Key words for comparing and describing food

Food, food, food! Who doesn’t love food? You need it to live, and it’s the perfect thing to share with friends and family. But do you know how to compare food in English, or to describe how different things taste?

Let’s do a quiz about basic words to describe food. Find out how much you know by simply matching a word from the word bank to the statements below.

Word bank: oily, sour, tender, sweet, spicy, acidic, raw, salty, bland, tough

1. When you taste a lime it tastes …

2. When something has a lot of oil it’s …

3. If something is not cooked, it’s…

4. If it contains a lot of salt it’s …

5. If it makes your lips pucker it’s …

6. If it’s hard to eat and chew it’s …

7. If it’s nice to eat and is easily chewed it’s …

8. When you taste most fruits or candy they taste …

9. If something has barely any taste at all it’s …

10. If it tastes hot (not referring to it’s actual temperature) …

How did you do? Check your answers below.

So let’s talk food now! How would you compare apples to oranges? I would say oranges are a bit ‘acidic’ and therefore, taste nothing like apples.

A piece of steak that’s cooked for a long time tastes ‘tough’. If it’s cooked medium it would be quite ‘tender’ and much easier to chew. Although it’s the same meat, when it’s cooked so differently it tastes totally different.

Thai food is one of my favorite cuisines, and if you don’t know, it’s often super ‘spicy!’ It’s most certainly not ‘bland’ in any way.

‘Sour’ candies are yummy and kind of funny too, because I always make a silly puckered face when I eat them. ‘Sweet‘ candies are OK, but I can’t eat a lot of them.

I hate foods that are too ‘oily’, but I enjoy ‘raw’ foods, especially squash.

What are your favorite foods? What do they taste similar to? Want to practice comparing foods more? Some of our online classes are all about foodie phrases for cooking and eating. Why not try them?

Answers: acidic, oily, raw, salty, sour, tough, tender, sweet, bland, spicy

image: nattu