Roasting versus Toasting

“Quieres un poco de tomate tostado, mi Moniquita?”

My mom knows how to make her little girl (me!) happy. For as long as I can remember, I have never been a fan of raw tomatoes. Yet if you were to toast them with some olive oil, I will love you like no other. You should read back the previous sentence one more time. Did you notice that I used the word “toast” rather than “roast” to describe cooked tomatoes? For some reason, many people have an issue with this that I never really noticed until recently discussing this with some fellow foodies in our Intro Sem. Why could this be? Let us look into this:

  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, roasting and toasting in English have very distinct meanings:

Retrieved from Google under search prompt "Roast"

Roast (v) To cook (food, esp. meat) by prolonged exposure to heat at or before a fire or similar source of radiant heat.

Retrieved from Google under  "Toast"

Toast (v) To brown (bread, cheese, etc.) by exposure to the heat of a fire, etc.

In Spanish though, things change a bit:

Retrieved from Google Mexico under  "Asar"

Asar (v) cocinar alimentos por acción directa del fuego. 

Translation: cooking food with direct heat

Carne Tostada (Retrieved from Google Mexico under "Tostar")

Tostar (v) poner un alimento al fuego para que tome color sin que se queme.

Translation: cooking food with heat so it browns without burning

  You see the difference? In English, the definitions differentiate roasting and toasting mainly through what types of food are involved in the process. Meat tends to be roasted and breads tend to be toasted. In Spanish though, when somebody roasts or toasts the only difference is how much the food has browned. Not so much WHAT food has been cooked. The coloring of the food through cooking seems to matter much more than what has been cooked! To make this clearer, let us see what exactly are the components of each method in each respective language:

English                                                                                Spanish

to roast: [+Direct Heat] [+Meat]                                     asar: [+Direct Heat]

to toast: [+Heat] [+Brown] [+Breads and Cheeses]     tostar: [+Heat] [+Brown]

  So essentially, as seen above, the ONLY difference between the two languages is the types of food which are roasted or toasted. Why could this be? English speakers, specifically Americans, tend to favor specificity while Spanish speakers I think value familiarity and simplicity. This can be seen through looking at two menus, one in Spanish and English. Let's look at both of them:

Menu from Moocher's Jazz Cafe

Menu from Dos de Oros

  Moocher’s Jazz Cafe elaborates in more detail than the menu from Dos de Oros, a Spanish restaurant. This is simply a cultural difference in preference.

           Moreover, maybe this desire for specificity in English speakers is why there is more detail in the English definitions of roasting versus toasting. 

Just a thought.