Food technology

The seventh entry is le jury de dégustation, and the first noun is one English has shut inside a courtroom. For an English reader a jury is twelve strangers who return a verdict, and almost nothing else; the word arrives with an oath, a judge and a public gallery behind it. French never narrowed it that far. Le jury is any body of people appointed to judge something. Le jury du baccalauréat is the board of examiners; le jury de thèse is the committee a doctoral candidate defends a thesis in front of; le jury d’un concours is the panel of a competition; and here le jury de dégustation is the trained tasters sitting in separate booths. The court sense exists as well, le jury d’assises, but it is one use among several rather than the whole word, and un juré is the individual member wherever the body sits. English therefore has to choose a fresh noun almost every time: board, committee, panel. The one rendering to avoid is « tasting jury », which seats a criminal trial in the sensory laboratory.