It is difficult to fully define a culture without a nod to
The preferences for seasoning and cooking
The most
If you always hate certain vegetables. you may be more than a picky eater. Instead, you might be a “super-taster”, a person
“We don’t get the taste of food equally,” said Professor Duffy, an export in the study of food taste. “It could explain some of the differences in our food
Food scientists are trying to develop ways
We might also try to use various cooking methods, either by adding me fat, sweetness, strong flavors like garlic
3 . Food Taboos Around the World
●Jamaican Taboos
When it comes to raising children，there are some definite food-related taboos（禁忌）Jamaican people believe in. It is believed that if children eat chicken before they learn to speak, they will never talk. Eating half an egg will make the child grow into a thief and drinking milk from a baby bottle will turn them into an alcoholic.
●Nigerian Taboos
Much like the Jamaican taboos, many Nigerians’ taboos revolve around children. While they don’t believe children who eat eggs will turn into thieves, they have particularly strong feelings about coconut milk. Another widely held belief is that children who drink this type of milk will become unintelligent.
●Russian Taboos
Old world traditions are very much alive in Russia when it comes to traditional dating. If you are hoping to court a lady at a restaurant, do not expect to go Dutch. If you are the one who arranges the date, you are expected to pay for everything, as most Russian women won’t even bring their wallets on a formal date.
●Chinese Taboos
If you travel to China, minding your chopsticks is important. After finishing a meal at a restaurant, do not leave your chopsticks sticking up in the left-over rice at the bottom of your bowl. That practice is employed when families offer a meal to their ancestors’ ghosts at family shrines（神龛）but Chinese believe doing so in a restaurant would bother the owner with a terrible curse. For more global food taboos, click here and check out the full list.
1. What is least recommended for 2-year-olds in Nigeria?| A．Half an egg. | B．Chicken. | C．Coconut milk. | D．Bottled milk. |
| A．Jamaica. | B．Nigeria. | C．Russia. | D．China. |
| A．A food brochure. | B．A travel website. |
| C．A geography textbook. | D．An academic journal. |
4 . Traditional Chinese tea ceremonies are often held to welcome guests into one’s home. If you want to perform one, start by gathering all the tools you’ll need.
Prepare the Chinese tea set and appreciate the tea.
To prepare the Chinese tea set, heat water in a kettle. Then place the teapot and teacups in the bowl and pour the heated water over them to warm up the tea set.
Using the tea-leaf holder, pour the tea leaves into the teapot. This step is called “the black dragon enters the palace”. Heating water to the proper temperature is important when making Chinese tea, and ideal temperatures vary by tea type.
Next, place the teapot into the bowl, raise the kettle at shoulder length, and pour the heated water into the teapot until it overflows. Place the lid on the teapot.
Discard the tea and pour to brew (泡茶) again.
Pour the brewed tea into the tea pitcher. Using the tea pitcher, fill the tea cups with tea. But do not drink the tea. Instead, it is discarded.
Keeping the same tea leaves and holding the kettle just above the teapot, pour the properly heated water into the teapot. The water should be poured just above the teapot so as to not remove the flavor from the tea leaves too quickly. Place the lid on the teapot.
Time to enjoy your tea.
Pour all the tea into the tea pitcher, and then pour that tea into your tea snifters. It is good manners that tea drinkers hold the cup with both hands enjoy the tea’s aroma and take a sip.
| A．Watch out for the brewing temperatures. |
| B．Brew the tea leaves at proper temperatures. |
| C．The cup should be drunk in sips of different sizes. |
| D．Then, remove the teapot and cups from the bowl. |
| E．It is finally time for you to enjoy a nice cup of Chinese tea. |
| F．A traditional Chinese tea set can be bought at Chinatowns around the world. |
| G．The size of the tea leaves and their quality determine the length of the brewing time. |
5 . When you think of Chinese food in the US, fried rice, or General Tso’s chicken may first come to mind. But a new museum exhibition in New York City is trying to expand visitors’ palates (味蕾). It features stories of famous cooks like Martin Yan and home cooks whose food represents 18 different regional cooking styles of China.
“I think it’s unfair to just classify Chinese cooking as one,” says Kian Lam Kho, an organizer of “Sour, Sweet, Bitter, Spicy: Stories of Chinese Food and Identity in America” at the Museum of Chinese in America. “Even with the same dish or same cuisine, every family has a different variation.” That’s why the organizers say if you want to taste the full range of Chinese cuisine in the US, you’ll need to go beyond restaurants and into home kitchens, which can play a central role in many immigrants’ lives.
“The kitchen itself is kind of a comfort when you come to a new country. That’s the one place where you set up as your home base, and you cook things that you remember from your past,” explains Audra Ang, another organizer.
