Genoise -- 1838

[victor steinbok]

Several comments.

1) I did not try to antedate "Genoise". Given the lack of an OED lemma
entirely, I simply grabbed what I thought to be a fairly early
instance. I would actually expect the date to be pushed down to the
pre-revolutionary period.

2) I am not sure if a purely French menu can be considered integrated
use. In a sense, it fails even the "mention" standard that is
characteristic of Marasca citations, for example. I welcome it, but a
dictionary might not, since the words are not being placed in English
context.

3) The task with Genoise is particularly difficult because of a
confluence of several factors. First, the traditional spelling comes
with diacritics, which makes OCRed versions less likely to be picked
up correctly. Even without the diacritics, once you wonder into the
long-s territory (pre-1808, roughly), OCR is likely to mess it up.
And, to top it off, the spelling appears to be fairly creative,
although the French version is clear enough. But there is also
Genovese, Genoese and, the Punch misspelling, Genvoise. So it's not an
easy task.

For my part, I appreciate all such findings because I appear to have
found an underappreciated niche of antedating culinary and kitchen
terms. But I don't make judgments for dictionaries.

AHD4 has a definition: "A delicate buttery sponge cake."

MWOL also has one and dates it back to 1892: "a sponge cake containing
butter and leavened by stiffly beaten eggs".

Dictionary.com, which claims the definition from Random House
Unabridged 2011, dates it to 1930-35, which is off by a good century.

Clearly the word exists in dictionaries, just not in the OED. And I
did check "Genoese" even though it would be quite incorrect, as the
cake name is of French origin, even though the origin of the cake
itself is claimed to be Italian. The standard pronunciation and
spelling follow the French origin--at least, today.

VS-)

On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 11:10 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
> [The whole "bill of fare", as the newspaper puts it, is in French,
> albeit in an English-language newspaper.]
>
> Carte du Diner.
> Potages---
> ...
> Entrements de Patissirie---
> ... Genoise a l'Abricot
>
> Daily Commercial Bulletin, Wednesday, July 04, 1838; Issue 249; col
> 5.  [19th Century U.S. Newspapers]
>
> Joel

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