Cooking and preparing

Third from the end of this list is speziato, and it is the word here an English reader will get wrong with complete confidence. The form invites it: speziato is built on le spezie, the spices, exactly as « spiced » is built on « spice ». The trouble is that « spicy » has drifted. In ordinary English it now means hot — a spicy curry is one that burns — and the older sense of simply well seasoned survives mostly in cookery writing. Italian never let the two ideas meet. Speziato says that cinnamon, clove, nutmeg or pepper are present and can be tasted; it describes the jar the cook reached for, and it says nothing whatever about burning. Burning has a word of its own, piccante, which began as the participle of a verb meaning to prick, and therefore names the sensation rather than the ingredient. So the sentence on this page, il sugo è troppo speziato per i bambini, complains of a heavy hand with the spice jar and not of chilli. At the table, ask for something non troppo piccante when heat is the worry, and poco speziato when it is the spice.