Nothing like a new word to make my day. Roll “abliguritions” around your tongue and savor it. Suzanne turned this one up (one Piggy Point for her!), and it means “prodigal expense for food.”

There’s so much meaty matter to chew on here!

Abligurition comes from the Latin roots ab, meaning “from, away, off,” and ligurire, meaning “to be lickerish, dainty.” “Lickerish” or, alternatively, “lickerous”–more great new words!–means “fond of good food, eager to taste or enjoy,” and, yes, stems from licking. All these words, ligurire, lickerish, lick, come from the Latin verb lingere, “to lick,” which, of course is related to the Latin noun, lingua or “tongue.” So, abligurition refers to a particular aberration or abuse: an errant, excessive wandering, a mis-use of the tongue, just like that of a lecher.

Implicitly, all this would seem to be in opposition to a proper use of the tongue (or lingua) for speech. In other words, too much linguini and not enough language. And somehow the connection or elision is made between language and money: using your tongue to lick, to savor, instead of to speak, represents a diminishment, an impoverishment, a prodigal waste, a foolish expenditure of one’s human capital. The abliguritive tongue is a demon tongue.

This negative value judgment is implicit in the word “prodigal,” which carries all kinds of moral overtones from the story of the prodigal son in the New Testament. Ironically, the prodigal son is rewarded for his return to the fold, for ceasing his prodigal ways, with a prodigal feast: the killing of the fatted calf. It’s as if the moral here is keep your tongue in your mouth, instead of driving it out to lick various dainties, and you will be rewarded by your father with even more savory riches.

The more you dig, the deeper it goes. Through the window of this word, it appears as if a whole economy, an entire metaphysics, balanced precariously on the tip of our tongues. I feel I’ve only licked the surface of what’s condensed in the word “abligurition.” It has everything: it’s bitter, it’s sweet, it’s sour and acid, and, yes, it’s a little salty. Finally, it has the umami component of savory deliciousness. If I ever write a memoir, I will have to title it Abliguritions.

In the days before the lunch box and the thermos, how did working people take enough food for the day with them? An English solution was to take the entire meal (meat and two veg, of course), seal it, and bake it in a pastry shell, which made it easy to carry and easy to eat. The Cornish Pasty dates back to the Middle Ages, and according to cornwall online,

The pasty originally evolved to meet the needs of tin mining, that other great, but now sadly declined, Cornish industry. A hearty meal wrapped in a pastry casing made for a very practical lunch (or “croust” , as they used to call it ) down in the dark and damp tunnels of the mine. Some mines even built huge ovens on the surface to keep the miner’s pasties hot until it was time to eat.

Tradition has it that the original pasties contained meat and vegetables in one end and jam or fruit in the other end, in order to give the hard-working men ‘two courses’. Cornish housewives also marked their husband’s initials on the left-hand side of the pastry casing, in order to avoid confusion at lunchtime. This was particularly useful when a miner wished to save a ‘corner’ of his pasty until later, or if he wanted to leave a corner for one of the ‘Knockers’. The Knockers were the mischievous ‘little people’ of the mines, who were believed by the miners to cause all manner of misfortune, unless they were placated with a small amount of food, after which they could prove to be a source of good luck.

My pasties stick with fairly traditional ingredients: meat, potatoes, carrots, and turnips. For the meat, I cut a nice slab off the end of the sirloin from the Dexter bull that’s been hanging and aging for seven weeks. A short pastry is also traditional, but I make mine with butter, following the recipe for galette dough from the Chez Panisse Fruit cookbook (which has the best version of this recipe). They learned to make this pastry from Jacques Pépin, so you know it’s good. As you can see, it’s crisps up beautifully in the oven and gives the pasty a satisfying “crunch.”

In launching the Morsel of the Month Club, I hope to put the word “tidbit” back on every tongue. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a tidbit is “a small and delicate or appetizing piece of food; a toothsome morsel, delicacy, bonne bouche.” And I love this early quotation they give, from the Connoisseur in 1774: “For fear any tid-bit should be snapped up before him, he snatches at it, greedily.”

Here’s how the Morsel of the Month Club works. You pay for a six-month or twelve-month membership, and each month you get two items: one pound of whichever product I’m most pleased with that month plus a tidbit made exclusively for MoM members. These toothsome morsels are small production items, something just too ridiculously elaborate, time-consuming, and/or expensive to make a regular offering, but which I can’t resist trying my hand at. MoM membership is perfect for any little piggy on your gift list, including yourself!

November’s tidbit: Chicken Galantine
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