Mise en place your vocabulary with these culinary gems.
A fragrant purple flowering plant of the mint family, or the pale purple color associated with it. Used in perfume, soap, medicine, and culinary applications.
French for 'in a crust,' meaning wrapping food in pastry dough before baking. It's the culinary equivalent of wrapping a gift -- it makes everything look fancier and hides whatever questionable decisions are happening inside. Beef Wellington is the poster child.
Soaking ingredients in liquid to extract flavor or soften texture. It's basically marinating's pretentious cousin. Also: The process of soaking ingredients in liquid to soften, flavor, or preserve them. It's what happens when you leave fruit in booze and call it cooking.
A tangy, mayonnaise-based sauce with pickles, capers, and herbs that makes everything taste better. It's basically fancy tartar sauce that went to finishing school in France and came back with a new accent and an attitude.
A knife technique where you roll up leafy herbs or greens and slice them into elegant thin ribbons. It sounds like a French ballet move but it's really just aggressive lettuce rolling. It exists solely so chefs can feel superior about cutting basil.
Restaurant slang for a single diner or group, as in "a party of four" becomes "a four-top." Because counting people is easier when you pretend they're table configurations.
The hierarchical kitchen organization system invented by Auguste Escoffier, basically a military chain of command but with more butter. It's how restaurants justify having seventeen people scream at each other to produce one plate of risotto.
A rich, glossy sauce made by reducing brown stock and espagnole sauce for approximately eleven thousand years. It's the kitchen equivalent of a PhD thesis -- it takes forever, nobody fully understands it, and when it's done you have about two tablespoons.
A cooking philosophy that uses every part of an animal, from snout to tail, because waste is bad and also because chefs realized they could charge premium prices for parts butchers used to throw away. Oxtail went from peasant food to $35 an entree real quick.
A fancy French term for putting one pot inside another pot of hot water. Essentially, you're giving your food a hot bath because apparently direct heat is too confrontational. Marie must have been very particular about her chocolate tempering.
A pastry chef, but the French title makes it sound like they graduated from Hogwarts instead of culinary school. These are the people who can make a croissant with 27 layers of butter and somehow still judge you for eating a Pop-Tart.
A sweet-and-sour sauce made by caramelizing sugar and adding vinegar. Sounds like a stomach condition but tastes like culinary enlightenment. It's what separates a $12 duck breast from a $42 duck breast -- two tablespoons of fancy vinegar sugar.
A generous spread of soft cheese, cream cheese, or other spreadable ingredients, most famously associated with bagels. It's the Yiddish way of saying 'don't be stingy with the cream cheese.'
A cheese shop, but saying it in French means the cheese costs four times as much and comes wrapped in paper instead of plastic. It's where you go to feel cultured while spending $30 on something that smells like gym socks and tastes like heaven.
A small round ramekin used for holding sauces, prepped ingredients, or garnishes. Named either for their resemblance to dishes in a monkey's tea party or because you'd have to be as chaotic as a monkey to organize your station without them.
A small, imprecise amount of liquid added to a dish—more than a drop, less than a pour. The measurement system favored by chefs who scoff at your measuring spoons.
The crucial resting period after kneading dough or after cooking meat, allowing gluten to relax or juices to redistribute. Ignoring bench rest is how you get tough bread and dry meat, making patience literally delicious.
An edible container made from bread, pastry, or even rice that holds various fillings, proving that the French turn even serving vessels into billable food items. The ancestor of the bread bowl, but with class.
The end-of-shift ritual of cleaning, organizing, and preparing the station for the next day. The tedious aftermath of culinary glory that can take longer than actual service.
A stick-cut vegetable roughly 1/4 inch × 1/4 inch × 2-3 inches; the Goldilocks zone between julienne and chunky, requiring just enough precision to be annoying. Also: A stick-shaped vegetable cut measuring 1/4 inch × 1/4 inch × 2-3 inches long. It's the bigger brother of julienne and slightly less intimidating.
Threading strips of fat through lean meat with a larding needle to add moisture and flavor from within, because some meats are born dry and need internal fat intervention. The surgical approach to keeping venison from turning into jerky.
The fundamental cooking method of applying dry heat in an enclosed space, typically an oven, to transform raw ingredients into edible creations through the magic of thermal chemistry. It's also a social gathering where people eat baked foods, from clam bakes to cake sales. The term doubles as both verb and noun, much like the confusion over whether you're "having a bake" or "having a bake."
The industrial refrigerator large enough to actually walk into, where both food and occasionally traumatized cooks go to chill out. Also where you discover forgotten experiments from previous regimes.
Removing impurities from butter (making ghee) or clearing cloudy stock until it's transparent. The pursuit of purity through heat and patience, or egg whites if you're making consommé.