seasoning

Pluralseasonings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Salt, pepper, herbs, spices, or other ingredients added to food to improve its taste or flavor.

   The chef adjusted the seasoning until the sauce tasted balanced.

   A good seasoning of salt and pepper brought out the flavor of the steak.

   Similarflavoring, spice

   Note

   The word works two ways in the kitchen. As a mass noun it means a dish's overall flavor, the thing a cook tastes and corrects, as in the 1989 Yoga Journal advice to "distinctify the seasoning" with ginger, chili or fresh herbs. As a count noun it means the ingredients themselves: Maggie Hiufu Wong calls salt, sugar and MSG "the Chinese Trinity of seasonings."

2. 2
   nounfigurativelyuncountable

   Anything added to an activity or experience to increase enjoyment or interest.

   Friendly rivalry was the seasoning that made the whole tournament memorable.

   A touch of suspense is the seasoning of a good mystery novel.

   Similarspice, zest, flavor

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The drying of freshly cut wood in open air to reduce its moisture before the timber is used.

   Furniture makers rely on careful seasoning to stop their timber from warping.

   The seasoning of green lumber can take several years in a sheltered yard.

   Similardrying, curing

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The process of coating cookware with fat and heating it so its surface becomes non-stick.

   Cast-iron skillets develop a smooth, dark surface through repeated seasoning.

   The seasoning wore off after she scrubbed the pan with soap.

   Note

   A cookware word that can collide with the flavoring sense: the seasoning on a skillet is a coating, not a taste. It is something a pan has, builds up and can lose, as in "the seasoning wore off," so it behaves like a surface rather than an ingredient. When instructions say to season a pan, they mean fat and heat, not salt.

5. 5
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of season.

   The cook is seasoning the broth before it goes on to simmer.

   Seasoning the meat overnight noticeably improves its flavor.

   Note

   The verb form has a pedigree of its own, going back to Middle English seasonyng, from sesounen. It carries every sense of season, not just the cook's. One can be seasoning a recruit to hardship, seasoning timber by drying it, or, in the older sense of tempering by admixture, seasoning severity with mercy. Transitive uses take an object, while intransitive ones describe something maturing or hardening on its own, as wood does while seasoning.

6. 6
   noununcountable

   Preparing the laps or wheels used in diamond cutting by applying diamond dust and oil to them.

   The cutter renewed the seasoning on the laps at the start of each day.

   Careful seasoning of the wheels determined how cleanly the diamond took its facets.

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