In France, the characteristics of the regional environment where a food or wine is produced has a word: “terrior.” It’s not just the region, climate, soil, and topography, but the flavor and related characteristics of the food as well. The word “terroir” comes from the Latin word “territorium,” which is also the source of ‘territory.’
“Terroir” doesn’t have a close equivalent in English, although recently “artisanal” has come into similar use. But “artisanal” isn’t quite the same thing, and there are any number of people writing in French who have claimed “terroir” is untranslatable. Like “sisu” is said to be by Finns and “hygge” by Danes. I’d explain what those are, but I can’t; they’re untranslatable.
But none of those words (probably) has the interesting history of “terroir.” In Tasting French Terroir: The History of an Idea by Thomas Parker, he makes the point that “terroir” was recognized in France as early as the 1500s. But then by the 1700s:
“In a kingdom whose values were increasingly dictated by metropolitan and courtly high society, the idea of terroir signified all that was uncouth and provincial.”
Even dictionaries cooperated in the downfall of “terroir.” It began to be defined as something undesirable. There’s absolutely no hint of this in the scholarship about the era, but I can’t help wondering if, just like in England with regard to dialects and “proper” language use, the introduction of printing presses might have had something to do with this trend.
In any case, the rejection of “terroir” didn’t last either. Rousseau revived the term, and even though the French Revolution didn’t agree (seeing centralization as a desirable thing) “What everybody agreed on was the superiority of French ‘terroir’ to anywhere else.”
William Doyle reviewed Tasting French Terroir in the Times Literary Supplement (that’s the London Times; the NY Times has one of those too), and concludes with this question: “Was the term ‘terroir’…uniquely French, or could some similar notion be found in the culture of other European countries?” As far as anybody has discovered, “terroir” IS unique, and so is the political history of a term that’s really about food.
In the meantime, about the only untranslatable English food words are probably “cheetos” and “twinkies.” I was going to add “quarter pounder,” but as anybody who’s seen Pulp Fiction knows, that’s translated as “grande with cheese” in France.
