Smoked means preserved and flavoured by hanging in wood smoke. Smoked salmon, smoked bacon, smoked cheese.
Cold smoking flavours without cooking, which is how smoked salmon stays translucent; hot smoking cooks as it flavours, which is how smoked mackerel is made. The wood matters: oak, beech and applewood all give different results. Smoked also describes glass darkened in colour: smoked glass. Note smoked paprika, which is a distinct spice rather than ordinary paprika, and kipper, which is a smoked herring.
1adjectivesmokedPreserved and flavoured by hanging in wood smoke.
“The smoked sausages had a rich, woody flavour.”
2adjectivedarkenedDarkened in colour, of glass.
“The smoked glass hides everything and lets almost no light in.”
smoked is a state of preservation.
Smoke is Old English smoca, from a Germanic root. Smoking as preservation is far older than the word — it is one of the oldest food technologies there is, and the flavour is now the point rather than the keeping.
Middle English
smoked
English, today
smoked
From Middle English smoked, y-smoked, equivalent to smoke + -ed.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA