I spent 10-20 minutes trying to explain how cool it was to my manager and he nodded and said "Good for you" and kept telling me about New York Times news alerts so I guess it is probably not for everyone but as I said, A book about words and food! What's better than this!

When the women prep the food and discuss ingredients with final touches, you can visualize it on a tray with its tasty aroma filling the house. The atmosphere of the cookery evokes your senses of taste and smell. When Eliza savors the six course French dinner, she eats it so slowly devouring its intricacies and complexities to a point that you want to grab that food and taste it yourself. The friendship between two women makes you want to join them in their endeavors. I've noticed how the creation of verse mirrors the creations of the kitchen - the sense of being truly alive, the utter concentration so that one exists solely in the moment of exertion. These apply equally when I prepare a dish or when I write a recipe and must use the perfect prose." (pp.214-5)However, the women's contentedness is threatened when Eliza receives a marriage proposal from aging but sympathetic spice merchant Edwin Arnott. Should she accept his offer and submit to her pre-ordained future as a well-to-do society wife, thereby relinquishing any hope of the social and financial independence she craves? Or will a scandalous secret from her past threaten her future and all the plans she and Ann have? The story is about Eliza Acton and Ann Kirby her assistant. They are cooks and working on what will be the greatest British Cook Book of all time. Eliza changed the way that cookery books were written and how cooks after her presented their recipes. In a nutshell, she was the woman who changed the face of baking and cookery books by listing the ingredients separately at the start of the recipe. Seems like common sense today but then it was revolutionary as no-one had thought of it before. The idea behind this story is pretty good, but with the modern twists and the controversial characteristic features of the protagonists, there were too many things that irked me. And it’s the first book about food that did not urge me to eat or to try some new recipes. True, there were some recipes that I wanted to see how they are written down nowadays (with pictures and all), and some recipes reminded me of my first mouthful of that particular food, but I did not want to eat it again or make it.How the sikbaj of Persia (sweet-n-sour stewed beef with sweet vinegar in it) became a fish dish like ceviche, fish & chips, tempura, escabeche, aspic – sailors’ help c.10th century; the influence of fish-during-Lent, the conquest of Peru, Portuguese Jesuits in Japan, of Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews in Britain. As a frequent reader of historical fiction, it is common to encounter dual timelines these days, which is okay most of the time, but not really my favorite, which was why I enjoyed the format the author used in this novel. Instead of a dual timeline, she used dual first-person narratives from the same time period. This made the story much more effective for me. It was interesting. It made me realize a lot of things. I mean, they've always been there but I've never perceived them before. Of course, some things make sense only in English (the longer the words, the pricier the object will be), but some of them are applicable in Italian as well. Why a sauce, for exemple, should be real, for instance. I mean, I really hope the tomato sauce the restaurant is using is real. If it needs to write it down, it makes me wonder. Ann Kirby is hired as her assistant cook and the two develop a friendship outside of the normal social class boundaries. As the two women's friendship develops, we see Ann looking up to Eliza as she is taught about not only cooking but about poetry, life skills and love. Eliza has become a real mentor to her. The author did a good job highlighting women's roles during this time period and society's expectations. It was something she was able to explore a bit not just with the two leads but some of the other female supporting characters as well.

The Language of Food is an enthralling historical fiction novel, based around the life of Victorian poet and cookery book writer Eliza Acton (1799-1859). Outside the UK and Australia, the book has been published as Miss Eliza's English Kitchen: A Novel of Victorian Cookery and Friendship. All this calling food by seductive names has been going on a long time. In 1066, when the Normans (who were originally Norsemen) defeated the English, they brought with them French, which became the language for the upper classes. But everyone soon adopted these upscale words for food - pork, not pig, boeuf - beef - for cow, mouton - mutton - for sheep. Latterly we say 'jus' rather than gravy, and often 'cuisine' rather than cooking. A menu written in French will be presumed to be of higher class, better cooking and more expensive than a similar one in English. The writing is deliciously suggestive but also funny on occasion, as in this observation from Ann Kirby early on in the novel:

In thirteen (a baker’s dozen) readable chapters, Stanford linguist Dan Jurafsky shows what happens when linguists study the language of food. Combining etymological research and contemporary linguistic theory, the book offers a readable history of such staples as ketchup, turkey, salad, sushi, macaroni, sherbet, and even broader concepts like entrée and dessert. His well-researched vignettes provide something for readers to chew over, while the computational insights are surprise ingredients. We learn about the etymological relationship between salad, salsa, slaw, sauce and salami, for example, and between macaroons, macarons, and macaroni (and how the famous line from “Yankee Doodle Dandy” came about). Told in alternate voices, this novel brings endearing friendship, the joy of cookery and creativity with food; and with limited options for spinsters, it also means certain independence.