You can hide a lot behind carefully chosen words. For example, an edible but not very remarkable meal can be propped up with a smile and a comment about how esculent it was. The word means that the meal was edible. It sounds terrific, but in this case, it conceals the gaseous nature of the meal’s outcome. ” Carl! It was absolutely esculent!”
Language is lovely that way, and while most of us learn to be cautious with claims posted in advertisements, personal flattery, done subtly, is hard to resist.
Most cooks have soft spots in their repertoire that stand out. Excellent cooks have plotted the territory and understand their limits. A friend of mine, a professional chef, yields ground to his wife on baking. ” I cook, but she is the baker!” He maintains that they are very different realms.
Regrettably, some feel that being equipped with an entire library of cookbooks, they have the mandate to make the rest of us eat merely esculent cooking.
My advice is this: if you have to look the words of praise up in a dictionary, you are in trouble.