Romaine Wasn't Built in a Day: The Delightful History of Food Language

by Judith Tschann

"A truly delightful smorgasbord of history and linguistics that kept us entertained—and made us hungry."
—Apple Books

"Scrumptious...This book was meant to be devoured."
—Roy Peter Clark, author of  Murder Your Darlings

Romaine calm and read on for a deliciously detailed digest of food language throughout time from celebrated linguist and historian Judith Tschann that is guaranteed to "make you a hit at dinner parties" ( New York Times ).

Food and words—we rely on both to sustain our daily lives. We begin each morning hungry for nourishment and conversation, and our happiest moments and fondest memories are often filled with ample servings of both.

Food historian Judith Tschann celebrates this glorious intersection of linguistic and culinary affinities with  Romaine Wasn't Build in a Day , an irresistibly charming and deliciously decadent romp through the history of food words. On the hunt for the hidden stories behind hundreds of dishes and ingredients we take for granted, Tschann takes us on an expedition through the centuries and around the world, illuminating the ways in which language is always changing, ever-amusing, and entirely inseparable from culture, history, identity, and such as: Full of endless morsels of fascination for word nerds and foodies alike,  Romaine Wasn't Built in a Day  will beguile history buffs, captivate crossword fiends, satiate Scrabble nerds, and feed our fondness for our two favorite pastimes: eating and talking. 

Genres: Nonfiction, Food, History, Language, Audiobook, Linguistics, Cookbooks

240 pages, Hardcover

Published February 21, 2023

Reviews

[Petra X]

In ancient Egypt, 4,000 years ago, Romaine lettuce which grows tall and straight and oozes a white sap, was considered a uh hmm you know, male-part symbol and dedicated to the god of fertility, Min. It was considered an aphrodisiac so probably a green salad was a very popular evening dish. I must say I'd never seen lettuce as a phallic symbol before. I wondered if people buying lots of lettuce in the Egyptian markets got side glances and hurhurhur jokes made to them?

The origin of computer cameras

One day in 1991 at Cambridge University, a researcher needed a cup of coffee. Battling eyestrain and foggy brain (one imagines), he trudged down the hall, up the stairs, around the corner, up another flight of stairs, and on and on to the coffeemaker that was stationed in the corridor outside the computer lab’s Trojan Room. Alas, the so-called Trojan coffeepot was empty.

To guard against caffeine disappointment in the future, a couple of plucky researchers thought up a plan. They focused a camera on the pot and connected the feed to a video frame grabber in the Trojan Room, then created a program that allowed researchers to see a frequently updated image of the coffeepot. No more wasted to-ing and fro-ing to check on the coffee supply. Thus, the serendipitous but nevertheless spectacular invention of what eventually became the webcam, now used by zillions of Zoomers, FaceTimers, and other lookers every day.

The live feed remained active for a decade, and the coffeepot became so famous that when it was retired, it sold on eBay for thousands of pounds. The coffeepot is now living out its retirement in a German museum.

The book is a mixture of erudite etymology, strange connections between words, odd humour and even challenge questions, 'make a cocktail, write the ingredients in the margin'. It's good but I wish it was either less light humour and more solid etymology, or conversely, light and humorous perhaps the linguistic equivalent of Mary Roach and her popscience books.

[Manybooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Indeed and yes, there definitely is a lot of both enlightening and fun cultural, historical and also linguistic information concerning both common and not so common food and drink items to be found in Judith Tschann's 2023 book Romaine Wasn't Built in a Day: The Delightful History of Food Language. And yes, I certainly have to a point enjoyed my reading time, with me especially appreciating owning the hardcover and not the Kindle edition of Romaine Wasn't Built in a Day: The Delightful History of Food Language (since I have been doing a lot of flipping back and forth, which is easy enough to do with a so-called dead tree book, but rather frustrating at best with electronic versions).

