English food words tell a remarkable story about the evolution of our language and culinary history, revealing a collision of cultures from the time Caesar first arrived on British shores to the present day. WORDS TO EAT BY explores the stories behind five of our most basic food words, words which reveal our powerful associations with certain foods. Using sources that range from Roman histories to Julia Child’s recipes, Ina Lipkowitz shows how saturated with French and Italian names the English culinary vocabulary is. But the words for our most basic foodstuffs—bread, milk, leek, meat, and apple—are still rooted in Old English. WORDS TO EAT BY will make readers reconsider the foods they eat and the words they use to describe them. Brimming with information, this book offers an analysis of our culinary and linguistic heritage that is as accessible as it is enlightening.