Much Ado About Stuffing: Thanksgiving Vocabulary: The Melting Pot: Food Words from Other Languages

Dente means "tooth" in Italian, so al dente refers to pasta that still offers some resistance to a bite. Pasta that's overcooked and soft is not al dente.

Gratter means "to scrape" or "to grate" in French, so a dish that's covered in breadcrumbs and/or grated cheese and then baked or broiled is cooked au gratin.

Au jus means "with the juice" in French, usually referring to the liquid that's a byproduct of cooking meat. It's pronounced "oh zhoo."Au here means "with" so don't say "it was served with au jus."

Couscous is pasta, made from semolina flour, rolled into tiny balls by hand or mechanically. Steamed or boiled, it's the everyday carbohydrate across North Africa, usually topped with a stew of meat and vegetables called a tagine. Of Berber origin, couscous entered Mahgreb Arabic — the variant spoken in countries like Morocco and Tunisia — as kuskus. By the Renaissance, it was already in use throughout Europe, albeit with different spellings.

Essen means "food" in German. There's a lucky coincidence that the French word delicatesse, meaning "delicacy" in both the "fragile" and "delicious" senses fits seamlessly with essen, so delicatessen means "delicious food."

Dim sum comes from the Cantonese tim sam, which literally means "to touch the heart." It refers to a daytime meal of steamed dumplings, served in their steamer baskets, which are often pushed around the restaurant on trolleys from which diners choose the dishes they want.

Chile or chili derives from chilli, the Nahuatl word for hot pepper plants and their fruit. When the Spanish colonized Central America, they brought the word and the food back to Europe. You can see the word chili there in enchilada, which means something pretty close to "chilified" in Spanish.

Exprimere is a Latin verb meaning "to press out" that became espremere in Italian. Espresso is its past participle.

If you combine the Nahuatl words for "avocado" and "sauce," you're adding ahuacatl to molli. From there it's a short trip, via Spanish, to guacamole.

Mbundu is a language spoken in West Africa, mostly in Angola. The Mbundu word for okra is ngombo, and okra's gelatinous texture is an important aspect of this stew that became a classic dish in Louisiana's Creole cuisine. Though its roots are African, it has been embraced by diverse Southern cultures and can include a wide variety of seafood, meat, and vegetables.

In French, hors d'oeuvre literally means "outside the work." It refers to one or more small courses served before a main meal.

Iuncata was the Latin word for a basket woven from reeds and used to make cheese, among other things. In time, the French word jonquette referred to a sweetened cheese strained in a cloth or basket, and now junket is a sweet custard. You may also see junket used to describe a wasteful, pointless trip for politicians or journalists. This use of the word likely derives from the "picnic basket" sense of the word's origin.

Kabab is an Arabic word for "roast meat." It's used all over the Middle East and South Asia, and in Turkey the word shish, meaning "skewer," is often added beforehand. So if you've ever grilled meat and vegetables on a skewer, you've made shish kebab.

In Chinese, koe-chiap refers to a pungent sauce, common throughout Southeast Asia, made from fermented fish. In Malaysia, this term became kecap or kicap, where it means fish or soy sauces or other condiments. This migrated to English, where it described a number of various salty sauces until tomato ketchup dominated the market in the early twentieth century.

From the Nahuatl word molli, meaning sauce, mole is a thick, complex, spicy sauce important in many regional Mexican cuisines. Mole usually includes chocolate and chilies, and is often thickened with toasted and ground squash seeds.

Samosa is a Hindi word for a triangular pastry of fried dough stuffed with spiced meat and/or vegetables. Samosas are a common appetizer in Indian restaurants, often served with several sauces.

In Swedish, smörgås means "bread and butter" and bord means "board" or "table." A smorgasbord is a table set with many small plates of different dishes to choose from and combine according to your taste. In English it can also be used to describe any wide assortment of treats, not necessarily food.

Tofu is a Japanese word that derives from the Chinese doufu, meaning "rotten beans." It's made by curdling soy milk — similar to the way cow's milk is curdled to make cheese — and then pressing the curd into cakes or bricks.

In French, vin aigre literally means "sour wine," which is where we get vinegar from. Vinaigrette carries the diminutive suffix -ette because mixing vinegar with oil and other flavors lessens its sharpness, making it taste better.

A Cantonese word, wok describes a large bowl-shaped pan in which much Chinese food is cooked. By putting the pan right into the cooking fire, chefs are able to cook very quickly, giving the food what's known as wok hai or "breath of the wok," a particular combination of freshness and a seared flavor.

Another Cantonese word, wonton means "stuffed dumpling."