But sorry, even though Tschann certainly provides a plethora of interesting and at times also quite humorous food and beverage related facts and details in Romaine Wasn't Built in a Day: The Delightful History of Food Language, that her writing, that her words are easy to understand, engagingly/entertainingly penned both for reading Romaine Wasn't Built in a Day: The Delightful History of Food Language from cover to cover and equally so for just browsing and skimming through for quick reference, that Romaine Wasn't Built in a Day: The Delightful History of Food Language features a good and useable index and also includes a nicely decent and user-friendly bibliography, well, considering the book title's claim of dealing with language history in particular, I do have to admit having been linguistically speaking left pretty much and sadly disappointed and frustrated with what Judith Tschann is presenting and featuring content wise with regard to linguistics. For while Tschann does happily (and also correctly to a point) make use of etymology (word origins), she generally with regard to her featured text in Romaine Wasn't Built in a Day: The Delightful History of Food Language (and at least in my humble opinion) almost never goes far enough back in time so to speak, and thus often tends to give the rather strange and problematic impression that in particular food and drink words which have come from Old English just stop there, to have basically had their actual origin with Old English, when in fact Old English (like Old High German, Old Dutch etc.) are all Germanic and also Indo-European languages and that the etymology of items like eggs, bread, apples, beer and other basics thus of course goes both much further back than Old English and also has cognates throughout most of Europe and also in India, Afghanistan. Iran (basically everywhere an Indo-European language is spoken).

And honestly, for Judith Tschann not to consider this, to only very rarely textually go back to Proto-Germanic and to Proto-Indo-European regarding the etymologies she is using and to almost never show non English language cognates either (Dutch, German, Swedish, Russian etc.), yes, this certainly makes Romaine Wasn't Built in a Day: The Delightful History of Food Language linguistically speaking majorly academically lacking and inferior for me and definitely not all that delightful either (to use the words of the book title), only a two star book (at least for me personally) and that I would recommend Romaine Wasn't Built in a Day: The Delightful History of Food Language ONLY with substantial reservations and certainly not if a potential reader is actually looking for a book that is linguistically solid and goes far enough with questions of word word origins (not to mention that with the books on etymology Judith Tschann is listing in her bibliographies and that there are also really good and solid online etymology search engines available, I really do not understand why much of the linguistic elements of Romaine Wasn't Built in a Day: The Delightful History of Food Language are so sparse and lacking and in particular so since Tschann as an emeritus professor should most definitely know better).

Finally (although this is just or at least mostly a rather minor issue with Romaine Wasn't Built in a Day: The Delightful History of Food Language for me), I also kind of do consider the book title itself a bit misleading, since it seems to insinuate that Judith Tschann will be writing about food language in general (and as such also on a global scale) but that the text for Romaine Wasn't Built in a Day: The Delightful History of Food Language is actually not only mostly English-centric but also tends to kind of adhere to an English language superiority attitude (and which I do consider rather annoying, as I was in fact from the book title expecting a much more international thematics and contents from Romaine Wasn't Built in a Day: The Delightful History of Food Language, although I do admit that am likely being just a wee bit overly picky here and maybe using a proverbial fine toothed critical comb simply because of my frustration and disappointment about Judith Tschann's lack of etymological rigour for Romaine Wasn't Built in a Day: The Delightful History of Food Language).

[Chloe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn't really what I wanted this book to be. Maybe I'm just an English etymology nerd, but I felt like this book went way too wide and shallow. I also thought the writing style seemed kind of stilted and simple. Fun for someone who just wants a very brief foray into etymology.

[Christine LaBatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting dive into the origins of food words! The author goes through meal by meal (with some interludes) and shows the origin of words like bread, coffee, and more. I really enjoyed this book - it was easy to read, and I learned a lot!

I received my copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Ellen V · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars, but barely.

Interesting information, but it just felt like it was throwing disjointed information at me with no narrative to support the structure of the book.

[Caylie Ratzlaff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC of this novel. 4/5 stars.

As someone who suffered gleefully through a history of the English language class in college (and then wished that there had been more linguistic classes and even considered doing an advanced degree in linguistics) this book was an absolute delight. Not only did I learn WAY more than I ever need to know about food and words and even words not relating to food, but it's also humorous and relatively easy to digest (food pun unintended) for those who may not have a linguistic background.

I also like how it was short, brief explanations of the etymology and I also liked all the history (and honestly, the adultness) that was tied in. Will I retain most of this information? No, but some of it will stick when I inevitably have more weird facts to add to my one I already had about linguini meaning little tongues (not only was this from my professor BUT this book also has a section on what pasta names mean...without linguini though).

I did deduct a star though because quite a bit of it felt like an etymological ramble and sometimes the train of thought would start somewhere and end up at a completely different thing and it was hard to follow the progression (tbh, some of them needed flow charts) but this was a delight. I would definitely recommend reading in small, bite size chunks though. (that pun was intended).

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of fun facts! Hope I can actually remember some of them :D

[Jessica - How Jessica Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

A funny, irreverent dive into the history of many common food and drink names. Plus bonus tips: like did you know that “Chicago” is derived from the Miami-Illinois word for “Wild leeks”?

