Tiramisu

Tiramisu (pronounced tir-uh-mee-soo)

An rich Italian semifreddo dessert made with espresso coffee-soaked layers of cake alternating with mascarpone cheese and chocolate; variations sometimes add liquor.

1972: From the Italian tiramisù, the construct being tira (pick or pull) + mi (me) + sù (up).  The Italian tirare (to pull, tug) is from the Medieval Latin, from the Vulgar Latin tirāre, of unknown origin but thought by most etymologists to be Germanic.  In the Italian it’s tiramisù and the alternative spelling is tirami sù.

Signor Campeol (1927-2021) with a tiramisu.

Aged ninety-three, Ado Campeol died on 31 October 2021.  Signor Campeol owned Le Beccherie, a restaurant in Treviso in the north of Italy and it was there the most celebrated modern form of tiramisu was created by his wife, Alba Di Pillo and their chef.  Constructed with espresso coffee-soaked biscuits, mascarpone and chocolate, it was added to the Le Beccherie menu in 1972 but, being never patented by the family, it became another of Italy’s many cultural gifts to the world. Around the world, there are variants of tiramisu which include different chocolates, spirits like rum or liquors but the original recipe (certified in 2010 by the Italian Academy of Cuisine) was alcohol-free because it was meant to be eaten by children too.  Quite when the concoction was first made isn't clear and there is evidence something similar may have appeared as early as the nineteenth century and there are accounts of similar dishes from the 1960s. 

There has long been a dispute about the origin of tiramisu, including the tempting suggestion it was offered as an aphrodisiac in one of Trevisio’s brothels but the definitive modern version seems to be the one created at Le Beccherie, opened by the Campeol family in 1939 and managed after the end of World War II by Ado Campeol.  According to the co-inventor, Chef Roberto Linguanotto, the creation of tiramisu was entirely serendipitous, the result of a slip of the hand while making vanilla ice cream, some mascarpone cheese which had been spilled into a bowl of eggs and sugar proving to yield a delightful taste.  The chef and Signora Campeol experimented with combinations, perfecting the dessert by adding ladyfinger sponges soaked in coffee, and sprinkling it with cocoa.  They called it tiramisù which translates into English as "pick me up", a tribute to the refreshing sensation a serving provides.

Tiramisu recipe:  This will serve 4-6, take about 30 minutes to prepare and will be ready to serve after a further two hours of chilling.  This recipe includes only Marsala wine but works well with liquors like Kahlua or Benedictine.

Ingredients

300ml espresso coffee, brewed

2 tablespoons Marsala wine

4 eggs

100g sugar

500g mascarpone

300g ladyfinger (savoiardi) biscuits

200g shaved dark chocolate

Unsweetened cocoa powder

Instructions

Brew coffee using a macchinetta.  In saucepan or other heatproof container, combine coffee and Marsala wine, stirring slowly, then set aside to cool.

In a bowl, separate egg whites from yolks and whip whites until stiff.  In another bowl, whisk the yolks with the sugar until pale and smooth. This should take 3-5 minutes.

Add mascarpone to the yolks and whisk slowly with an electric mixer. Add the stiffened egg whites and mix through with a wooden spoon until smooth and creamy.

Dip ladyfingers into the coffee and wine. Spread a layer of the biscuits in a serving dish, add a level of shaved chocolate (depth according to taste) and spread a layer of mascarpone mixture on top. Sprinkle with cocoa powder. Repeat layers once more.

Sprinkle the top with cocoa powder. Chill for 2 hours before serving.

Pavlova

Pavlova (pronounced pav-luh-vuh, pahv-loh-vuh, pav-luh-vuh or pah-vluh-vuh (Russian)).

A meringue cake, topped typically with whipped cream and fruit or confections.

Circa 1930: Named after Russian ballet ballerina Anna (pronounced ah-nuh) Pavlova (1885-1931).  Pavlova is a transliteration of the Russian surname Па́влова (Pávlova), the feminine variant of Па́влов (Pávlov).  Pavlova is a noun (pav the usual contraction); the noun plural is pavlovas.

Julia from Pampered Menial (1975) by Pavlov’s Dog.

