WAIE (whatamieating.com)


This is the searchable online international food dictionary with – so far – 61,500 terms in 302 languages (I have just added some Isan) plus 12,690 plurals.

Just type in the word that you're looking for and press enter or click on search. There are other types of search; see search help for more information.

Most Recent Upload: 6th December 2009

The amazing Mariana Kavroulaki has done an amazing job on proof-reading the Greek list, and it is now up to more than 1,500, plus plurals, with 1,470 showing the Greek alphabet rendition as well as the English transliteration.

A few weeks ago I spent an extraordinary couple of days in a food market in Laos, where I photographed huge numbers of foods I had never even glimpsed before. Jungle fruits and insects, furry leaves and vines, roots and tubers, fish artistically arranged alongside chickens (one of the few foodstuffs I recognised!) and the occasional rat. A young woman called Noy, whose other names I do not know, has been working through the images and e-mailing me to identify them for me, giving me the Lao name, and the transliterated name, and a description in English. From these and my other sources, not least the wonderful, but late, Alan Davidson, I have managed to give a formal identification to them. These I am slowly adding. I am having trouble transferring the Lao alphabet terms, but it will happen in due course. Jane is finding a way round this problem for me. As ever!

Please do let us know if you see any errors, broken links or pictures. Some of the changes I am making may lead to this happening and it would help if you could let us know.

Welcome to the new people who have joined the Facebook group. (Facebook group) If you would like to join, you will get occasional updates about what has been added to to the site.

I am mainly working on improvements to the site at the moment. This is a long job and entry of new food terms will happen much more quickly once this structural work is done.

Description: A large, crisp, dry, aromatic, yellowish-fleshed, pippin apple with a sweet, slightly tart flavour and dull, yellow skin washed and speckled with orange-red. It is a good-looking eating apple which cooks well and is preferred in tarte tatin as it is soft-textured but does not lose its shape. It was discovered growing along the wall that was the boundary of the grounds of Blenheim Palace in Woodstock in Oxfordshire around 1740 by Kempster. It was originally named Kempster's Pippin but the name was changed with the approval of the Duke of Marlborough around 1904. It was awarded the Banksian Medal of the London Horticultural Society in 1822. In the 1920s it became widespread throughout Europe and the United States. In France it is known as Bénédictin. A traditional Christmas, mid- to late-season, apple which is harvested from late September to early October in South-East England, is stored and is at its best between October and December. In the United States it is harvested from October to December.