食物語言的奧秘

Robert Siegel （Host）： Where did 1）ketchup come from？ How about ice cream or 2）macaroni？ And what does macaroni have to do with 3）macaroons？ We probably don’t have enough time to explore all those questions right now with Dan Jurafksy. But he does in his book“The Language Of Food： A 4）Linguist Reads The Menu.”He also tells us why we call a menu a menu， a salad a salad and a toast a toast. Professor Jurafksy is a Stanford linguist and computer scientist. And he joins us from Stanford. Welcome to the program.

Dan Jurafksy： Thanks， Robert.

Siegel： And let’s start with ketchup. Tell us about ketchup’s origins in China.

Jurafksy： Well， ketchup was originally a 5）fish sauce just like modern Vietnamese fish sauce. In the 17th century， English and Dutch sailors， traders—they’re sailing to Asia. And they brought home barrels of this Chinese fish sauce. And this fish sauce was called ketchup. Tchup is a word for sauce in Chinese dialects. And so in England， ketchup lost the fish and acquired tomatoes. And much later on， the Americans added sugar. And there is our national 6）condiment.

Siegel： And you’re right that the migration of ketchup out of China—far from being mere curiosity—actually forces historians to rethink just how shut off China was from the rest of the world at that time.

Jurafksy： Yeah， the traditional view of economic history says that in the Ming Dynasty， China turned inward and had to be 7）dragged into the modern global world by Europe much later. But the story of ketchup tells us that China was really the center of world trade. And we know all that and there it is in just this one Chinese word for ketchup that we still use every day.

Siegel： We should just note 8）in passing， as you do， that Marco Polo did not introduce 9）pasta to Europe after supposedly discovering it in China.

Jurafksy： That is true. That is a fun and humorous myth that was created in a marketing piece in the ’20s. But in fact， pasta had been sold throughout Europe for 100 or 200 years before Marco Polo came back from China.

Siegel： I was going to call it a 10）canard but that could lead us in a whole different direction.

Jurafksy： Ah， yes， yes， yes. I’ll 11）duck that one.

Siegel： I learned from your book that the original ice cream flavor was orange blossom. And making it owed something to the development of 12）gunpowder. Explain that one.

Jurafksy： Yes. Well， so the key ingredient in gunpowder is 13）saltpeter. It was actually in China that they first figured out that saltpeter， also called 14）potassium 15）nitrate， could be mixed with 16）sulfur and coal to create gunpowder. And that’s of course where fireworks came from originally.

Siegel： And then in Syria， there is yet another chemical development involving saltpeter.

Jurafksy： Yeah. Sometime around the 13th century in 17）Damascus， Syrian chemists figured out that saltpeter was a 18）refrigerant. You could add it to water and it made the water cold. This was used in all sorts of Muslim countries—in 19）Mogul India—as a way of cooling water. You put saltpeter in the water. And then you put a jug of water inside this saltpeter and water. It’s the same technology that’s used in modern cold packs.

Siegel： This is before using actual ice. Saltpeter was used to chill things.

Jurafksy： Well， you could use ice. But ice is expensive. You have to bring it down from the mountains. You have to store it in these ice houses. So ice has[sic] certainly been used. They’ve been storing ice in ice houses for thousands and thousands of years. It’s mentioned in the Bible. But saltpeter’s much cheaper.

Siegel： Here’s a question that I have about the source material for your study of the language of the food—certainly for the older language of food. You cite many 20）recipes from old cookbooks in English， French， Arabic—hundreds of years ago. Considering how few people could read in those days， are we in fact getting more of a glimpse of what the 1% of its time ate as opposed to what ordinary people were 21）scrounging up for a meal？

Jurafksy： That’s absolutely true. The recipes we have are the recipes of the 22）courts and the rich people. But one fabulous fact about food is that things that start with the rich 23）trickle down to the poor.

Siegel： Now， I should add that your book， in addition to 24）charting the history of food and how we talk about food， has some other features. And one that I’d like you to talk about is what the computational analysis of contemporary American restaurant venues tells us about the priciness of the restaurant and the vocabulary of the menu.

Jurafksy： Yes. It turns out—we looked at 6，500 menus across America—and it turns out that the words on the menu tell you a lot about the priciness of the restaurant and even the price of the individual dish. For example， as you can imagine， expensive restaurants are 15 times more likely to tell you where the food comes from—to mention the grass-fed things or the name of the farm or green-market cucumbers. But expensive restaurants also use fancy difficult words like tonarelli or choclo or pastilla.

But these expensive menus， they’re shorter. The really long menus—those are the middlepriced restaurants. They’re stuffed with adjectives—so fresh， rich， 25）mild， crisp， tender， golden brown. And it’s the cheapest restaurants—they’re gonna use those positive but vague words—that’s your delicious， tasty， 26）savory.

So the idea is that the highstatus restaurant—they want their customers to just assume the food is going to be fresh and delicious. If you say it’s fresh and delicious， that’s kind of implying you have to be convinced.

Siegel： Right. If we’re sitting down at a very expensive restaurant and the menu says our 27）scrumptious 28）veal， we know something is off-key there at that point. Jurafksy： Exactly.