Although coined at much the same time, the adjective Pavlovian is unrelated Ms Pavlova or meringue cakes.  It refers to the theories & experimental work of Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (Ива́н Петро́вич Па́влов; 1849-1936), especially in connection with the conditioned salivary reflexes of dogs in response to the mental stimulus of the sound of a bell (in the West, his work was in 1911 originally referred to as the “Pavloff method” because of a misunderstanding by editors).  His work was a landmark in experimental behavioralism, inducing a dog associatively to link a biologically potent stimulus (food) with a previously neutral stimulus (a bell).  The phrase “Pavlov’s dog” entered English to describe a conditioned response (reacting to a situation on the basis of taught behavior rather than reflectively).  One interesting aspect of comrade Pavlov’s career is that he made no secret of his opposition to many aspects of communism in the Soviet state built by comrade Stalin (1878–1953; leader of the USSR 1922-1953), on occasions making his views plain even to the general secretary himself.  Despite that, no action appears ever to have been taken against him and after he died (at 86 of natural causes), he was granted a grand funeral.

Anna Pavlova with Jack.

Anna Pavlova was famous for her interpretation of The Dying Swan, a solo dance choreographed by Mikhail Fokine (1880-1942) to Camille Saint-Saëns's (1835-1921) Le Cygne (The Swan) from Le Carnaval des animaux (The Carnival of the Animals (1922)), commissioned as a pièce d'occasion (an artistic work produced for a special event) for the ballerina who performed it on some 4000 occasions.  It's a short, intense piece which follows the last moments of a swan.  Ms Pavlova for years kept a pet swan called Jack.

New Zealand is a small country in the remote South Pacific which has over the years produced some notable figures such as (1) Lord Rutherford (1871–1937) who, although a physicist who regarded other branches of science as mere forms of engineering which worked within the laws of physics, was awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in chemistry and is most remembered for his work which led to the atom being split in 1932, (2) Sir Edmund Hillary (1919–2008) who, with the Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay (1914–1986), was the first to ascend Mount Everest and (3) Sir David Low (1891–1963) who was among the most noted and prolific political cartoonists between the troubled 1930s and the early Cold War years.  The country has also for more than a century fielded what has been usually the world’s most successful rugby union side (the recent inconsistency of the All Blacks not withstanding) and memories are long, the try disallowed by a Scottish referee in a 1905 test against Wales at Cardiff Arms Park still a sore point.

Mango, passion fruit & limoncello pavlova.

Less bitter but no less contested than the matter of the disallowed try is the origin of the Pavlova, the invention of which is claimed by both Australia and New Zealand.  What all agree is the cake is a mixture of egg whites and sugar, topped usually with cream and fresh fruit, named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova who toured both countries during the 1920s.  Researchers on both sides of the Tasman Sea (referred to by locals as “the ditch”) have long trawled cook books and newspapers to find the earliest entry but according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), New Zealand appears to hold the evidential advantage, a recipe from there having been verified as published in 1927 while the oldest claimed entry from Australia dates from 1935.  That however resolves only the use of Ms Pavlova’s name as the description, pastry chefs adding cream to meringue known even in the nineteenth century and the 1927 recipe in the book Davis Dainty Dishes, published by the Davis Gelatine company, was a multi-colored jelly concoction.  New Zealand’s historians of food concede the culinary point but cite recipes from 1928 & 1929 which are definitely of meringue, cream and fruit.  Strangely perhaps, the OED remained on the lexicographical fence, listing the origin as an ambiguous "Austral. and N.Z."

Espresso martini pavlova

Preparation: 1 hour

Cooking: 2 hours:

Serves: 10-12

Ingredients

8 egg whites
Pinch of cream of tartar
1 tablespoon ground coffee powder
430 gm (2 cups) caster sugar
2 tablespoons of corn-flour
1 teaspoon white vinegar
600 ml (l carton) thickened cream
125 ml (½ cup) coffee liqueur
2 teaspoons cocoa powder
Chocolate-coated coffee beans (to decorate)
Dark chocolate curls (to decorate)
Coffee vodka syrup
2 tablespoons vodka
2 teaspoons arrowroot
100 grams (½ cup, firmly packed) brown sugar
125 ml (½ cup) prepared espresso coffee

Instructions

(1) Preheat oven to 120^oC (100 ^oC fan forced) (250^oF (210 ^oF fan forced).  Draw a 200 mm (8 inch) circle on 2 sheets of baking paper.  Place each sheet, marked side down, on a baking tray.

(2) Use an electric beater with a whisk attachment to whisk the egg whites and cream of tartar in a clean dry bowl until firm peaks form.  Gradually whisk in the coffee powder.  Add the sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, whisking constantly until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is thick and glossy.  Beat in the corn-flour and vinegar.