One of the home cooks showcased in the exhibition is Ni Biying, 80, of Manhattan. She worked as a live-in babysitter for years before she could finally afford to rent a home with her own kitchen. These days, you can usually find her moving around her one-bedroom apartment as a sweet smell of vinegar and rice wine floats from her stove. For Ni, a small dinner for friends and family means preparing almost a dozen different dishes. She learned some of her techniques from her father, who made most of her family’s meals when she was a child. “I still miss the beef with stir-fried celery my father used to cook,” she says. And it’s the kind of comfort food that defines Chinese food for Ni.
1. What is the new museum exhibition mainly about?| A．Cuisine of different countries. | B．Exploration of famous restaurants. |
| C．History of Chinese immigration. | D．Stories of Chinese food and cooks. |
| A．It provides a wealthy life. | B．It brings a sense of belonging. |
| C．It helps them to accept new cultures. | D．It enables them to forget the past. |
| A．She worked in a Chinese restaurant. |
| B．She made most meals as a child. |
| C．She learned cooking from her father. |
| D．She lives with a big family. |
| A．Cuisine Gains New Variations |
| B．Home Cooking Brings More to the Table |
| C．Immigrants Seek Their Fortune in the US |
| D．Chinese Restaurant Tells Immigrant Tales |
6 . Eating, probably one of the most-important parts of the day and probably one of things that change most when moving to another country. In Oaxaca, Mexico, adapting to eating patterns can take a while.
The first few months of living here I enjoyed eating Mexican food. I quickly learnt that big lunches and small dinners were the Mexican way and I kinda liked it. It made sense. As the months wore on I desired cooking and with it I desired the ingredients I knew and loved.
Oaxaca is known for its fantastic food and the food really is mind-blowing, but the problem for me was variety. I am from London, a city where you can eat food from a different country every day of the week, I was spoilt when it came to choice. I began to instruct friends and family who visited to bring Thai curry paste, sweet chili sauce, Indian curry sauces and gravy to make the perfect English Roast dinner.
For quite a while Oaxacan food lost its charm and the thought of cooking Mexican food was just too annoying. I would start to think about dinner at 5 just as my local market was shut and I would realize I had no ingredients and no means of getting any unless I took a long journey to the supermarket. It sounds like a strange thing to pet concerned about but I really think it was one of the biggest changes that I faced moving to Oaxaca.
However, just as I hit the two-year mark, things changed. I guess somehow I stopped fighting things and I began to adapt to the Oaxaca market food way of life. I shopped regularly for the freshest ingredients. I knew what was in season and I cooked accordingly. I started to realize just how super lucky I was to be able to eat fresh, locally sourced, seasonable food on my own doorstep. What started as culture shock turned into an improved way of living!
1. What did the author think of Mexican food for the first few months?| A．Boring. | B．Amazing. | C．Spicy. | D．Simple. |
| A．She wanted to save money. | B．She couldn’t afford Mexican food. |
| C．She was spoilt by her family. | D．She wanted to eat various foods. |
| A．She preferred shopping in the supermarket. |
| B．She was concerned about strange things. |
| C．Everyday cooking disturbed her quit a lot. |
| D．Food held little appeal for her. |
| A．If you can’t beat them, join them. |
| B．Where there is a will there is a way. |
| C．Food brings people together on many different levels. |
| D．It is never too late to learn. |
7 . Help Foreign Guests at Formal Dinner
The Spring Festival is coming. The traditional family banquet (宴会) is also coming. You probably have tried many different Chinese dishes. But do you really know how to behave properly at such an important meal?
In the West, everyone has their own plate of food or elder people at the table taste every dish first.
Don’t put your chopsticks upright in the rice bowl.
Make sure the spout (壶嘴) of the teapot is not facing anyone as this is impolite. The spout should always be directed to where nobody is sitting, usually just outward from the table.
Although, teenagers are not supposed to drink any wine, you can still say “Ganbei” and drink to the health of your grandparents and parents.
| A．It is sure to please them. |
| B．Instead, lay them on your dish. |
| C．Don’t tap on your bowl with your chopsticks. |
| D．Helping foreign guests at formal dinner is of great importance. |
| E．Could you explain Chinese polite table behaviors to a foreign visitor? |
| F．Therefore, Chinese people use chopsticks rather than knives and forks. |
| G．However, in China, the dishes are placed on the table and everybody shares. |
1.推荐一种美食；
2.简要介绍其特色；
3.邀请他来你的家乡品尝。
注意：1.词数：85 左右；
2.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
3.注意书信格式。
9 . Tea drinking was common in China for nearly one thousand years before anyone in Europe had ever heard about tea. People in Britain were much slower in finding out what tea was like, mainly because tea was very expensive. It could not be bought in shops and even those people who could afford to have it sent from Holland did so only because it was a fashionable curiosity. Some of them were not sure how to use it. They thought it was a vegetable and tried cooking the leaves. Then they served them mixed with butter and salt. They soon discovered their mistake but many people used to spread the used tea leaves on bread and give them to their children as sandwiches.