羅伯特·西格爾（主持人）：番茄醬從何而來？冰淇淋或通心粉呢？通心粉和馬卡龍有什么聯系？或許現在我們并沒有足夠的時間與丹·朱拉夫斯基來探索那些問題。但在他的書作《食物的語言：語言學家解讀菜單》中可以找到答案。他同時還告訴我們為什么菜單叫菜單，沙拉叫沙拉，烤面包叫烤面包。朱拉夫斯基教授是斯坦福大學的語言學家和計算機科學家。他在斯坦福與我們連線。歡迎你參與節目的討論。

丹·朱拉夫斯基：謝謝你，羅伯特。

西格爾：讓我們從番茄醬說起。跟我們說說番茄醬起源于中國的故事吧。

朱拉夫斯基：嗯，番茄醬起源于一種魚露，就像現代越南的魚露。十七世紀，英國和荷蘭的航海家、商人航行至亞洲。他們把這種中國的魚露一桶一桶地帶回家。他們把這種魚露稱作ketchup。在中國方言里，tchup是醬的一種表達。（譯者注：潮汕人將這種魚露稱為醢汁，ketchup是其諧音，tchup是“汁”的諧音。）這樣，在英國，ketchup沒了魚而加入了番茄。很長一段時間以后，美國人往里面加入糖，就成了我們國家的調味料。

西格爾：你說得對，番茄醬源于中國這一說法確實使歷史學家相當好奇，因此重新思考那時閉關鎖國的中國是如何與世界相聯系的。

朱拉夫斯基：是的，從經濟史的傳統觀點來看，明朝時期的中國政策轉向保守，后來不得不被歐洲卷入現代世界發展進程。但是番茄醬的故事告訴我們，（那時的）中國確實是世界貿易的中心。正是因為這個我們仍每天使用的來自中國的單詞——番茄醬，我們了解了這一點。

西格爾：我們應該順帶提一下，正如你（在書中）所糾正的，馬可·波羅在中國發現了意大利面并將其引到歐洲，這一推測并不屬實。

朱拉夫斯基：對的。那是20年代的一種營銷策略，創造出了一個有趣且滑稽的傳言。但實際上，在馬可·波羅從中國回來的100或200年之前，意大利面已經全歐洲銷售了。

西格爾：我正準備稱之為謠言，但那可能會將我們帶到一個完全不同的方向。

朱拉夫斯基：啊，是啊，是啊，是啊。我會避免這一點的。

西格爾：我從你的書上得知，最早的冰淇淋是橙花口味的。而且它的制作與火藥的發展有關。請解釋下那點。朱拉夫斯基：好的。嗯，那么，火藥的主要成分是硝石。實際上，中國最早發現了硝石，也被稱作硝酸鉀，能與硫磺、木炭混合制成火藥。那當然就是煙花的起源。

西格爾：后來在敘利亞，又有了與硝石有關的另一個化學變化。

朱拉夫斯基：是的。大約在十三世紀的大馬士革，敘利亞的化學家發現硝石是一種制冷劑。你可以將它投入水中，它會使水變冷。作為一種冷卻水的方法，這在各種穆斯林國家被使用，包括莫臥兒帝國。你把硝石放入水中，然后再倒入一壺水到硝石和水的混合液里。現代的冰袋制作使用的也是這種方法。

西格爾：這是在使用真正的冰之前所采取的方法。硝石被用來冷卻物品。

朱拉夫斯基：呃，你可以用冰。但是冰很貴。你得把它從山上運下來，儲存在冰庫里。所以冰當然又被使用。幾千年來，他們將冰儲存在冰庫里，圣經里也提到過。但是硝石便宜多了。

西格爾：我有個問題，是關于你研究食物語言的資料來源，當然是針對更古老的食物語言。你引用了許多古老的烹飪手冊里的食譜，有英文的、法文的，還有阿拉伯文的，都是幾百年前的資料。考慮到那些年代甚少人會識字，我們實際上獲得的資料會不會更多的是當時那極少數1%的人的食譜，而不是來自那些連一餐飯都要乞討的普通大眾？

朱拉夫斯基：完全正確。我們得到的是王公貴族和富人的食譜。但是關于食物的一個很妙的事實是，富人一開始吃的食物會慢慢傳入窮人之中。

西格爾：現在，我應該補充說說你的書，除了記錄食物的歷史以及我們如何談論食物之外，還有一些其他內容。我想請你談談，當代美國餐飲場所的計算分析告訴了我們關于餐館定價和菜單詞匯的什么東西。

朱拉夫斯基：是的。我們研究美國上下6500份菜單的結果表明，菜單上使用的單詞能透露給你很多餐館價格，甚至是特色菜的價格信息。舉個例子，正如你能想象到的，高價的餐館更想告訴你食物的來源，這是普通餐館的15倍，他們會提到草養食物，或農場的名字，或綠色市場的黃瓜等。但是高價的餐館也會用一些復雜的生僻詞，比如多納瑞麗面（意大利語）、玉米球（西班牙語）或巴司蒂亞餡派（法語，摩洛哥的一種傳統食物）。

但是這些高價菜單，它們更短些。真正長的菜單出自那些中等價位的餐館。他們使用很多形容詞——多么新鮮的、油膩的、味道不濃的、酥脆的、嫩的、金棕色的。而價位最便宜的餐館，他們會使用那些正面卻含糊的詞——美味的、可口的、好吃的。

所以得出的結論是，在高品位的餐館，他們想讓他們的顧客認為食物就是新鮮美味的。如果菜單上寫著這道菜新鮮美味，那還有可能讓你半信半疑。

西格爾：是這樣的。如果我們在一家高價的餐館坐下，菜單上寫著“我們極其美味可口的小牛肉”，那個時候我們就知道這有點不著調了。

朱拉夫斯基：沒錯。