MAGIRIC/ˌmædʒaɪrɪk/

Relating to cooking.

Nothing to do with magic, at least etymologically speaking, though as a non-cook I often feel the products of my wife’s kitchen must have been created by some such process. It’s from mageirikos, a classical Greek adjective referring to cooking, or describing somebody who is skilled in that art. The English word is so rare that I can find no example other than one from 1853 quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary; this is from Alexis Soyer’s The Pantropheon: or History of Food and its Preparation in which he says “The magiric science, therefore, began in the year of the world 1656”, an assertion that may be thought contentious. Derived from it are mageirics, a usefully obscure term for the art of cooking, and mageirocophobia, fear of cooking, a common affliction.

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