WTN: garnish
James Harbeck
garnish
“You said you withheld the garnish for safety reasons,” Maury’s friend Brandur said. “I’m sure it wasn’t withheld from your paycheque, though.” He raised one eyebrow to indicate that he had just made a conscious witticism. “You were not garnished.”
“Indeed,” said Maury, “the cocktail would have been the garnishee. But the garnish would have been an addition rather than a subtraction. However, that’s true in any case, because garnishing a paycheque is a subtract that comes only after an add.”
“Add as in addition or ad as in advertisement?” Brandur said.
“Yes,” Maury said.
There was a pause. Maury sipped his Berlin cocktail and did not immediately explain. Brandur finished his own cocktail and said, “Well, I am going to serve the next cocktail, and I have brought a garnish for it too.” He reached into his bag and pulled out a vacuum bottle, set it on the table, and then pulled out a plastic container, the contents of which were only dimly visible, and set it down too. “But first you have to finish your cocktails” – he looked at both of us – “and explain to me garnish in more detail.”
Maury tossed back the last half ounce of his and set the glass down. “Garnish, as in deduct money from wages to satisfy a creditor, is shortened from garnishee. The verb garnishee is formed from the noun garnishee. The noun means ‘one who is garnished’.”
Brandur was about to exclaim something I probably wouldn’t want to transcribe here, but Maury continued: “It’s not circular because that garnished means ‘served notice’ – that is to say, ‘warned’. Specifically, warned – as for instance with a notice, or advertisement – that they are to have money deducted to satisfy a debt. So the garnish is added as an ad to indicate that there will be subtraction.”
“Ah, I see,” said Brandur. “I should have made the deduction. But such an addition seems more than decorative.”
I set down my empty glass. “Indeed,” I said, “the decorative sense is a latecomer. The word comes from guarnir, the same Old French source as for our word warn. It meant ‘provide’ or ‘furnish’ but also ‘defend’ or ‘warn’. Our word garnish came to mean ‘fortify’, or ‘equip’, and then to mean ‘clothe’, and from that ‘accessorize’ – but also, more pertinently, it could mean ‘serve dishes of food’ and then ‘decorate dishes of food’.”
“And guarnir,” Maury said, “came from a conflation of two Old Frankish roots, one meaning ‘warn, protect, prepare’ and the other meaning ‘refuse, deny’. So it is bifurcated both forward and backward in time, in each direction splitting into one sense meaning something additive and one meaning something subtractive.”
“Well,” said Brandur, pouring a cold, clear liquid from his vacuum bottle into our glasses, “I have prepared this for you.” He opened the plastic container and pulled out three small metal forks; on each fork was an olive and a cube of something white. “Speaking of bifurcation.” He plunked a fork into each glass and gave each a little stir. Then he held up his glass and said “Skál.”
“Scowl?” Maury said (he doesn’t know any Icelandic). He picked up his glass and eyed it skeptically.
“No need to scowl,” Brandur said. “It’s mainly brennivín. Fittingly.” He took a hearty sip and said “Ahhh!” theatrically.
Maury sipped his and made a face like a cat that had just tasted lemon juice. After a moment to recover, he said, “And vermouth, apparently. And something… else.”
I stared at the white cube. “Is that…”
“Kæstur hákarl,” Brandur said, with an angelic smile.
For those who don’t know, that’s an Icelandic specialty: rotten shark. Anthony Bourdain once called it “the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing” he’d ever had.
“Well, now, that is the perfect garnish,” I said. “It both adds to and subtracts from the drink. I take it as a warning… and I will have to refuse.” I set my glass back down and stepped away from the table.
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