pemmican

The aboriginal people of North America made pemmican by drying strips of bison meat or venison, pounding them with some berries into a powder, mixing the powder with melted fat, and then storing the resulting lump in a little bag made from the skin of the animal. Although early pioneers did not like the taste of pemmican, they recognized its nutritional value. First recorded in English in the early eighteenth century, pemmican derives from the Cree name for the food, pimihkaxn; this word in turn derives from two Proto-Algonquian words--pemy, meaning "grease," and hkexw, meaning "make."

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