Nutrition and food

La date de congélation is the date of freezing, and the choice of verb inside it is not free. French divides in two what English covers with one word. Congeler is to freeze, plainly: what a household freezer does, what happens to a pond overnight, and what the label of this list records. Surgeler is to freeze fast and hard, at industrial temperatures, so that the ice crystals stay small — and out of it comes the noun a shopper actually uses, les surgelés, the frozen goods, which is also the name of the aisle. So there is a word for the process and a separate word for the product, and the second cannot be turned back into a date: nobody writes la date de surgélation on a bag filled at home. « Frozen » does all of this unaided, and « quick-frozen » and « deep-frozen » are technical glosses rather than words anybody says, which is exactly why an English speaker reaches for the wrong one. The rule to carry away is short: the act and the label take congeler, the goods on the shelf are les surgelés.