/Erjudait/

[Victor Steinbok]

This reminds me of something else that's been bothering me.

On Top Chef, one of the contestants overcooked the salmon, at some
point, and that generated the white goo you sometimes see on the
exterior of a cooked salmon (particularly one that's been frozen
before). Normally, people either scrape it off, if appearance is
important, or just mix it in with everything else. But it does have a
fairly distinct appearance, so if the goal is striking plating, it's
off-putting.

In any case, I never gave the issue much thought and did not have a name
for this white stuff. Of course, there appears to be a chef-jargon term
for it--albumen. Yes, the protein word. I wonder if any chef using this
word ever gave much thought to the fact that he just referred to fish
extraction as "egg white".

Here's the entire OED take on it:

albumen
> 2. The substance which exists nearly pure in the white of an egg, and
> forms a constituent of animal solids and fluids, and of the tuberous
> or fleshy roots, and seeds of plants. See albumin n.

albumin
> One of the classes of albuminoids (see albuminoid n.), containing such
> as are soluble in water (= albumen n. 2), or in dilute acids or
> alkalis (/acid/ or /alkali albumins/.)

This strikes me as uniquely unhelpful. Never mind the fish
excreta--that's irrelevant to this particular definition, as the issue
is more color than the chemical content. But there is a simple way to
describe "albumen" (or albumin, for that matter)--it's protein. It's a
subclass of proteins, but it is basically protein. In some languages
"albumin" literally means "protein" (although Russian, for instance,
uses it on par with the term "whites"--belki [sing. belok usually
applies to egg white, but can be used for an individual chemical
compound as well]; prote'in is a secondary formation--likely picked up
from English and is used in scientific, but not culinary or prevention
literature).

In any case, the pronunciation also struck me as odd. There was an
almost Slavic quality to the [bu] part. There was no glide between
them--unlike the way most English speakers pronounce Slavic words as
[ju]. And no [oo] either. The closest I can describe it is [@l'b'y:mIn]
with stress on the middle syllable (unmarked here) and "palatalized" [l]
and [b], followed by [y:] as in OED Führer [incidentally, [y:] is not
listed in the OED pronunciation guide, even though the symbol is clearly
in use]. Not so in the OED. Both spelling get [æl'bjuːmIn] with stress
on the middle syllable and the glide in the middle (unless I'm
misreading the OED pronunciation). Compare that to the OED treatment of
bureaucrat [ˈbjÊ É™rÉ™Ê kræt]. The common pronunciation I hear is
[@lb-ju:mIn] with a virtual stop between the b and the glide.

There is really no on-line recording to refer to--only a couple of
episodes are available on-line and only the last 4 are in FIOS
ON-Demand. But both Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio pronounced the word
very similarly.

VS-)


On 2/28/2012 11:43 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> I'm with Larry in all respects, including "aven-yoo".  Also native
> NYC, and I haven't noticed any different in Bahston.
>
> Joel
>
> At 2/28/2012 12:13 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> ...
>> Funny how we make such different choices, if choices they are, as we glide through life, or don't.  It's always been "er-ju-dite" for me (<  NYC), but I'm glideless in "garrulous" (awful name for a movie), as well as in "corrugate". Contra Pedro V, though, I do have a glide in "avenue", whether numbered (5th), lettered (C), or named (of the Americas).  None even imaginable in "rude" or "ruse", though--and I'm sure I'd boggle if I heard anyone else put a glide in those, at least on this side of the pond.  I've heard plenty of glides in "Tuesday", "news", and such, but I don't go in for them there myself.
>>
>> LH, native Noo Yorker (no, not Noo Yawka)

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org