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Nov 9, 2005

This week's theme
French terms for food

This week's words
hors d'oeuvre
amuse-bouche
macedoine
vinaigrette
saute

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macedoine

noun: A mixed dish, usually of fruit and/or vegetables, in which several different varieties are combined into a colorful tableau.

[From French macédoine, from Macédoine (Macedonia). The reference is to the Balkan area of many different territories and ethnic groups that Alexander the Great welded into a single unit.]

"So in her own home -- where raspberries and tiny fraises des bois grow in the garden -- a frequent dessert is an artless salad or macedoine of cut-up fruit, such as peaches, nectarines, or apricots, with a few berries thrown into the mix."
Karola Saekel; Alice Waters's Newest Showcases Fresh Fruit; San Francisco Chronicle; May 8, 2002.

"There are similar impulses in Art Nouveau Bing, the English Aesthetic and American Arts and Crafts movements, the Vienna Secession -- and the style moderne of Czarist Russia, which mixed them all together in a macedoine."
Margo Miller; The Man Who Made Art Nouveau; Boston Globe; Sep 11, 1987.

See more usage examples of macedoine in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

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