(3) Divide meringue mixture among the 2 marked circles on the prepared trays. Use a palette knife to spread mixture into 2 evenly shaped discs.  Bake for 2 hours or until meringues are dry and crisp.  Turn off oven. Leave meringues in the oven, with the door slightly ajar, until cooled completely.

(4) Meanwhile, to make the coffee vodka syrup, combine the vodka and arrowroot in a small bowl.  Combine the sugar and coffee in a small saucepan.  Bring to the boil over high heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Reduce heat and simmer for 3 minutes or until the syrup has thickened slightly.  Stir in the vodka mixture and return to the boil, boiling for 1 minute or until thickened.  Remove from heat and transfer to a small bowl and set aside to cool.  Place in the fridge until required.

(5) Use electric beaters to beat the cream in a bowl until soft peaks form. Beat in the coffee liqueur and cocoa until firm peaks form.

(6) Place 1 pavlova disc on a serving plate. Top with half the cream mixture. Drizzle with a little coffee vodka syrup. Scatter with coffee beans and chocolate curls.  Repeat with the remaining disc, cream mixture, syrup, coffee beans and chocolate curls.  Serve.

Auckland Airport, New Zealand, December 2023.

Ossuary

Ossuary (pronounced osh-oo-er-ee or os-oo-er-ee)

(1) A structure dedicated to the storage of the bones of the dead.

(2) Any container for the burial of human bones, such as an urn.

(3) By extension, a place for discarded or broken items or (figuratively), of abandoned concepts or ideas. 

1650-1660: From the Late Latin ossuārium (charnel house; receptacle for bones of the dead), a neuter of ossuārius (of or for bones) and variant of ossārium, the construct being oss- (stem of os) (bone (plural ossua)) + -ārius (the adjectival suffix giving the sense “of or related to”).  The Latin os was from the primitive Indo-European ost (bone).  The model for the word was mortuarium, and the alternative form remains ossuarium.  Ossuary and ossuarium are nouns and ossuarius is an adjective; the noun plural is ossuaries.

The Sedlec Ossuary at Starosedlecká, Kutná Hora, in the Bohemian region of the Czech Republic lies about 42 miles (70 km) east of the capital, Prague.  A medieval town, much of the baroque architecture was build between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries from the wealth generated by the adjacent silver mine.  On architectural grounds alone Kutná Hora is worthy of its status as a UNESCO World Heritage site but, in the suburb of Sedlec is the Church of All Saints which probably deserves a separate listing.

Sedlec’s Church of All Saints is better known as the Sedlec Ossuary, the church of bones, said to contain the bones of between some forty and sixty-thousand dead.  Its origins were a mission by the abbot of the Sedlec Cistercian Monastery, sent by the King of Bohemia to Jerusalem.  The abbot returned with an urn of soil from the Golgotha, the place where Jesus Christ was said to be crucified and this earth he spread around the grounds of the church’s cemetery.  As word of the "Holy Soil" became known, from all over Bohemia, people began to ask to be buried at Sedlec’s Church of All Saints.

Such was the demand that by the fifteenth century, skeletal remains had to be exhumed from the cemetery, the town needing to expand and more space needed for the more recently dead.  In what may sound a little shocking (but must have been judged theologically sound), the bones lay stacked in the basement of the church until 1870 when František Rint (1835-circa 1895), a woodcarver and carpenter from the small town of Česká Skalice in northern Bohemia, was employed by the House of Schwarzenberg (the ruling family of the town) to organize and arrange them.  The results of his efforts were spectacular, the carpenter creating intricate sculptures, including several chandeliers and a copy of the Schwarzenberg coat of arms.  The most spectacular of the chandeliers is also technically interesting for anatomists, said to include at least one of every bone in the human body

The elaborate constructions may seem macabre but each is accompanied by religious displays arranged from bone, conveying to visitors the message that the chapel remains a respectful place of worship and indeed, regular masses continue to be held in both the upper and lower chapel.  Musical performances however are staged only within the church proper so what might prove the interesting acoustic properties of all those bones remains unexplored.  The site, opened to tourists early in the century proved popular, almost a quarter-million visiting in the last year before the pandemic and it quickly became the biggest attraction in central Bohemia.  The financial blessing has proved also a curse however, local residents complaining the volume of visitors often overwhelms the operations of what remains a functioning Roman Catholic church and cemetery.  It’s said there are tourists who treat the place as just another theme-park.

