Understanding Your Cookbook: Storing and Decorating Terms

Once you finish making a dish you may find that the recipes calls for you to store it in a certain way or that you have to store it before you can finish it.

Storing Methods

Ice - to store a glass or serving dish in the freezer, or a place with temperatures below 32*F, so that a coat of frost forms on its surface.
Freeze - to store food in a temperature that is below 32*F so the moisture in the food freezes and solidifies.
Macerate - to soak food, most likely fruit, in a liquid so the flavor of the food can infuse with the liquids flavor.
Marinate - to cover food with a marinade, a seasoned liquid blend that is usually acid-based with wine, for a specified amount of time before cooking to make it more flavorful, more moist and more tender. The dish that the food is in should be covered and kept in the refrigerator.
Vent, Let - to allow a food to have circulation and to allow the escape of a liquid or gas in an uncovered dish.
Steep - to let food stand in not quite boiling water until the flavor is completely extracted.

Decorating food can be very fun and a very fulfilling creative process. Sometime recipes will have suggestion on how you should decorate the particular food item that you have just made.

Decorating Methods

Coat - to cover a food completely with an outer layer of another ingredient.
Crimp - to seal pastry edges together by pinching in a decorative fashion.
Dot - to distribute small bits of one food randomly on the surface of another food.
Dress - to dress up a dish with garnish.
Flute - to make a decorative edge on pastry or to cut fruit or vegetables in a decorative manner.
Garnish - to enhance the appeal of a dish by serving it with an edible decoration.
Glaze - to add a shiny coating to a food.
Ice - to place icing on a cake, cookie or other dessert.
Mold, To - to shape food in a decorative form, usually by pouring the liquefied food into a mold and then chilling it.
Pipe - to squeeze a shapeable mixture through a decorating bag to make shapes for edible decoration.
Top - to place one food item or mixture on top of another food item.
Unmold - to remove a food item from its container.

When a dish allows you to add decoration the entire process of making the food item will take longer. Food items that involve storing food so it can either cool down or solidify can also prolong the amount of time that it takes you to finish that food item. However in the end you will have one spectacular dish.