Popadometer
What are popadoms? You can find a rather dry description at Wikipedia:
The papadum … is a thin Indian wafer, sometimes described as a cracker or flatbread. An important part of Indian cuisine, recipes vary from region to region and family to family, but typically it is made from lentil, chickpea, black gram or rice flour.
Accurate but unappetising. You’ll get a better flavour of what a popadom is at the Baba Enterprises page, which serves the picture above and says:
The final product, a deliciously crispy snack which can be eaten on its own or served with chutnies.
Delicious, crisp, onomatopoeic, that’s it! In the UK popadoms are often served before an Indian meal, with chutneys, pickles, finely chopped onion, yogurt, and everyone loves them. So we won’t argue about how they taste. And we won’t fret about spelling either! According to the experts at the Oxford English dictionary:
As with many words from foreign languages which have their own alphabets, there is no universally accepted way of transcribing the Tamil name of this food into English. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1999) lists the word at poppadom, but mentions poppadum, and popadom, as alternatives. The variant spellings which have been listed in Oxford dictionaries include papadam, papaddam, papadom, papadum, papodam, papodum, popadam, popadom, poppadam, poppadom, poppadum, poppodam, puppadum, puppodam, puppodum. However, there is nothing to say that you cannot use the unlisted spellings papodom, popadum, poppodom, poppodum, puppadam, puppadom, and puppodom. Take your pick!
I’ve picked “popadom”, the nicest letter pattern.
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