frangipani

In the sixteenth century, the custom of the baissemain--that is, greeting a superior by kissing her hand--was still common in French aristocratic circles. For Muzio Frangipani, an Italian Marquis living in Paris, the one drawback of this quaint custom was that the fingers of his French acquaintances did not smell as sweetly as they might. To solve this embarrassing problem, Frangipani invented an almond-scented perfume for gloves, one that was soon odoriferizing the dainty digits of French aristocrats everywhere. So popular was this new almond-based glove-perfume that Parisian chefs borrowed its name, frangipani, and bestowed it on an almond-flavoured cream used in making pastries and desserts. Later on, in the mid-nineteenth century, the name of this almond-flavoured cream eventually made its way into English, where it is now sometimes loosely used as a name for any pastry made with ground almonds.

what is an ort?

an ort was originally a scrap of food or leftover fodder not eaten by cattle or pigs. The word then came to be applied to leftovers from the kitchen table, leftovers that were also known as relief or relics. Ort appeared in the mid fifteenth century as a compound of the prefix oor, meaning not, and etan, meaning to eat; quite literally, therefore, orts are the uneaten scraps of a meal.

mark morton is the author of Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities (Insomniac Press, 2004). His most recent books are The Lover's Tongue: A Merry Romp through the Language of Love and Sex and The End: Closing Words for a Millennium. He teaches English and Learning Technologies at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

previous orts:
aperitif
flummery
runcible spoon
mezzaluna
fletcherize
abligurition
cornucopia
banyan day
spurtle
appetite
plague-water
nym
spork