Trivia Too Short to Write Down

Ledikeni, an ancient-sounding Bengali dessert of chickpea balls dipped in syrup, is actually named for Lady Canning, the wife of the first viceroy of India. Meanwhile, the Egyptian dessert umm ali turns out to be a pudding learned from an English nurse named O’Malley.

The mosquito repellent citronella is extracted from a variety of lemon grass, that lemony herb used in Thai cooking.

The most famous expression in the Arabian Nights is “Open, sesame.” Oddly, though, the tale of “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves,” in which it occurs, isn’t found in any Arabic manuscript of “The Thousand and One Nights” dating from before the early 18th century, when Antoine Galland made his vastly influential French translation, so there’s a chance Galland wrote the tale of Ali Baba himself and it was so popular it later got translated into Arabic. No matter: The expression “Open, o sesame” (iftah, ya simsim) is now proverbial in Arabic as well.

Cloves have only one relative that’s a spice, allspice; nearly all its other edible cousins are tropical fruits. And apart from the guavas, you’ve probably never heard of them: rose apple, water berry, beach cherry, pitanga, lilly pilly.

Carpaccio, that stylish Italian appetizer of thinly sliced raw beef, was invented to honor the memory of Vittore Carpaccio (1460-1525) on the occasion of a 1963 exhibition in Venice. He was, um, the greatest early Renaissance narrative painter of the Venetian school.

Signs that a cookbook is British: It measures ingredients by the dessertspoon (2 teaspoons) and liqueur glass (3 tablespoons).

The French name for kiwi fruit, souris vegetales, means vegetable mice.