Still, such is the importance of the ossuary to the local economy, that the ancient site is often renovated, including some attention to the condition of the bones which sounds strange but it seems human bone is subject to discoloration over time and restoring them to a more brilliant white is thought greatly to enhance the tourists' visual experience.  Even if one’s taste doesn’t extend to the macabre, Kutná Hora remains one of the medieval treasures of Bohemia and within the same Cistercian complex as the ossuary is the Sedlec Cathedral, the Church of the Assumption of Our Lady and Saint John the Baptist.  Built between 1290-1320, the cathedral is one of the oldest remaining in the Baroque Gothic style and also enjoys a place on the UNESCO World Heritage list and a short distance from there is a truly secular attraction, the Kutná Hora's Chocolate Museum, a tiny homage to chocolate with exhibits dating from the early nineteenth century.  There are chocolate tasting sessions and private candlelit dinners can be booked.

The ossuary vibe: Lindsay Lohan wearing Alexander McQueen skull scarf, 2012.

So entrenched in fashion has the skull been for hundreds of years that not even its use (as the “Death’s Head”) by the Nazi SS (the Schutzstaffel (security squad), 1925-1945, also stylized as ᛋᛋ with Armanen runes) tainted it sufficiently to discourage its appearance on clothes, accessories and jewelry.  Seasonally, the popularity ebbs and flows but skulls are seemingly always at least a niche and the appeal is also cross-cultural, the skull variously a good luck charm and a symbol employed to ward of disease and evil spirits.  In the English-speaking world, the widespread use of the skull symbol seems to have begun in the Elizabethan period (1558-1603) although most acknowledge the practice began in Bohemia and came to England via sea-farers and traders, the original items being skull rings, either carved from a human jawbone or rendered from metal.  An especially popular form was the skull ring with the jawbone disappearing to create the illusion of a finger piercing the wearer's mouth, still a widely used pattern today.  One curious aspect of the appeal is that Satanists and Christians alike have both embraced the iconography, skulls a likely to be seen among Devil worshipers as they are to be in the mix with images of saints and crucifixes.  Of late though, while they haven’t disowned the medieval art, Christianity seems now less keen on skulls.  The Satanists remain committed.

Petecure

Petecure (pronounced pet-i-kyoor)

Simple cooking; meals prepared quickly with a limited number of ingredients.

Circa 1430: From the Middle English coining petecure, the construct being the petit + cure.  Petit was from the Middle English petit, from the Old French petit, from the Vulgar Latin pitittus, a diminutive of the Latin pit-, possibly from the Proto-Celtic pett- (part, bit, piece) and related to the Latin pitulus & pitinnus (small), the forms said to be of imitative origin; a doublet of petty.  The alternative forms in the Old French were peti & pitet, the source ultimately of the Spanish pequeño.  Cure was from the Latin curāre (to care for) from cura (cure), from the Proto-Italic kwoizā, from the primitive Indo-European kweys- (to heed); the long archaic forms being coira & coera.

The word petecure seems first to have appears in print in Liber Cure Cocorum, an English cookbook published in the county of Lancashire circa 1430.  The literal translation of Liber Cure Cocorum (which the author titled as The Slyghtes of Cure) isn’t a great deal of help and it’s best understood as The Art of Cooking.  Very much a document of the working class & peasant cuisine of the age, it’s notable for its focus on the food of the common people which contrasts with many of the works by social historians which relied upon the much more extensively recorded recipes and menus enjoyed by royalty and the aristocracy.  There are useful entries about that famous delicacy haggis and the first known reference to humble pie, written at the time as nombuls (ie a pie made from offal) and a theme in the cookbook is what the unknown author called petecure (simple cooking), tips and tricks for the poor who lacked the expensive ingredients and even the exotic spices used by chefs who cooked a sophisticated fare for the elite.  “Of petecure I will preach” he declared and there remains in Cambridge a street named Petty Cury which in the fourteenth century was spelled Le Petycure, though to mean “small kitchen” and probably associated with some eating place once located there.

