Cuisine

The word (cuisine, n.) is the first, and not last, in this series to come from French, from the French word for 'kitchen'. Like culinary, its use spread throughout the Early Modern English period as an "inkhorn" word within the cooking world. Unlike culinary, however, its very first use in English is during the Middle English period as kusyn.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the primary definition of the word is 'kitchen; culinary department or establishment; manner or style of cooking; kitchen arrangements'. When it first appears in the Dictionary, it is in the sentence, "One messe grosse de kusyn." This sentence uses multiple French-derived words (including the Latin/French preposition de 'of'), and roughly translates to, 'one big meal of the cuisine,' where mess is used to reference a dish or course in a meal, as it is used today in the term mess hall. The key here is that this is not a confirmed or established form of the word, but it is an appearance from the Dictionary's quotes.

A cuisine, by one definition, is considered an art, and usually refers to the food style of a specific region, class, or culture.

The many cuisines of the Early Modern English period in England included pottage for anyone, but while some could afford white bread, others could only afford browner breads (Folgerpedia).

By the Early Modern period, the ethnic cuisines of American immigrants were available in the United States. New Englanders and the Quaker-influenced people of the mid-Atlantic avoided heavy seasonings, while Southerners adopted a mix of African, Native American, English, French, and Spanish food styles. Meanwhile, in the backcountry, people were forced to eat foods that others would only consider animal feed (Mintz and McNeil).

Thus, with a rather late arrival, often being used as a mass noun, and applying to a limited range of things, the word cuisine never underwent any morphological or lexigraphic changes. The spelling seems to have changed drastically from its first use in Middle English as kusyn to the Early Modern English cuisine. This may have occurred because of the overcorrection of many words by those seeking language standards, when they tried to conceive of words by applying apparent foreign spelling conventions. As Van Gelderen explains, this is called etymological respelling.

Alternatively, it could have occurred because the one Middle English writer, quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary, who used kusyn, wasn't familiar with the word.

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Folgerpedia. "Pottage & Bread: Daily Diets in England." Folgerpedia: Fooles and Fricassees: Food in Shakespeare's England, 2023. Retrieved October 2025 from: https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Fooles_and_Fricassees:_Food_in_Shakespeare%27s_England#:~:text=pear%2C%20Flanders%20cherry.-,Pottage%20&%20Bread:%20Daily%20Diets%20in%20England,Good%20Friday%2C%20and%20at%20Christmas.

Mintz, S., & McNeil, S. "Food in America." Digital History. Retrieved in 2025 from: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu

Oxford English Dictionary. "Cuisine, n." Oxford English Dictionary, Third Edition. Retrieved October 2025 from: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/cuisine_n?tab=meaning_and_use#7727049

Van Gelderen, Elly. "Early Modern English." A History of the English Language, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2006.

*AI image generated by Google Gemini.