MediumAlphabet Soup — A Culinary Lexicon of the Ridiculous | by Linda Lum | Sep, 2026 | Tastyble
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Alphabet Soup — A Culinary Lexicon of the Ridiculous

6 min readSep 21, 2026

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Photo by Vadim Bogulov on Unsplash

Food is universal, but the words we use for it can be wonderfully strange. Across kitchens and cultures, cooks have coined terms that sound quirky, funny, or even a bit risque.

Don’t worry; this isn’t a dry dictionary. Just for you, I’ve assembled a playful A‑to‑Z of wacky food words — a culinary alphabet that proves language can be as flavorful as the dishes themselves. So, read and be amused, utilize these when playing Scrabble, or recall them for that next Trivia Game!

en accolade of sandwich (Image by Aline Ponce from Pixabay)

Accolade — According to my Funk and Wagnalls, this is an award, an honor. But en accolade is when one presents two foods on a plate leaning against each other. (You probably won’t see this at McDonald’s.)

Affriter— We are not referring to one fritter (as opposed to two or more). Affriter is a French term in which you season a pan by rubbing it with salt, or heating a bit of oil in the pan and then drying it with a cloth.

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Linda Lum
Linda Lum

Written by Linda Lum⁠

I write about culinary history and the way foods connect us, blending history, personal narrative, and story telling—because food is never just food.

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