Word nerds and cooks alike will enjoy this!

[Christina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Light and fluffy. Does not dig deeply in to the topic but if you are unfamiliar with etymology, it’s probably a decent starting place.

[zozo]

Thank. you Judith for helping me read something it's been tough, you know?

Anyways I'm choosing to DNF because I've lost interest :(. The introduction about romaine was really interesting and I thought that might be the tone of the rest of the book since it explained its possible origins in a really fun way but this is more a reference book than anything as a bunch of other reviews have pointed out. There's nothing wrong with that, I just got tired of reading the words Old Germanic Old French, and Latin 100 times. I also wish the words had been categorized differently since they don't seem to follow much of an order.

[Megan Sager · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 ⭐️ - Lots of words explaining the origin of other words. 😵‍💫 Probably won’t retain any of this information. Etymology this, morphology that. Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Arabic, I am overwhelmed. Scientific Latin roots are enough for me, I don’t need any more taking up space in my brain. This was still fun though! Just very dense.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful if you love food, history and language.

[Hannah]

This is fun!

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pleasant and enjoyable way to pass the time for a few moments every day if you like word origins. Which I do.

[Kelsey Krueger · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful romp in etymology! I did the audio version and I am very happy I did as I was able to hear the correct pronunciation of the words versus trying to guess who they should sound. The audio reader was pleasant to listen to, as well.

[M Delea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whether you are interested in food, language, history, or—like me—all three, you will find this book enjoyable. The author digs into the etymological histories of a variety of foods, meals, drinks, and food-related phrases. Fun fact—American English has words from approximately 350 languages! Chew on that!

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting etymology and history of words about food.

[Leigh Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful surprise: Tschann mentions not just signing but also ProTactile in the first paragraph of the Intro. Great inclusion! Most scholars still leave it at speech.

While it does seem odd to come across it in a book about English etymology (in that signed languages and ProTactile are generally unrelated to spoken languages), it’s nice to be thought of nonetheless.

Bonus: An American Sign Language - English pun, for your pleasure: if you sign MILK while moving your hand from one side of your face to the other, you sign PAST-YOUR-EYES MILK (pasteurized milk).

[Kathryn E-E · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather than marketing it as a history of language, it should be marketed as a reference book

[Erin Bomboy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Romaine Wasn’t Built in a Day is witty romp through the lexicon of food. There’s too much to absorb in one reading, but I left amused at how many foods are named after men’s testicles. I also learned that pumpernickel, my favorite kind of bread, loosely means farting dunderhead. I won’t forget that the next time I order it.

[Tonya Woodbury · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was exactly what it promised to be, no more and no less. What it promised to be was the history of a lot of food words strung together, and that’s exactly what it did. It says in the introduction that it can be used more as a reference book to look up cool facts to impress at parties or to sate a particular curiosity. I was kind of disappointed that there wasn’t more of a narrative to tie together the whole book, but the individual entries were interesting, although to be honest, I don’t remember any of them now, so I guess they weren’t particularly memorable either.

[The Captain · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ahoy there me mateys! I am a big fan of etymology so I was looking forward to reading this book that discusses the history of food words.  The one sadly walks the plank.  I am not sure if reading this in paperback would have helped but listening to it via audiobook certainly hurt.  I don't believe this is the fault of the narrator,  Alejandra Reynoso.  She had a lot of weird words in lots of languages to speak.  It was nice to hear them pronounced.  There were also some great facts but I don't remember any of them.

There were two major problems - the writing style and the digressions.  The book was broken down by category:

chapter 1 - breakfast - word origins of our morning fare
chapter 2 -  midmorning java break - food origins of computer jargon
chapter 3  - lunch - foods named after people, places, and body parts

Etc.  Even though there were categories, there were many digressions and it felt so disjointed.  It mostly seemed to be a series of long lists.  There was more supposition then I would have liked.  The author also tried to discuss the politics, religion, and gender about some food words but I felt like it was too lightly done.  Many times it felt like going for a laugh rather than an educated discussion.  The book felt too short and ultimately scant for how it was set up in the beginning.  Ultimately I was extremely unsatisfied.  I finished this because I was trapped in a car and couldn't change it for something new.  Can't say I recommend this one.  Arrrr!