Despite the appearance there’s no etymological connection between petecure and epicure, the latter derived from the philosopher Epicurus (circa 340–270 BC).  In the popular imagination, the two words would be thought diametrically opposed, Epicureans now thought of as sybarites with diets characterized by rich, gout-inducing dishes but that’s a modern understanding.  In antiquity, the philosophical system of Epicurus held that the external world was but fortuitous combinations of atoms and that the highest good is pleasure, interpreted as freedom from disturbance or pain.  Epicurus’ school in Hellenic Greece, founded circa 307 BC taught a doctrine hostile to superstition and divine intervention and believed pleasure leads to the greatest individual and collective good.  The path to this, Epicurus held, was to study the world, live modestly and contain one’s desires so as to not succumb to self-indulgence.  A life such lived, he taught, would allow one to attain a state of ataraxia (tranquility) and aponia (a freedom from fear and pain) and to attain these two states produces human happiness in its purest and highest form.  Happiness therefore comes from the virtues of diligence and restraint; the avoidance of excess.  To be fair to Epicurus, he was not averse to the odd luxury and his school was known for the feasts it held on the twentieth of each month.  In the modern age, adherents came to focus on the feast and ignore the rest resulting in the meaning shift which sees Epicureanism now a synonym for hedonism and associated almost exclusively with fine food and drink.  By the late twentieth-century, the word in the sense of its original meaning was barely used outside academic circles but of late something of a cult has developed around his original ideas although all Epicurean societies do seem to have maintained the tradition of the feast.

Lindsay Lohan enjoying a pedicure, September 2007.

Nor should petecure be confused with the 1839 noun pedicure (one whose business is the surgical care of feet (removal of corns, bunions etc)), from the French pédicure, the construct being the Latin pēs (genitive pedis) (foot), from the primitive Indo-European root ped- (foot) + cure as a clipping of curāre (to care for).  The sense of the word shifted from the practitioner (1939) to the treatment itself (1890) before finally settling as a beauty treatment (1905) wholly separate from clinical medicine and thus a companion term to manicure.

Liber Cure Cocorum was barely known for centuries, sitting in the collection of Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), an Anglo-Irish physician & naturalist.  It was one of some 70,000-odd items he bequeathed to the nation, the works among the foundation documents of the British Museum, the British Library, and the Natural History Museum.  Liber Cure Cocorum was deciphered and published in 1862.  Sloane is credited by some as having invented drinking chocolate but the evidence suggests there had been many recipes for such concoctions circulating for years before Sloane published his and the origins anyway probably lie in the Caribbean centuries earlier.  Sloane however, a physician to the aristocracy and three successive sovereigns, was a good publicist, lending his name to Sir Hans Sloane's Milk Chocolate, marketed in the 1750s by a London grocer as a “medicinal elixir” and Cadbury’s tins of drinking chocolate for years included a card detailing Sloane's recipe.

Royal Court, Sloane Square SW1W 8AS, London.

It’s after Sir Hans that Sloane Square, a part of London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea which drips with money, was named, the reference due to him once owning the land.  Thus far the connection has survived the ripples of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement but in 2020 a bust of Sloane in the British Museum's Enlightenment Gallery was moved to become part of a display documenting his links to the "exploitative context of the British Empire", a reference to the financial benefits he gained from the Jamaican sugar trade.  To that, some Irish critics noted acerbically that nothing was said about the benefits Sloane’s family had gained from the confiscation of Irish lands and their exploitation.

Snack

Snack (pronounced snak)

(1) A small portion of food or drink or a light meal, especially one eaten between regular meals.

(2) In the phrase “go snack”, to share profits or returns (archaic).

(3) In slang, someone physically attractive and sexually desirable (regionally limited).

(4) To have a snack or light meal, especially between regular meals:

1300–1350: From the Middle English verb snacchen, snacche, snache & snak & noun snacche, snak & snakee (to snap at, bite, seize (as of dogs) and cognate with the Middle Dutch snacken (to snap (as of dogs), from snakken and a variant of snappen (to snap)) and the Norwegian dialect snaka (to snatch (as of animals)).  In many European languages, snack is used in the same sense though in Swedish technically it’s deverbal of snacka (to chat, to talk).  The pleasing recent noun snackette is either (1) A small shop or kiosk selling snacks or (2) smaller than usual snacks (the word often used by dieters to distinguish their snacks from the more indulgent choices of others).  The synonyms include morsel, refreshment, bite, eats, goodies, nibble, pickings & tidbit.  Snack is a noun, adjective & verb, snacking and snacked are verbs; the noun plural is snacks.

Cadbury Snack.

The original Middle English verb (to bite or snap (as of dogs), probably came either from the Middle Dutch or Flemish snacken (to snatch, snap; chatter), the source of which is uncertain although one etymologist traces it to a hypothetical Germanic imitative root snu- used to form words relating to the snout or nose.  The sense of "having a bite to eat; a morsel or light meal” dates from 1807.  The noun snack (a snatch or snap (especially that of a dog) developed from the verb and emerged circa 1400.  The meaning extended to "a snappish remark" by the 1550s and "a share, portion, part" by the 1680s (hence the now archaic expression “go snacks” which meant "share, divide; have a share in").  The familiar modern meaning "a small dish morsel to eat hastily" was first noted in 1757.  The first snack bar (a place selling snacks) seems to have opened in 1923 and the similar (often smaller, kiosk-type operations) snackettes were a creation of US commerce in the 1940s.  Snack bars could be either stand-alone businesses or something operating within a stadium, theatre, cinema etc.  The commercial plural form snax was coined in 1942 for the vending machine trade and the term “snack table” has been in use since circa 1950.

