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Although a room where food is cooked is called a kitchen, the words cook and kitchen are so different that it is surprising to learn that they both come from the same source. Both words can be traced to the Latin verb coquere, meaning “to cook.” The connection between coquere and cook is easy to see, but kitchen has a more involved history. From the verb coquere came the later Latin noun coquina, meaning “a kitchen.” With some changes in pronunciation, coquina came into Old English as cycene. This became Middle English kichene and finally modern English kitchen.
