Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 26 July 2003

A Lexicographer writes

issue 26 July 2003

Britain invented lasagne, according to a front-page report in the Daily Telegraph. The claim came from organisers of a mediaeval banquet at Berkeley Castle. They appealed to ‘the world’s oldest recipe book’, The Forme of Cury, compiled under Richard II in 1390.

It seems the Berkeley banqueteers meant that not just the food but the word itself were English, for the dish concerned was called loseyns.

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