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English language (monolingual) [Non-PRO] Cooking / Culinary
English term or phrase:sweet and savoury buffet
i keep coming across this expression in hotel descriptions e.g.: Breakfast here is a sweet and savoury buffet with homemade cakes, cold cuts, and cheeses.
i've googled some Q&A sites where the problem has been discussed, yet i still can't decide whether "savoury" stands for "salty" (i've seen russian translations where "sweet and savoury" turns to "sweet and salty snacks") or whether it's just opposite of sweet in the sense that a sweet and savoury buffet is one that offers both 'normal' food and desserts.
if any of you have ever come across this expression in hotel descriptions and had a chance to actually see the buffet afterwards, could you please tell me what it actually means? :)
Explanation: Savoury means "not sweet", this usually does involve saltiness, but it's not just saltiness. Savouries might be cheese puffs, bread sticks even, sausage rolls, other pastry type things (but not sweet pastries). So the cold cuts and cheeses are the savoury bit of the buffet you mention.
Indeed yes, in a different context; but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that here we are specifically talking about breakfast buffets — where in terms of the traditional 'continental' breakfast (as viewed by the EN), we would expect fruit juice, croissants etc., jam, perhaps cereals, toast, marmalade etc. — the 'sweet' side of things.
The traditional English breakfast buffet, however, is more likely to contain eggs, bacon, sausages, kippers, etc. (i.e. the 'savoury' side of things) — albeit perhaps also with cereals and toast/marmalade.
Hence why many hotels vaunt the fact that their buffet contains both elements — even though rarely the 'hot' ingredients; so often, the 'savoury' side amounts to little more than some cold meats and cheese, with the quantity / quality / variety very dependent on the individual hotel.
This word, spelt "savory", can be a noun, meaning a type of aromatic mint (plant), or an adjective, spelt "savoury" in British English and "savory" in American, whose primary meaning historically was "pleasing to the organs of taste and smell", still the only definition of the word in the Webster's Revised Dictionary of 1913. And in modern dictionaries, agreeable to taste is still the primary definition. This is reflected in the verb "to savo(u)r", meaning to take pleasure in the taste of something (and these words are commonly used metaphorically as well). In the twentieth century, apparently, it became associated with a particular kind of flavour, namely salty, aromatic or spicy, and not sweet (but not just salty). Moreover, savoury in this sense can also be a noun, meaning a savoury (salty or spicy) snack: "a selection of savouries".
The thing is that salt was historically the main flavour enhancer. Even today, the Spanish word "sabroso", which basically means "tasty", is often applied to the amount of salt: it means just the right amount, well salted without being salty. "Soso" (insipid) means too little salt and "salado" (salty) means too much.
In a slightly more sophisticated mood we also get "buffet de douceurs et buffet de saveurs", which means the same: the "saveurs" are anything not sweet but not necessarily salted: may be "canapés" with vegetables for example
That's absolutely true. In Russian it would be "sweet and ordinary (sladkiye i obichniye zakuski)" snacks. And what is funny, "sweet" and "salty" have the same stem in Russian (sladki, solodki, solyoni) actually and initially meaning "tasty" as opposed to "tasteless"
The problem here, I suspect, is simply that English distinguishes between "savoury" and "salty", but some languages don't. Spanish, for example, uses "salado" for both, and "sweet and savoury" in Spanish is "dulce y salado"; there really isn't another way of saying it, despite the fact that "savoury" things don't necessarily taste "salty" (and don't necessarily have a high salt content). I imagine this may be the case in Russian too. So if you translated "sweet and savoury" into one of those languages and then back into English, it might end up as "sweet and salty", though it would be a mistranslation.
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Sweet and savoury buffet
Explanation: Savoury means "not sweet", this usually does involve saltiness, but it's not just saltiness. Savouries might be cheese puffs, bread sticks even, sausage rolls, other pastry type things (but not sweet pastries). So the cold cuts and cheeses are the savoury bit of the buffet you mention.