Mastering Cooking & Baking Vocabulary: Boost Your Writing with Essential Kitchen Jargon

Have you come across any of the terms in the table above? Try and name others that are not in the list!

How to apply cooking/baking-related jargon in your compositions

Previously, I showed you how you could put your knowledge of occupation-related jargon to good use in your compositions. I will now demonstrate how you can do the same with cooking/baking-related vocabulary.

Below is an example of a storyline that may require specific knowledge of cooking/ baking:

Composition Topic: An Accident

1. Your main character was at home feeling excited about cooking dinner for his mother as a surprise.
2. Your main character struggled to find all the necessary ingredients and utensils but eventually managed to do so. He then started cooking following a video tutorial he was watching on YouTube.
3. While he was bustling around to clean up after cooking, he accidentally knocked over the bottle of extra virgin olive oil. Shards of glass were scattered everywhere and the floor became slippery.
4. Your main character was stressed as he needed to clean everything up before his mother reached home. He even injured his feet while cleaning up.
5. Your main character’s mother came home and was dumbfounded seeing everything. She was touched to see your main character’s effort and she was not upset over the accident. She helped to treat your main character’s injury and they finally enjoyed their dinner together. Therefore, even though the accident was upsetting, your main character eventually learnt that accidents can happen easily in the kitchen and one should be very careful.

Read the plot above carefully and you can see that the plot is straightforward: facing an accident while cooking and learning to be more careful.

However, because you managed to include cooking-specific terms in your writing, you not only display your understanding of what goes into preparing a meal but also doing so in a realistic way. This will impress your marker and will help you score higher marks for language as you have managed to use appropriate and accurate vocabulary to convey your ideas!

There are many other storylines you can explore and where you can use cooking and baking vocabulary based on the same topic of ‘An Accident’. Some examples can be found below:

1. Your main character accidentally cut himself (e.g.hisfinger) while preparing ingredients to cook.
2. Your main character was reaching high up a cabinet to reach for a jar and it slipped through his fingers, thus knocking over a pot of soup which was simmering.
3. Your main character sneezed while trying to add salt to a broth, thus accidentally causing too much salt to be added.
4. Your main character accidentally added salt instead of sugar to a cake batter as he had reached for the wrong jar.

Ta-da! Now that you are equipped with cooking/baking-related jargon, try applying them in your next composition. You can use such jargon for other topics, for example:

• A Mishap in the Kitchen
• A Fire
• Preparing a Birthday Surprise
• Trying Something New

Before I end the post, just a friendly reminder about scoring well for writing: while having a wide range of vocabulary that is used appropriately will certainly help to increase your composition score, remember to always ensure that the topic and chosen picture are closely linked to the story that you end up writing. For more details on how to do this, check out this post as well as this one!

We shall be looking at more jargons in our next Jargon Series. Stay tuned and discover more! Have fun exploring!