Tea remained rare and very expensive in England until the ships of the East India Company began to bring it direct from China early in the seventeenth century. During the next few years so much tea came into the country that the price fell and many people could afford to buy it.
At the same time people on the Continent were becoming more and more fond of tea. Until then tea had been drunk without milk in it, but one day a famous French lady named Madame de Sevigne decided to see what tea tasted like when milk was added. She found it so pleasant that she would never again drink it without milk. Because she was such a great lady that her friends thought they must copy everything she did, they also drank their tea with milk in it. Slowly this habit spread until it reached England and today only very few Britons drink tea without milk.
At first, tea was usually drunk after dinner in the evening. No one ever thought of drinking tea in the afternoon until a duchess (公爵夫人) found that a cup of tea and a piece of cake at three or four o'clock stopped her getting “a sinking feeling” as she called it. She invited her friends to have this new meal with her, and so tea-time was born.
1. Which of the following is true of the introduction of tea into Britain?| A．The Britons got expensive tea from India. |
| B．Tea reached Britain from Holland. |
| C．The Britons were the first people in Europe who drank tea. |
| D．It was not until the 17th century that the Britons had tea. |
| A．In the eighteenth century. | B．In the sixteenth century. |
| C．In the seventeenth century. | D．In the late seventeenth century. |
| A．It tasted like milk. | B．It was good for health. |
| C．It became a popular drink. | D．They tried to copy the way Madame de Sevigne drank tea. |
| A．How tea-time was born in Britain. |
| B．The history of tea drinking in Britain. |
| C．How tea became a popular drink in Britain. |
| D．How the Britons got the habit of drinking afternoon tea. |
10 . When our ancestors were peasants in the earliest days of agriculture, the daily schedule was: work in field all day, eat midday meal in field, continue working in field. Today, after centuries of human advancement, it goes something like: work in coffee shop all day, buy and eat lunch there, continue working on laptop until the sun sets. Though it may seem like the tech boom and gig economy(临时工经济) led the way in this modern mobile work style, working and dining have always been closely connected. In major cities like New York, Washington D.C., Sydney and Hong Kong, restaurants are changing into official co-working spaces during off-peak hours.
Dr. Megan Elias, director of the gastronomy program at Boston University, says food and business have been linked since as far back as the ancient Sumer (who established civilization as we know it around 4000 B.C.) “What we think of as street food has always been part of human civilization,” she says. “There have always been marketplaces where humans came together to conduct some kind of business — like trading grain, trading animals or building houses. As long as there have been marketplaces, people have been eating at them while also doing business.”
The first example of a brick-and-mortar “restaurant” came during the merchant economy in the 15th and 16th centuries, according to Elias. During this stage in European, African, and East and South Asian history, inns allowed merchant businessmen to rest — and of course, eat — throughout their travels. During the colonial era of the 1600s and 1700s, concrete examples of American restaurants emerged as “Coffee Houses”. Coffee Houses were places that had newspapers, which at the time were very small and commercial,” author and social historian Jan Whitaker explains.
Coffee houses remained tradesman staples throughout the early 19th century, with simple menu items like rolls and meat pies. More “grand meals,” as Elias calls them, were still taking place within homes for non-traveling folk. But, when the U.S. began industrializing in the 1840s and people stayed near workplaces during the day, eating establishments popped up around factories.
“Industrialization of the city is also restaurantization of the city,” Elias says. “Places sprung up to serve a business lunch crowd and an after-work dining crowd again, still doing business.”
1. Why does the author mentioned our ancestors in paragraph1?| A．To lead in the topic of the passage. |
| B．To present examples in the ancient times. |
| C．To raise questions on working style. |
| D．To remember ancestors’ working style. |
| A．Around 4000 B.C. | B．In the 15th and 16th centuries. |
| C．During the 1600s and 1700s. | D．In the early 19th century. |
| A．Newspapers were produced there first. |
| B．The food served there was limited at first. |
| C．They were especially popular around factories. |
| D．It was a perfect place for entertainment and eating. |
| A．The Function of Eating out. | B．The Slow Formation of the Modern City. |
| C．The Evolution of the Restaurant. | D．The Age of More Work, Less Eating. |
