🌐
Toast POS
pos.toasttab.com › blog › on-the-line › culinary-terms
101 Culinary, Cooking, Food Terms and Definitions Every Chef Knows
Common culinary terms range from ways to prepare food and sauces to kitchen items to dishes themselves. These cooking definitions often come from other languages like French and Italian and can be challenging to understand. Learning the basics of cooking vocabulary will help you to interpret ...
🌐
Escoffier
escoffier.edu › homepage › the escoffier blog › culinary arts › the essential glossary of cooking terms for the culinary arts
The Essential Glossary of Cooking Terms for the Culinary Arts - Escoffier
June 14, 2024 - Culinary professionals must be familiar with culinary terms! Browse this glossary of French cooking terms for immersion in the language of the kitchen.
🌐
TouchBistro
touchbistro.com › home › blog › 104 culinary terms you should know: a complete list for restaurants
104 Culinary Terms Every Restaurateur Should Know
December 7, 2021 - If you work in a restaurant, you need to know the proper terms for cooking techniques, ingredients, dishes, and jargon. Culinary terms are a common language that keeps everyone on the same page.
🌐
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Category:Culinary_terminology
Category:Culinary terminology - Wikipedia
Culinary arts · Culinary name · Curdling · Curing (food preservation) Dark cuisine · Deconstructed cuisine · Deep frying · Deglazing (cooking) Degustation · Development chef · Dicing · Duxelles · Engastration · Fermentation in food processing · Fillet (cut) Flambé ·
🌐
Marketman
marketman.com › blog › the-ultimate-a-to-z-guide-of-culinary-terms-for-chefs-and-restaurant-staff
The Ultimate A to Z Guide of Culinary Terms for Chefs and Restaurant Staff | MarketMan
Culinary terms are essential words and phrases that cover everything from cooking techniques and food preparation to ingredient handling and plating.
🌐
Culinary Arts Academy
culinaryartsswitzerland.com › en › news › culinary-terms
Culinary Terms: 50+ Essential Words Every Chef Should Know
Sauces, stocks, and other liquids provide depth of flavor and texture to many dishes. There are a variety of culinary words that describe techniques, preparations, and consistencies relevant to them, including the following:
🌐
WebstaurantStore
webstaurantstore.com › food service resources › food prep › culinary terms glossary
The Essential Dictionary of Culinary Terms
Infusion - A culinary technique that involves steeping ingredients such as herbs, spices, fruits, or vegetables in a liquid (such as water, oil, or alcohol) to extract their flavors. This process allows the liquid to take on the essence of the infused ingredients, adding depth and complexity to dishes or beverages.
🌐
What's for Dinner?
whatsfordinner.com › home › kitchen tips › 25 culinary terms every foodie should know
25 Culinary Terms Every Foodie Should Know - Kitchen Tips | What's for Dinner?
October 22, 2025 - We all come across unfamiliar words in recipes and on menus. Learn the definitions of common culinary terms and let your inner chef out.
🌐
Revolution Ordering
revolutionordering.com › home › blog › culinary terms 101: mastering culinary lingo from a to z
Culinary Terms 101: Mastering Culinary Lingo from A to Z
June 20, 2025 - Culinary terms are words and phrases used in preparing, presenting, and consuming food. They are often terminology associated with specific cooking methods, ingredients, cooking and serving styles, and equipment.
Find elsewhere
🌐
Quizlet
quizlet.com › 79704744 › culinary-vocabulary-flash-cards
Culinary Vocabulary Flashcards | Quizlet
Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Aromatic, Aerate, A La Carte and more.
🌐
Reddit
reddit.com › r/cooking › culinary terms that don't or are confusing to translate?
r/Cooking on Reddit: Culinary terms that don't or are confusing to translate?
October 15, 2024 -

The discussion of the 'coriander/cilantro' problem in a recent post, brought this to mind.

What other culinary terms don't translate clearly between American English and other languages (including non-American English)?

The ones that spring to my (Irish) mind are 'tomato puree' (US: concentrated tomato paste) and 'passata' (US: puree, I think...still confused); 'jam/jello/jelly'; and apple cider (not alcoholic in US).