Nestlé Salted Caramel Munchies.

Functionally (though not etymologically) related was munchies (food or snack) from 1959, the plural of the 1917 munchie (snack eaten to satisfy hunger) from the 1816 verb munch (to eat; to chew).  The familiar (to some) phrase “got the munchies” in the sense of "craving for food after smoking weed (marijuana)" was US stoner slang which was first documented in 1971 but Nestlé corporation’s Munchies weren’t an opportunistic attempt to grab the attention of weed smokers.  Munchies pre-date the slang use of the word by over a decade, introduced in 1957 by the Mackintosh company, Nestlé acquiring the brand in 1988 when it acquired Rowntree Mackintosh and it’s not known if the slang use can be attributed to some stoner coming back from the shop with a bag-full of the snacks and telling his grateful companions “I’ve got the Munchies”.  Munchies were originally milk chocolates with a caramel and biscuit centre but the range has in recent years proliferated to include centres of mint fondant, chocolate fudge, cookie dough and salted caramel.  The latest variation has been to use a white chocolate shell, this described as a “limited-edition” but it’s presumed if demand exists, it will become a standard line.

Stocking up: Lindsay Lohan buying snacks, London, 2008.

Freckle

Freckle (pronounced frek-uhl)

(1) One of the small, brownish spots on the skin that are caused by a localized deposition of the pigment melanin and that increase in number and darken on exposure to sunlight.

(2) Any small spot or discoloration.

(3) To cover with freckles; produce freckles on.

(4) To become freckled.

(5) In Australia, a small, disk-like sweet consisting of a flattish mound of chocolate covered in hundreds and thousands.

1350-1400: From the Middle English freken & frekel, from the Old Norse (plural) freknur (freckles) (and related to the Old Norse freknōttr (speckled) the Swedish fräkna & fräknar, the Norwegian & Icelandic frekna and the Danish fregne & fregner), a variant of the Old English sprecel from the Proto-Germanic sprekalą (freckle) (and related to the dialectal Norwegian sprekla and the Middle High German spreckel), from the primitive Indo-European sp(h)er(e)g- (to strew, to sprinkle).  It was cognate with the Albanian fruth (measles).  The verb freckle (to cover with spots) dated from the 1610s, the adjective freckled existing since the late fourteen century in the sense of “spotted”.  Freckle is a noun & verb, freckled & freckly are adjective and the verbs (used without object) are freckled & freckling.  The noun plural is freckles and the long obsolete alternative form from the late fourteenth century was frecken.

The similar noun fleck (a mark on skin, a freckle) from the 1590s was presumably from the verb fleck or a related word elsewhere in Germanic, such as the Middle Dutch vlecke or the Old Norse flekkr (a fleck, spot); from circa 1750 meaning extended to "a small particle" and from 1804. "a patch, a spot" of any kind.  The technical term for a freckle is ephelis.  Ephelis is from the Latin ephēlis, from the Ancient Greek ἔφηλῐς (éphēlis) (a freckle), the construct being ἐπ- (ep-) (upon, over, (ie epi-)) +‎ ἥλῐος (hḗlios) (the sun) +‎ -ῐς (-is), the nominal suffix).  The plural is ephelides.  The freckle (ephelis) differs from a lentigo in that a lentigo is a pigmented flat or slightly raised lesion with a clearly defined edge.  Unlike an ephelis (freckle), it does not fade in the winter months and dermatologists define several kinds of lentigo. The name lentigo originally referred to its appearance resembling a small lentil and they’re often now referred to as beauty spots or marks, a la Marilyn Munroe.  To a dermatologist, freckle & ephelis are synonymous but in general vaguely related words include synonyms include blemish, blotch, mole, daisy, dot, lentigo, macula, patch, pepper, pigmentation, pit, pock, pockmark, speck, speckle, sprinkle & stipple.

A freckle is an area of the skin with more pigmentation than the surrounding area, a clustering of concentrated melaninized cells which appear more obvious on those with light skin.  Counter intuitively, the skin which manifests as a freckle doesn’t have any more melanin-producing cells (or melanocytes) than the surrounding skin but instead has melanocytes that overproduce melanin granules (melanosomes), thus darkening the color of the outer cells (keratinocytes).  In this, a freckle differs from a mole in that the latter is an accumulation of melanocytes in a small area.

