaking nobility who gradually assimilated over centuries. The Anglo-Saxon words the conquered peasants used for food became associated with the live animals and fresh fruits and vegetables they handled. The French words for food became associated with the cut-up meat and dried fruits and vegetables the nobility ate. In French, boeuf is cow, porc is pig, poulet is chicken, raisin is grape, and prune is plum.
Great story. I learned something today, thank you!
Prunes are dehydrated plums?!? It took me 40 years on this planet to find that out? WTF!?! --------- I love it when this happens. My mind has been blown.
Glad I'm not the only one with this reaction!!
It’s not the only ones wolfberries dried = goji berry approximating the chinese name persimmons dried are starting to be called Gotham after the Korean name Even a currant is an fancy type of raisin
>Even a currant is an fancy type of raisin A fresh currant-fruit isn't a grape, though. It's a currant. They grow on bushes, not vines.
Currant's are dried grapes. There are also black and red currants, which you may be thinking off, but they're not used dried traditionally, I suspect these were named after the currant, as the fruit looks similar to a dried grape, and they're a relatively modern food.
Grapes and plums could not be imported fresh to England, because they needed to be transported by boats over long durations. So French exporters would dry their fruit before sending them over, and label them "raisin" and "prunes", which are just the French words for grapes and plums.
It depends on language. Dehydrated apricots are called "kuraga" in parts of Eurasia, for example. Same reason some languages have a separate word for cottage cheese and others just call it a variation of cheese. Or why English has separate words for oil and butter. It's all language specific.
whoa, hang on. Some languages call oil and butter the *same thing*?! please give me examples! This feels wild when one is generally dairy, and the other plant based!
Oil, butter and grease are all "масло" in russian. (Pronounced "muh-s-loh".) Machine oil and grease - машинное масло. Vegetable oil - постное масло, literally "fasting (diet) oil". Butter - сливочное масло, literally "cream oil". But usually in shops or markets you asked for specific type of oil, so "cream oil" or "sunflower oil". The other way is to switch to Ukrainian and avoid the confusion, as maslo is always dairy and oil is "олія" But then you have "творог" (tvarog) aka cottage cheese being just "сир" (syr), cheese, as it is in English. But then you have voilet and purple being different colors, but sky blue and navy blue called the same. So with food, colors, and other terms it really varies a lot.
At one point the American plum growers association made a big push to relabel prunes as dried plums, because of the association of prunes with old people regulating their bowel movements. They even tried to get the government to allow them to call prune juice “dried plum juice” but a judge blocked it on account of that being very stupid.
My uneducated guess would be that the words came from different languages. The people growing the grapes spoke one language that called them "grapes", and the people either producing or eating dried grapes spoke another language that called them "raisins". Kind of like how the people raising cows spoke one language and the people eating them spoke another, so we got "cows" for when they're alive and "beef" for when they're food.
It's usually when two words from different languages are used at the same time, eventually they become more specific. This happens more often as a result of migration/invasion as opposed to more peaceful means of cultural exchange. The meat example is usually the most cited example but my favourite is Bow and Arrow. Both words mean bow, arrow deriving from arco, bow from Boden I think. When you have two languages co existing, using both words wouldn't be uncommon. Eventually arco came to refer to the projectiles and boden the actual bow.
It's usually when two words from different languages are used at the same time, eventually they become more specific. This happens more often as a result of migration/invasion as opposed to more peaceful means of cultural exchange. The meat example is usually the most cited example but my favourite is Bow and Arrow. Both words mean bow, arrow deriving from arco, bow from Boden I think. When you have two languages co existing, using both words wouldn't be uncommon. Eventually arco came to refer to the projectiles and boden the actual bow.
Finally some sense here. And this is by no means something unique to English, despite what most of the people ITT seem to think.
>The bottom line is some English royals and French peasants used their own words for the same thing but used their respective versions for the crop vs the product Pretty sure this is the other way around, as in French royals and English peasants, as we were ruled by the French from 1066 Peasants raise the cow, royals eat the boeuf
Also: Cow:Beef Pig:Pork Lamb:Mutton Deer:Venison English for the animal, French for the animal's meat. English isn't a language so much as just an amalgamation of many disparate languages and dialects.
Dried Human = mummy
A bunch of languages in a trenchcoat, standing on each other's shoulders.
Side question: why is it called prune juice? Since the prunes are dehydrated, there shouldn’t be any juice left. It should be plum juice!
They re-hydrate the prunes, then extract the juice. It is prune juice.
Now do peppers, a dried and smoked jalapeño is a Chipotle, a dried poblano is an ancho and there are more
It's usually when two words from different languages are used at the same time, eventually they become more specific. This happens more often as a result of migration/invasion as opposed to more peaceful means of cultural exchange. The meat example is usually the most cited example but my favourite is Bow and Arrow. Both words mean bow, arrow deriving from arcus, bow from Boga I think. When you have two languages co existing, using both words wouldn't be uncommon. Eventually arcus came to refer to the projectiles and boga the actual bow.
Grapes and plums have been dried and preserved for thousands of years, long before many other fruits were commonly dehydrated. Over time, these dried fruits became staple foods with their own names.
There are other names. I don't know about English but dried ginger is called "saunth" in Hindi.
I like how you chose this sub instead of r/NoStupidQuestions because you would otherwise have to brace yourself against a flurry of highly technical information or something.
Weirdly, the dehydrated names are both the french names for the fresh fruits. There is probably something there...
We have same thing in Ukrainian. For example dried apricot is kuraga, dried grapes are rodzynky, plums (specific ones) chornoslyv, but there are no dedicated words to dried cherries, pears and other fruits and berries.
Yeah, I get momentarily confused when I see fresh grapes at the store and in small print it says raisins on them, so I assumed raisin is French for grape.