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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.
罗伯特·西格尔（主持人）：番茄酱从何而来？冰淇淋或通心粉呢？通心粉和马卡龙有什么联系？或许现在我们并没有足够的时间与丹·朱拉夫斯基来探索那些问题。但在他的书作《食物的语言：语言学家解读菜单》中可以找到答案。他同时还告诉我们为什么菜单叫菜单，沙拉叫沙拉，烤面包叫烤面包。朱拉夫斯基教授是斯坦福大学的语言学家和计算机科学家。他在斯坦福与我们连线。欢迎你参与节目的讨论。
丹·朱拉夫斯基：谢谢你，罗伯特。
西格尔：让我们从番茄酱说起。跟我们说说番茄酱起源于中国的故事吧。
朱拉夫斯基：嗯，番茄酱起源于一种鱼露，就像现代越南的鱼露。十七世纪，英国和荷兰的航海家、商人航行至亚洲。他们把这种中国的鱼露一桶一桶地带回家。他们把这种鱼露称作ketchup。在中国方言里，tchup是酱的一种表达。（译者注：潮汕人将这种鱼露称为醢汁，ketchup是其谐音，tchup是“汁”的谐音。）这样，在英国，ketchup没了鱼而加入了番茄。很长一段时间以后，美国人往里面加入糖，就成了我们国家的调味料。
西格尔：你说得对，番茄酱源于中国这一说法确实使历史学家相当好奇，因此重新思考那时闭关锁国的中国是如何与世界相联系的。
朱拉夫斯基：是的，从经济史的传统观点来看，明朝时期的中国政策转向保守，后来不得不被欧洲卷入现代世界发展进程。但是番茄酱的故事告诉我们，（那时的）中国确实是世界贸易的中心。正是因为这个我们仍每天使用的来自中国的单词——番茄酱，我们了解了这一点。
西格尔：我们应该顺带提一下，正如你（在书中）所纠正的，马可·波罗在中国发现了意大利面并将其引到欧洲，这一推测并不属实。
朱拉夫斯基：对的。那是20年代的一种营销策略，创造出了一个有趣且滑稽的传言。但实际上，在马可·波罗从中国回来的100或200年之前，意大利面已经全欧洲销售了。
西格尔：我正准备称之为谣言，但那可能会将我们带到一个完全不同的方向。
朱拉夫斯基：啊，是啊，是啊，是啊。我会避免这一点的。
西格尔：我从你的书上得知，最早的冰淇淋是橙花口味的。而且它的制作与火药的发展有关。请解释下那点。朱拉夫斯基：好的。嗯，那么，火药的主要成分是硝石。实际上，中国最早发现了硝石，也被称作硝酸钾，能与硫磺、木炭混合制成火药。那当然就是烟花的起源。
西格尔：后来在叙利亚，又有了与硝石有关的另一个化学变化。
朱拉夫斯基：是的。大约在十三世纪的大马士革，叙利亚的化学家发现硝石是一种制冷剂。你可以将它投入水中，它会使水变冷。作为一种冷却水的方法，这在各种穆斯林国家被使用，包括莫卧儿帝国。你把硝石放入水中，然后再倒入一壶水到硝石和水的混合液里。现代的冰袋制作使用的也是这种方法。
西格尔：这是在使用真正的冰之前所采取的方法。硝石被用来冷却物品。
朱拉夫斯基：呃，你可以用冰。但是冰很贵。你得把它从山上运下来，储存在冰库里。所以冰当然又被使用。几千年来，他们将冰储存在冰库里，圣经里也提到过。但是硝石便宜多了。
西格尔：我有个问题，是关于你研究食物语言的资料来源，当然是针对更古老的食物语言。你引用了许多古老的烹饪手册里的食谱，有英文的、法文的，还有阿拉伯文的，都是几百年前的资料。考虑到那些年代甚少人会识字，我们实际上获得的资料会不会更多的是当时那极少数1%的人的食谱，而不是来自那些连一餐饭都要乞讨的普通大众？
朱拉夫斯基：完全正确。我们得到的是王公贵族和富人的食谱。但是关于食物的一个很妙的事实是，富人一开始吃的食物会慢慢传入穷人之中。
西格尔：现在，我应该补充说说你的书，除了记录食物的历史以及我们如何谈论食物之外，还有一些其他内容。我想请你谈谈，当代美国餐饮场所的计算分析告诉了我们关于餐馆定价和菜单词汇的什么东西。
朱拉夫斯基：是的。我们研究美国上下6500份菜单的结果表明，菜单上使用的单词能透露给你很多餐馆价格，甚至是特色菜的价格信息。举个例子，正如你能想象到的，高价的餐馆更想告诉你食物的来源，这是普通餐馆的15倍，他们会提到草养食物，或农场的名字，或绿色市场的黄瓜等。但是高价的餐馆也会用一些复杂的生僻词，比如多纳瑞丽面（意大利语）、玉米球（西班牙语）或巴司蒂亚馅派（法语，摩洛哥的一种传统食物）。
但是这些高价菜单，它们更短些。真正长的菜单出自那些中等价位的餐馆。他们使用很多形容词——多么新鲜的、油腻的、味道不浓的、酥脆的、嫩的、金棕色的。而价位最便宜的餐馆，他们会使用那些正面却含糊的词——美味的、可口的、好吃的。
所以得出的结论是，在高品位的餐馆，他们想让他们的顾客认为食物就是新鲜美味的。如果菜单上写着这道菜新鲜美味，那还有可能让你半信半疑。
西格尔：是这样的。如果我们在一家高价的餐馆坐下，菜单上写着“我们极其美味可口的小牛肉”，那个时候我们就知道这有点不着调了。
朱拉夫斯基：没错。
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.
