Patisserie

« Piping bag », « glucose syrup », « buttercream »: English builds a compound by putting one noun in front of another and leaving the reader to work out the relation between them. Italian cannot do that. It has to insert a preposition, and the preposition it picks says the relation out loud. La sacca da pasticcere uses da, which marks what a thing is for — a bag for a pastry cook — and the same da returns in la glassa da colare, a glaze made to be poured. Put di there instead and the sense shifts to what a thing is made of or holds: lo sciroppo di glucosio is syrup consisting of glucose, and una sacca di zucchero would be a bag with sugar inside it. A marks the flavouring or the manner, which is why this list has la crema al burro, la ganache al cioccolato and la meringa all’italiana. Three prepositions, three relations, and the noun pile that hides all three in English is why a beginner reaches for di every time.