🌐
Diabetes UK
diabetes.org.uk › guide-to-diabetes › enjoy-food › cooking-for-people-with-diabetes › getting-started › cooking-terms-jargon-buster
Cooking terms jargon buster | Diabetes UK
Al DenteAn Italian term used to describe pasta that is cooked but not soggy. It means ‘firm to the bite’.BakeCooking in the oven with dry air. Used for cakes, bread, biscuits, puddings.BasteA technique used during roasting meat or poultry where the cooking juices are spooned over the cooking ...
🌐
Push Operations
pushoperations.com › blog › 100-must-know-culinary-terms-vocab-you-need-to-know-in-a-commercial-kitchen
100 Must-Know Culinary Terms: Vocab You Need to Know
June 19, 2024 - Culinary terms are defined as specialized vocabulary used to describe processes, items, and other descriptors used in a kitchen or restaurant.
🌐
Sliceutah
sliceutah.com › home › culinary school › 8 crucial culinary terms every chef knows
8 Crucial Culinary Terms Every Chef Knows | Salt Lake Culinary Education
August 1, 2024 - A French phrase meaning “everything in its place,” mise en place refers to the key step of culinary prep work – gathering, washing, trimming, and chopping your ingredients and setting them out for yourself before beginning any actual cookery.
🌐
Reddit
reddit.com › r/cooking › what are some interesting cooking terms?
r/Cooking on Reddit: What are some interesting cooking terms?
August 16, 2023 -

I like to add butter right at the end of meals I make. I found out this is called 'mounting' butter.

What are some other terms/phrases that are not commonly known within the context of cooking?

🌐
Colorado Spice
coloradospice.com › blogs › news › cooking-term-glossary-common-culinary-terms
Cooking Term Glossary: Common Culinary Terms - Colorado Spice
Mince – This is a preparation technique referring to dividing an ingredient into small, uniform pieces. Check out our blog on Everyday Culinary Tips to learn more about mincing.
🌐
Reddit
reddit.com › r/cookingforbeginners › culinary dictionary
r/cookingforbeginners on Reddit: Culinary Dictionary
August 16, 2021 -

Is there a place where I can read commonly used terms in recipes? I hate when I read “easy to make” recipes and they use terms I don’t understand. Some of these terms I’ve come across are: parboiled, rolling boil vs boil, blanch etc. I have since Googled the differences of those terms but it’s quite frustrating because these recipes are supposed to be “beginner.” I wanted to know if there’s a free resource I could find that defines those words and others similar in one space.

Top answer
1 of 5
4
Consider How to Cook Everything: the Basics by Mark Bittman. My local library has an e-book version. Having an electronic version would give you a chance to search for specific terms if you wanted.
2 of 5
3
Honestly, learning to cook is a lot like learning to play a musical instrument, in that you only really properly learn how to do technique by learning that technique in context, which means that there are a ton of things that you can’t really know how to do until you’re already doing them. What you are doing right now is exactly what you should be doing. Following recipes and googling anything you don’t understand. If you would like to get some techniques down, there are plenty of technical series on cooking both for free on YouTube and for paid elsewhere. But the thing is, you can really only incorporate a few of them at a time anyway, so there’s no good way for you to just commit everything to memory before hand. There are literally hundreds of ways to cook a single egg, and you can go look up the definitions of them all right now, but that won’t help you poach an egg or fry an egg. And of course if you learn the definitions of each technique before you’ve ever executed any of them, you are likely to misunderstand a lot of what you are reading, since the idea is extremely abstract until you put it into practice. On the other hand, if you pull up a recipe that asks you to poach an egg or fry an egg, you can Google how to do that one specific thing in the recipe, and practice doing it in context. And then you find several recipes that require poached eggs, and cook one after the other for several meals until you feel like you have that technique down. It is a far better way to learn. Because with cooking, the actual knowledge is not that important. It’s the technique that is important. This is definitely one of those areas where knowledge follows technique and not the other way around. Someone here is complaining about the principle of radiant heat, and how hard it is to understand, and they have been looking at all of these physics sources. But if you want to understand radiant heat in cooking, you don’t need to know a thing about physics or even the term radiant heat; you can just put your hand a few inches over something that has been heated, and feel how much heat is coming off of that thing. That is radiant heat. Cooking is a skill that has been relegated almost exclusively to illiterate people until all but the last century of human existence. You learned by doing. Google is the resource that defines those words and others in one space. Google is easier to operate than any single resource that could do the same job. Because it is the only one that can answer your follow up questions and also give you a video demonstration of the thing you want. If you want what is basically a dictionary definition book of cooking terms, you will probably have to pay for it, or steal a PDF online.  there is literally no resource that you can find that is better than Google. If you want a single thing to go to that feels concrete to you, buy a book.
🌐
eGullet
forums.egullet.org › culinary culture › food traditions & culture
Culinary Terms/Terminology and their Etymology - Food Traditions & Culture - eGullet Forums
May 4, 2023 - Recently I've encountered a few culinary terms or bits of information about which I am skeptical. Of course, I don't know everything about food, but I know a fair amount and I have to wonder if these are new things I need to learn, or just BS. 1) Chocolate petit four of caramel mousse on a 'migno...
🌐
Cooking Dude
cookingdude.com › home › culinary terms
Culinary Terms - Learning to Cook with Lessons from the Cooking Dude
January 3, 2022 - A comprehensive list of culinary terms to become familiar with when learning how to cook with free online lessons and recipes from the Cooking Dude.