Kitchen technique

A recipe is a row of imperatives, and one of them carries a second life that has nothing to do with food. Mijoter is to cook something slowly in a covered pot — le plat mijote une heure — and it is also what a French speaker says about somebody who is quietly preparing a surprise or a scheme: qu’est-ce que tu mijotes ?, ils mijotent quelque chose. The figure is a pot with the lid on and something going on inside it that you cannot see yet. English built a figure on the same low heat and took it the other way. « To simmer » in its figurative use is about held-back anger — « a simmering row », « simmering resentment » — and « to simmer down » is to stop being angry at all. So the two languages agree that slow heat under a lid means something unseen, and disagree completely about what. Where French has mijoter for a plan, English reaches for « to cook up » or « to be up to something »; and where English has a simmering quarrel, French says une colère qui monte. Reading mijoter as « to simmer » in a novel loses the whole sentence.