In a sign that palates and culinary repertoires are becoming increasingly international, editors at Oxford Dictionaries have added a few foreign foods including arancini, carne asada and guanciale into their online database.
In the latest quarterly update to OxfordDictionaries.com -- the largest to date with 1,000 new entries -- editors included a handful of Italian and Spanish food terms after concluding that that they had reached widespread currency in English.
One particularly notable addition: the ‘five-second rule,’ a term that’s been widely used for years but only this year gains official recognition by the folks who helm the venerable word bible.
Test your culinary knowledge:
arancini: an Italian dish consisting of small balls of rice stuffed with a savory filling, coated in breadcrumbs, and fried
cappellacci: pieces of pasta stuffed with a filling of pumpkin (or other squash) and cheese and folded so as to resemble a hat
carne asada: (in Mexican cooking) beef that has been marinated and grilled, typically served sliced in thin strips as a main course or as a filling in tacos, burritos, etc.
chile con queso: (in Tex-Mex cookery) a thick sauce of melted cheese seasoned with chilli peppers, typically served warm as a dip for tortilla chips
five-second rule: (humorous) a notional rule stating that food which has been dropped on the ground will still be uncontaminated with bacteria and therefore safe to eat if it is retrieved within five seconds
guanciale: a type of Italian cured pork made from the cheeks of a pig
trofie: pasta in the form of short irregularly twisted pieces with pointed ends, traditionally eaten with pesto
