I first went to Spain in 1981. I have visited the country dozens of times. I have eaten unknown kilos of paella and other rice dishes. Even so, I had never heard of “soccarat” until this year. Not for the first time with new words and concepts, it came up in a quiz.

Here is the relevant question, from a quiz I competed in at the end of April:

“In Spanish cooking, which term names the crispy, browned layer of rice that appears at the bottom of a properly cooked paella? The name comes from a Spanish word meaning ‘to burn’ or ‘to scorch’.”

The answer, as you now know, is socarrat. I was doubly disappointed with this question: disappointed that I didn’t know the answer, and disappointed that I’d never even heard of it.

The question was paired, later in the quiz, with another one about the crispy rice at the bottom of a pan, this time in Iranian cuisine:

“In Iranian cuisine, which term names the crispy, golden rice at the bottom of a pan in traditional recipes? The name comes from the Persian for ‘bottom of the pan’.”

I have never been to Iran, and have eaten far fewer Iranian dishes than Spanish dishes. I was neither surprised nor disappointed that this word was completely new to me: tahdig.

Like all good quiz questions this one has come up again, most recently in last week’s episode of “University Challenge”. Here’s the question, as it appeared in the subtitles on BBC iPlayer:

“The term nurungji in Korean cuisine, or koji in Japanese cuisine, tahdig in Iranian cuisine, and socarrat in Spanish cuisine, all refer specifically to a crunchy, slightly scorched crust, intentionally produced when cooking which cereal …”

Southampton Stephenson buzzed in correctly at this point to say, “Rice”, which I had shouted at the screen a split-second earlier. It’s easier to guess the name of a cereal popular in the cuisine of Spain, Iran, Japan and Korea rather than remember the words soccarat and tahdig, which I had just about committed to memory. It looks like the subtitles were slightly inaccurate and the Japanese dish is called okoge, at least according to this Wikipedia page about scorched rice. Okoge and nurungji are completely new words to me, and less likely for now to come to mind than soccarat and tahdig.

For a while these “Word of the week” pieces really did appear weekly, always on a Monday. There was an unbroken six-month run at the start of 2016 for example. These days the concept is more like “Word of the quarter”, but it is still useful for me. I have just reminded myself of the last Spanish word that I wrote about in one of these pieces, “calabobos”, back in 2018. I couldn’t bring it to mind, but I knew it was here. And in future I’ll know that socarrat, and tahdig, okoge and and nurungji, are all here too.