Ricotta: from Latin heat to Italian whey

I first tried ricotta at university in 2001, when a friend used it to fill homemade ravioli. Its soft, mild texture seemed simple, but the word itself tells a more intricate story. From Latin recōcta ‘recooked’, ricotta refers to whey that is heated a second time to form a fresh curd. This word card follows its path from Roman dairies to modern English, tracing how a single Latin verb, coquere ‘to cook’, still lives on in the language of food.