As I labour in the spice mines of East Indian cooking, I have come across a curious one, made of a resinous gum extract from the rhizomes of a palm tree. It has a strong and bitter taste but, when cooked with other ingredients, produces a flavour a bit like onions and/or garlic and with the nose of a truffle. Some sources call it asafetida and others asafoetida. Why? And which is better?
From the taxonymic nomeclatura Ferula asafoetida. The variance is probably due to the same reason that some write foetus instead of fetus. The extra panache the old Latin diphthong gives. (/Oj/ over /i:/ ~ /E/.) The etymology of the Persian asa 'resin' and Latin foetida 'fetid'.
It strikes me as passing odd that (1) a Persian bit would be grafted onto a Latin bit to make an English word and (2) that anything designed to be eaten would contain the word/root for "stinky."
On second thought, I think there was a children's book years ago called something like "The Stinky Cheese Man."
It strikes me as passing odd ... that anything designed to be eaten would contain the word/root for "stinky."
FS, do you not eat stinky cheese? Thats what folks commonly call blue cheeses.
Actually, I do eat a variety of strongly odored cheeses but I don't think I ever referred to any of them as "stinky."