SAUCEAT

Going back at least to the early seventeenth century in Poland, bagels were given as presents to women who had just given birth; this doughy gift nourished the exhausted mother, but the shape of the bagel-a yonic ring-may also have represented the cycle of life newly embodied by mother and child. The name of this bun did not enter English until 1932 when it was adopted from Yiddish. In turn, the..

Anyone who has fondled her way through a boiled, buttered artichoke knows that this vegetable is made up of an edible, fleshy base called the heart and an inedible, hairy core called the choke. Infact, most people suppose that the so reverse is true: the word artichoke came first, entering English in the early sixteenth century, and only eighteenth century, as the heart and choke. In other words..

The word anchovy was introduced to English in 1596 by Shakespeare, who made the tiny fish a favourite of his most corpulent character, Flastaff. The word anchovy comes from Basque, a language spoken in parts of Spain and France but related to no other language in the world. The Basque source of anchovy-anchoa, meaning dry-was probably bestowed upon the fish because they are usually dried and sal..