罗伯特·西格尔（主持人）：番茄酱从何而来？冰淇淋或通心粉呢？通心粉和马卡龙有什么联系？或许现在我们并没有足够的时间与丹·朱拉夫斯基来探索那些问题。但在他的书作《食物的语言：语言学家解读菜单》中可以找到答案。他同时还告诉我们为什么菜单叫菜单，沙拉叫沙拉，烤面包叫烤面包。朱拉夫斯基教授是斯坦福大学的语言学家和计算机科学家。他在斯坦福与我们连线。欢迎你参与节目的讨论。
丹·朱拉夫斯基：谢谢你，罗伯特。
西格尔：让我们从番茄酱说起。跟我们说说番茄酱起源于中国的故事吧。
朱拉夫斯基：嗯，番茄酱起源于一种鱼露，就像现代越南的鱼露。十七世纪，英国和荷兰的航海家、商人航行至亚洲。他们把这种中国的鱼露一桶一桶地带回家。他们把这种鱼露称作ketchup。在中国方言里，tchup是酱的一种表达。（译者注：潮汕人将这种鱼露称为醢汁，ketchup是其谐音，tchup是“汁”的谐音。）这样，在英国，ketchup没了鱼而加入了番茄。很长一段时间以后，美国人往里面加入糖，就成了我们国家的调味料。
西格尔：你说得对，番茄酱源于中国这一说法确实使历史学家相当好奇，因此重新思考那时闭关锁国的中国是如何与世界相联系的。
朱拉夫斯基：是的，从经济史的传统观点来看，明朝时期的中国政策转向保守，后来不得不被欧洲卷入现代世界发展进程。但是番茄酱的故事告诉我们，（那时的）中国确实是世界贸易的中心。正是因为这个我们仍每天使用的来自中国的单词——番茄酱，我们了解了这一点。
西格尔：我们应该顺带提一下，正如你（在书中）所纠正的，马可·波罗在中国发现了意大利面并将其引到欧洲，这一推测并不属实。
朱拉夫斯基：对的。那是20年代的一种营销策略，创造出了一个有趣且滑稽的传言。但实际上，在马可·波罗从中国回来的100或200年之前，意大利面已经全欧洲销售了。
西格尔：我正准备称之为谣言，但那可能会将我们带到一个完全不同的方向。
朱拉夫斯基：啊，是啊，是啊，是啊。我会避免这一点的。
西格尔：我从你的书上得知，最早的冰淇淋是橙花口味的。而且它的制作与火药的发展有关。请解释下那点。朱拉夫斯基：好的。嗯，那么，火药的主要成分是硝石。实际上，中国最早发现了硝石，也被称作硝酸钾，能与硫磺、木炭混合制成火药。那当然就是烟花的起源。
西格尔：后来在叙利亚，又有了与硝石有关的另一个化学变化。
朱拉夫斯基：是的。大约在十三世纪的大马士革，叙利亚的化学家发现硝石是一种制冷剂。你可以将它投入水中，它会使水变冷。作为一种冷却水的方法，这在各种穆斯林国家被使用，包括莫卧儿帝国。你把硝石放入水中，然后再倒入一壶水到硝石和水的混合液里。现代的冰袋制作使用的也是这种方法。
西格尔：这是在使用真正的冰之前所采取的方法。硝石被用来冷却物品。
朱拉夫斯基：呃，你可以用冰。但是冰很贵。你得把它从山上运下来，储存在冰库里。所以冰当然又被使用。几千年来，他们将冰储存在冰库里，圣经里也提到过。但是硝石便宜多了。
西格尔：我有个问题，是关于你研究食物语言的资料来源，当然是针对更古老的食物语言。你引用了许多古老的烹饪手册里的食谱，有英文的、法文的，还有阿拉伯文的，都是几百年前的资料。考虑到那些年代甚少人会识字，我们实际上获得的资料会不会更多的是当时那极少数1%的人的食谱，而不是来自那些连一餐饭都要乞讨的普通大众？
朱拉夫斯基：完全正确。我们得到的是王公贵族和富人的食谱。但是关于食物的一个很妙的事实是，富人一开始吃的食物会慢慢传入穷人之中。
西格尔：现在，我应该补充说说你的书，除了记录食物的历史以及我们如何谈论食物之外，还有一些其他内容。我想请你谈谈，当代美国餐饮场所的计算分析告诉了我们关于餐馆定价和菜单词汇的什么东西。
朱拉夫斯基：是的。我们研究美国上下6500份菜单的结果表明，菜单上使用的单词能透露给你很多餐馆价格，甚至是特色菜的价格信息。举个例子，正如你能想象到的，高价的餐馆更想告诉你食物的来源，这是普通餐馆的15倍，他们会提到草养食物，或农场的名字，或绿色市场的黄瓜等。但是高价的餐馆也会用一些复杂的生僻词，比如多纳瑞丽面（意大利语）、玉米球（西班牙语）或巴司蒂亚馅派（法语，摩洛哥的一种传统食物）。
但是这些高价菜单，它们更短些。真正长的菜单出自那些中等价位的餐馆。他们使用很多形容词——多么新鲜的、油腻的、味道不浓的、酥脆的、嫩的、金棕色的。而价位最便宜的餐馆，他们会使用那些正面却含糊的词——美味的、可口的、好吃的。
所以得出的结论是，在高品位的餐馆，他们想让他们的顾客认为食物就是新鲜美味的。如果菜单上写着这道菜新鲜美味，那还有可能让你半信半疑。
西格尔：是这样的。如果我们在一家高价的餐馆坐下，菜单上写着“我们极其美味可口的小牛肉”，那个时候我们就知道这有点不着调了。
朱拉夫斯基：没错。