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seasoning

nounB1+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,455 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: seasonings

Seasoning is the salt, pepper and herbs that wake up a dish. Check the seasoning, adjust the seasoning, a little seasoning.

Checking the seasoning means tasting and deciding whether it needs more salt, and doing it at the end rather than the start is the single most useful habit in cooking. Seasoning a pan is a different thing: building up a slick baked-on oil layer.

FiveRings at English Wikipedia · Public domain

Definitions of seasoning

  1. 1nounseasoningThe salt, pepper and herbs that flavour a dish.B1+

    “Taste the soup and adjust the seasoning before you serve it.”

    • Said"It needs more seasoning; taste it and tell me what's missing."
    • WrittenThe seasonings stood in a row by the stove, their labels long rubbed off.
    • UsedAdjust the seasoning at the end, once the liquid has reduced.
    • ContrastSeasoning, not sauce. A sauce is poured over the food; seasoning is stirred in and disappears. sauce →
    • Not thisSugar in a cake is not seasoning. Seasoning is salt, pepper and herbs.
    • SimplyThe soup wants seasoning. Add pepper.

    Patternadd / adjust / check the seasoning · seasoning to taste · a seasoning of + noun · season

seasoning is a flavouring.

Remember it

SEASONing → what you SEASON with

It is season + ing: the salt, pepper and herbs that season the dish.

hooks ontoseason

Where it comes from

From season, from Old French assaisonner, to ripen or make palatable, from Latin satio, a sowing season.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *seh₁- — to sow, plant

  2. Latin

    satiō — act of sowing, planting

  3. Old French

    seson — time of sowing, seeding

  4. Middle English

    sesoun — time of the year

  5. English

    season

  6. English, today

    seasoning

Built from

  • serō · Latin — to sow, plant

From season + -ing. season comes from Middle English sesoun (“time of the year”), from Old French seson (“time of sowing, seeding”), from Latin satiō (“act of sowing, planting”) from satum, past participle of serō (“to sow, plant”) from Proto-Indo-European seh₁- (“to sow, plant”). Akin to Old English sāwan (“to sow”), sǣd (“seed”). a doublet of saison. Displaced native Middle English sele (“season”) (from Old English sǣl (“season, time, occasion”)), Middle English tide (“season, time of year”) (from Old English tīd (“time, period, yeartide, season”)).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen

Practise this word

seasoning in the wild

  • The seasoning is a mix of 18 herbs and spices including celery salt (salt, celery seed), red pepper and black pepper, and paprika.

    Old Bay Seasoning

  • Seasoned salt is often the standard seasoning on foods such as chicken, French fries, deep-fried seafood and potatoes.

    Seasoned salt

  • Onion powder is dehydrated, ground onion used as a seasoning.

    Onion powder

  • A citrusy seasoning, it is mostly produced in India.

    Amchoor

  • In addition to its use as a seasoning it adds the nutritional benefits of mangoes when the fresh fruit is out of season.

    Amchoor

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the serō family

season

seasoning — used about once every 6,207 pages · #10,455 · point at the bar for the others

  • seasoning balance