#freckles: Lindsay Lohan out shopping.

Of the six skin types on the Fitzpatrick spectrum, (1) Pale white skin with blue or green eyes & blonde or red hair (always burns, does not tan), (2), Fair skin with blue eyes (burns easily, tans poorly), (3), Darker white skin (tans after initial burn), (4), Light brown skin (burns minimally, tans easily), (5), Brown skin (rarely burns, tans darkly & easily & (6), Dark brown or black skin, freckles appear most frequently and are most apparent upon types (1) & (2) but can exist on anyone.  Like just about everything, the existence of freckles ultimately dependent on genetics and related to a particular gene although geneticists note the presence of at least one of two or more versions of the MC1R gene is usually required for freckles to form, the genetic combination does not guarantee an instance and in their absence, freckles may still exist.  Thus those with the gene combination are much more likely to be freckled while in those without, the instance is rare.  The MC1R gene correlates even more strongly with the red hair which is, impressionistically, so associated with freckles and it is true the two are the most frequently seen combination among the freckled, most red-heads having two variants of the MC1R gene and almost all have one.  Freckling exists even among populations, such as those of East Asia, where there is no natural occurrence of red hair but there, while genetically determined, it’s a different gene from MC1R, intriguingly one found in European populations where any influence on pigmentation is rare.

Lindsay Lohan's fridge magnet.

For centuries, many with freckles have sought their removal and by the nineteenth century, demand meant the process was part of the beauty industry.  Hydrochloric acid (muriatic acid), ammonium, hydrogen peroxide and liquid carbon dioxide could be effective and were certainly safer (if used correctly) than bi-chloride of mercury which definitely worked although the inherent difficulty was that pigment cells exist under the horny cells of the epidermis so results were usually temporary.  Many resorted to sometimes quite drastic skin-peeling and the most popular agent was for centuries lemon juice which bleaches the skin, inducing peeling although those wanting faster results would later use a hydrogen peroxide solution which was applied immediately after the skin had been scrubbed with a strong alkali soap and ammonium water.  If a patient demanded it, dermatologists would sometimes use undiluted carbolic acid to induce a severe inflammation and consequent peeling but there was reluctance in the profession because even when used with the appropriate skill, it could cause scaring and certainly couldn't be used on sensitive skin.  For that reason, many preferred the less effective hydrogen peroxide, salicylic acid or resorcinol; the early experiments with electrolysis proved unsatisfactory.  Mercury compounds such as ammoniated mercury and bi-chloride of mercury (corrosive sublimate) were the basis of many over-the-counter "anti-freckle" compounds, often combined with zinc salts or bismuth sub-nitrate and although marketed as "bleaching creams’", chemically they were really desquamating agents.  Remarkably, although restrictions began to be placed on the use of mercury in cosmetics as early as the 1940s, it wasn't until the late 1970s that in the West it was effectively banned for this purpose.  The preferred method of freckle removal is now laser treatment although the traditional view of dermatologists that freckles are a normal part of the human condition requiring no treatment is now more fashionable and there are many who fancy freckles.

Chocolate Freckles.

Freckles form on the skin because of exposure to sunlight, certain parts of the spectrum activating the melanocytes which stimulate an increase in melanin production, cause them to darken and appear more obvious.  Cases exist in the literature of people who spent their early life in extreme northern latitudes developing freckles only after moving south and thus greatly increasing their exposure to sunlight.  In some cases, these people have presented to physicians seeking treatment for a skin disorder which freckles are not.  Freckles are instead something of a by-product of the migration of early humans, as long as 1.8 million years ago, from Africa, north to the lands around the Mediterranean and later beyond.  It was natural selection which, well over 100,000 years ago, produced the gene variants associated with pigmentation, induced by the advantaged gained by a lighter skin when living in northern latitudes; one which can absorb enough ultra-violet (UV) light to permit the body to sustain a healthy production of vitamin D.

Ersatz

Ersatz (pronounced er-zahts or er-sahts)

(1) Serving as a substitute; synthetic; artificial (adjective).

(2) An artificial substance or article used to replace something natural or genuine; a substitute (noun).