[Sarah Bodaly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was an absolute delight to read! I don’t want to see an author picture; I’m imagining her as a delightful cross between the Energizer bunny and the cutest of librarian book nerds, and I will not dash that image. :D
Who ever knew there was such a thing as a food historian, but the other does amazing credit to her calling, and fills the book with trivia, puns, history, humor, and more about every bit of food, seamlessly rabbit-trailing from one topic into the next. There’s even snippets about non-food items that could make someone think they were about food – bits and bytes sound like eating, and did you know that the first webcam was designed to watch a pot of coffee to make sure it wasn’t empty when the engineers down the hall wanted a cup? It’s like a conversation with a long-lost friend where you simply must get everything told, and there’s no time to pause in between stories, and one just runs right into the next. I could happily devour this book again, and while it was a library loan, I wouldn’t mind getting my very own copy just to indulge in its pages.
I should have written this review two weeks ago when the book was fresher in my memory; this brief blurb doesn’t do it justice. If you love food and you love words, and you want an amazingly engaging and interesting light read, get this book!!

[Madelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was definitely an interesting book and I enjoyed listening to it! I learned a lot and liked the narration. I’m a little disappointed with the throw away “connect to the bigger world!” Bit at the end of the book - I feel like it should have had its own section or been more of a theme throughout the book if that was the point she wanted to make. It left the entire book feeling rather incomplete.


I also think that while the etymology of language and specific words is interesting, it doesn’t quite encapsulate the entire “history of food language” as the title claims. There is a lot more to language and linguistics than etymology and while I’m by no means an expert, I definitely know that was lacking. I think it would have been an excellent addition to the book and would have actually helped my understanding of food language.

And I wish dinner and desert were separated into different chapter.

Still enjoyed, probably won’t come back to it though.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

From breakfast to nightcap, have you ever stopped to think of the history of food language? Maybe wondered where the word for your favourite food is from and how it came to be in English language? If so, than this is the book for you!

Judith Tschann has a great writing style and has used it to put a lot of interesting information in a relatively small package. Tschann shows how the history of food words not only sheds light on the history of these foods themselves, but to the connections of many other topics, such as science, politics and religion.

Although, this can at times lead the author to go on seemingly unnecessary tangents and leave other areas needing more detail, I found it to be a very enjoyable and educational read.

Thank you NetGalley, Voracious, and Little, Brown and Company for access to an advance copy to review.

[Betsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always like learning about the etymology of words, so I jumped at the chance to read this new book on food words and where they come from. The book is fun, with words arranged more or less "from soup to nuts." It's the kind of book that is best read a little at a time across a long period,rather than all at once, as one must do when borrowing from the library. Perhaps because of that, I found the writing style a bit stilted. Even so, I enjoyed the book. It was fascinating to see the author's account of all the languages that contributed to the food words she discussed, and the places where those languages are - or were - spoken.

[Denver Public Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

Want to win the next round of culinary trivia? Read Romaine Wasn't Built in a Day: the Delightful History of Food Language and you'll ace it!! From an explanation of the origin of lemon and lime, to how 'hamburger' became a tech term, to how the term 'happy hour' came into being, every page turn reveals something interesting and enlightening, especially for foodies. Written with wit and humor, readers will be delighted with each chapter, the illustrations by Peter Tschann-Grimm, and the word-lovers appendix.

[Jawahar Surti · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5

If the various food terminologies interest you and you feel inquisitive about the origins of such, this book is for you. One may not be able to recollect all that has been covered in this book but it sure makes an interesting reading. The book is divided into sections like Breakfast, Mid-morning break, Lunch, Happy Hour, Dinner & Nightcaps. The chapters are small and there is no necessity to read them in order. One can open any page and read a chapter and come back another time to go through a different chapter.. or a page or two...

[Popup-ch · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of etymology crammed into a short book.

Tschann seems to know her etymologies, and there's a lot of them in this slim book. She doesn't fall into the common fallacies of claiming e.g. that the Earl of Sandwich _invented_ the sandwich, nor that the roman soldiers were _paid in salt_. Instead she recounts a lot of short etymologies, without giving very much background. If I had one wish, it would be for the book to have fewer but deeper etymologies. (Only in a few cases are the earliest usages mentioned.) But that would probably have made for a less browseable book.

[Alexandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

fun for me to hear about so many different eat-ymologies

“Borrowed words and loaned words are traditional terms for words that are introduced into one language from a different one. The terms borrow and loan are not quite logical here, since a word can’t simply be returned like a library book.”

“The word Ghrelin was coined in the 1990s from gh (or growth hormone) rel (for releasing) and in. Hormone comes from the Greek hormon, impel, set in motion… the hormone leptin (from Greek leptos: thin) tells us when we’re full.”