Ladyfingers & Nun's Tummies: A Lighthearted Look at How Foods Got Their Names

by Martha Barnette

artha Barnette casts hundreds of words into etymological history and reels in the whimsical tales of how foods have been named. Every food has a story to tell, whether it's graham crackers or the common leaf of lettuce, whose name contains its surprising origin. 10 illustrations.

Genres: Nonfiction, Food, Language, History, Food History, Reference, Foodie

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

I’ve cohosted “A Way with Words,” the public radio show and podcast about words and how we use them, for 21 years now! My new book Friends with Words is a warm, witty memoir about the joys of language and the power of words to connect us.

Reviews

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I REALLY wanted to like this book - I was super excited to read it and thought that it would be everything I loved wrapped up in one delightful package. There was a lot of valuable information in it, but the writing drove me nuts. To me, it read like a high school essay, with endless redundancies, formulaic introductions to each chapter, and so many tangents on non-food related topics that the book would have been much, much shorter if they had all been edited out. In my opinion, the majority of the already brief book was padded. The tangents would have been interesting, but better suited to the random footnotes that already peppered the book without any real method or reason. And I felt annoyed by the author describing nearly every food with sentences like "Beef Stroganoff is named after a Russian diplomat who popularized the creamy beef dish".* It felt like every sentence was structured this way, with the decription of the "dish" (always "dish") at the end. Maybe it's unfair for me to have disliked this because I read and know a lot about food, and a casual reader may have needed a description of the food to understand, but surely she could have found alternate methods of describing it besides the same sentence over and over again. Perhaps she could have also found other ways to further the paragraph besides saying "And speaking of [insert previous topic]" or "Incidentally" in every paragraph. As far as I could tell from the book, she had a formula on how to structure the entire thing and then just plugged in the relevant information, much like a math equation. I'm giving it 2 stars because it really did have a lot of interesting facts and she clearly did a lot of research, but because the writing distracted me so much, I can remember next to none of it. Oh well. I'll find a better food etymology book someday.

*This sentence isn't verbatim from the book - I had to return my copy before I wrote this review, but the sentence is meant to illustrate the type of structure that came up so, so very often.

[Stephanie Pieck · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author conducts readers on a delicious and meandering tour of food names and words with food-related origins.Whether she's describing foods named for goddess's tits or goat turds; explaining how lasagna is linked to the lowly chamber pot; or making surprising connections between the "demon fart" of pumpernickel bread and the discovery of cobalt, Barnett's wit, intelligence, and passion for language sparkle on every page.

[Irene · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author catalogues hundreds of foods from around the globe and identifies their etymological roots. Often, she lists other words that are related. Many of these foods were unfamiliar to me. I expected humorous or quirky stories but this read more like dictionary entries. This is a book best picked up and glanced at an entry or two at a time. Unfortunately, it was a library book, so I read it straight through.

[Owl · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the middle of the book, I was like - I think this is boring, like an encyclopedia is boring. It was a list short articles under oddly arbitrary categories.

But immediately after I was done, I ended up sharing all sorts of fun trivial facts from the book. So, actually, I'm really glad I read it.

[Anna Katharine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun, meandering collections of words at the intersection of food and etymology. In languages ancient and modern, Barnette groups food words by themes and shares some unexpected relationships. I wouldn't recommend reading this cover-to-cover, but it's perfect to leave lying around to pick up for a few minutes' distraction.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

An etymological look at how foods were named with a lot of linguistic information regarding word origins, deviations and related words.
Barnette, using history, culture, folklore and science reveals the stories behind the names we give to the foods we eat along.

[Adrienne · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was an entertaining read, but some of its claims were not quite accurate which kind of spoiled it for me.

[Cade]

This book would have been much more enjoyable had it been formatted like a dictionary. As it is, it’s just not pleasant to read, which is a shame.

[Blissfulreader · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you enjoy languages and food, this book is a real treat--entertaining with some surprising linguistic connections. The historical references and the author's writing style are satisfying.

[MaryMargaret]

Very fun reading! Loved sharing the sources of words with my friends and coworkers! Thanks for putting it all together!

[Kayoc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun read. Tons of trivia and information

[Phyllis Barlow · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay, when it takes me over two weeks to read a book that's only 200 pages long, there's a problem. I love reading about word origins, and food origins, even better. But this one....it was a bit too scholarly for my taste. Too much history and too many footnotes. It was billed as a "light-hearted look at food" but this was anything but. I am not sorry I read it because I did learn some interesting facts about food/word origins, but it was just too dense. I could only read about half of a chapter and put it down and go read something like People magazine to clear my head. If you like books with lots of footnotes and lots of details you will like this, but if you just want a breezy read that touches on food terms, this is not for you.

[Maria (Ri) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This had some real gems in it. I liked that I could read it at a leisurely pace between other books as well and not lose the story. It's good to have a book you can put down and pick up again off and on. I especially liked the little part about raspberry tarts. That cockney expression has made it into my vocabulary now!

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Actually I just read the first chapter. I thought it would be right up my alley: a lighthearted look into the history of funny food names. Unfortunately it reads like an encyclopedia entry: heavy on the facts, light on the fun.

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an interesting book, but it was not really organized. The author jumps around quite a bit. The book needed better editing.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of interesting. A great book for falling asleep. Occasional hilarity.

[Marian Robinson]

A book for foodies and linguaphiles, this is a well-researched look into how different foods got their names. Definitely underscores the international roots of English as a language, but also how intertwined our global languages and cultures are.