The cream of the crop

 
Happy Thanksgiving, Canadians!

I hope you all enjoy a generous dollop of whipped cream with your pumpkin pie (I feel it is only a matter of time before the medical establishment determines that cream is, in fact, the absolutely best thing for our health).

Most dairy-product-related words go back, not surprisingly, to Anglo-Saxon times: milk, cheese, skim, curd, butter, cow. But "cream" didn't crop up in English till the 1300s. So, first of all, you have to wonder what the Anglo-Saxons called the stuff, since they obviously knew it existed. Their word was fliete, which was related to "float" (because cream floats on top of milk). "Cream" came into the language with the arrival of the French. We probably ended up using the French word because cream is, after all, a luxury product, and the French were the ruling classes in medieval England. 

Where the French got the word is an interesting story. They crossed a word from Gaulish (i.e. the language of the Celts living in France before the Romans arrived) meaning "cream" with the Latin word chrisma (an oil for anointing). In particular, chrisma was a specially consecrated oil mixed with balm  and used in certain sacraments such as baptism and confirmation. "Chrism" has this meaning still in modern English. Since cream is a fatty substance, the French took this Latin word meaning "oil" and applied it to "oil of milk", so to speak.

For the story behind "pumpkin", click here. 
For the story behind "turkey", click here. 

And if you're a fan of cream teas, you might want to check out my ballet trip to London in February. Click here for details.