1875: From the German ersatz (units of the army reserve (literally "compensation, replacement, substitute"), a back-formation from ersetzen (to replace; substitute good) from the Old High German irsezzen, the construct being ir- (an unaccented variant of ur; in German, the prefix signifying a notion of getting something (either by conscious effort or (rarely) producing the effect of coming to have it unintentionally) by specific means) + setzen, from the Middle High German setzen, from the Old High German sezzen, from the Proto-Germanic satjaną, from the primitive Indo-European sodéyeti; from the primitive Indo-European root sed- (to sit); it was cognate with the Hunsrik setze, the English set and the Dutch zetten.  Historically an adjective, use of ersatz as a noun was first noted in 1892.

Technically, although ersatz has many synonyms (synthetic, phony, imitation, fake, sham, substitute, counterfeit, bogus, manufactured, pretended, simulated, spurious, copied, false et al), because of its association with inferior quality goods (such as chocolate and, most famously, the notoriously unpleasant ersatz coffee, made typically from acorns), produced in Germany during the world wars to compensate for the shortage of genuine products, Ersatz tends to be used in that context while the preferred terms in modern English use are fake & faux, the latter with the particular sense of something imitative yet deliberately not deceptively so.  Indeed, faux can have positive connotations (faux fur, leather etc) and, among vegans, such things may be obligatory. 

Originally, the German military jargon was Ersatz Corps which described reserve, substitute or replacement troops, the word later adopted by the Kaiserliche Marine (the Imperial Navy) as part of the secrecy protocol which didn’t reveal the names of vessels until launch (and, in war-time, even during sea-trials), ships thus appearing in the naval lists with names like "Ersatz Yorck class".  During the two world wars, it was most famously applied to over ten-thousand substitute products, both industrial and consumer goods, created because of shortages.  The word entered Russian and English and came to describe any product thought not as good as the original.

Lindsay Lohan v Take-Two Interactive Software Inc et al, New York Court of Appeals (No 24, pp1-11, 29 March 2018)

In a case which took an unremarkable four years from filing to reach New York’s highest appellate court, Lindsay Lohan’s suit against the makers of video game Grand Theft Auto V was dismissed.  In a unanimous ruling in March 2018, six judges of the New York Court of Appeals rejected her invasion of privacy claim which alleged one of the game’s characters was based on her.  The judges found the "actress/singer" in the game merely resembled a “generic young woman” rather than anyone specific.  Unfortunately the judges seemed unacquainted with the concept of the “basic white girl” which might have made the judgment more of a fun read.

Beware of imitations: The real Lindsay Lohan and the GTA 5 ersatz, a mere "generic young woman".

Agreeing with the 2016 ruling of the New York County Supreme Court which, on appeal, also found for the game’s makers, the judges, as a point of law, accepted the claim a computer game’s character "could be construed a portrait", which "could constitute an invasion of an individual’s privacy" but, on the facts of the case, the likeness was "not sufficiently strong".  The “… artistic renderings are an indistinct, satirical representation of the style, look and persona of a modern, beach-going young woman... that is not recognizable as the plaintiff" Judge Eugene Fahey wrote in his ruling.  Lindsay Lohan’s lawyers did not seek leave to appeal.

Schematic of Ersatz Yorck's armor deployment.

Ersatz Yorck was one of the project names for a planned build of three battlecruisers ordered in 1916 by the German navy.  After the first keel had been laid down, influenced by the tendency, noted since the launching a decade earlier of the Royal Navy's HMS Dreadnought, towards bigger guns, the design was revised to become was significantly heavier than the Mackensen class which had been the original template.  The name Ersatz Yorck was derived from the ship being the replacement (ie ersatz in the original German sense of the word) for the Roon class armored cruiser SMS Yorck, sunk in home waters in 1914 after striking a (German) mine.  The other two ships in the programme were Ersatz Gneisenau & Ersatz Scarnhorst, both slated as replacements for namesakes lost during the Battle of the Falkland Islands (1914).

The three ships were never completed because it had become apparent augmenting the surface fleet was reinforcing failure and that U-boat (submarine) construction was a better use of available resources.  Thus the partially built Ersatz Yorck, years from completion, was broken up on the slipway and cannibalized to support U-boat production.  However, the navy retained the blueprints and it was these plans which in the 1930s provided the basis for what became the Scarnhorst class battleships although, in the Second World War, the illusion a surface fleet would be a more effective instrument of war at sea than the U-Boats proved again a chimera and one which meant that even in the early days of the conflict, the British never quite lost control of the Atlantic.  Had Germany entered the war with the 300 operational submarines advocated by the navy's U-Boat branch rather than the two-dozen odd available in 1939, the battle in the Atlantic would have have assumed a different character.