洋香菜
I bought a sauce called simply “Green Sauce”
That is the vegetable in it.
Not sure what it is?
:help:
Parsley
Babel fish says that this is parsley
荷蘭芹
My wife says it’s not parsley, but actually a kind of cilantro, one that is not native to Taiwan but is rather a foreign kind of cilantro.
Cilantro is Parsely.
Cilantro isn’t parsley, it’s the leaf of the coriander plant: 香菜 – xiang1cai4.
It’s related to parsley, at least to the flat-leaf Italian kind; not sure about the other kind.
I haven’t heard of 洋香菜, but, “yang2” being foreign or western, what twocs said makes sense.
My Oxford/Pleco dictionary says that parsley is either 荷蘭芹 – he2lan2qin2 – or 歐芹 – ou1qin2.
in taiwan parsley is commonly referred to as 洋香菜 or 美國香菜. that is almost certainly what it is. probably the flat leaf kind.
There are a number of names for basil, too. I remember Almas John posting before about the vagueness of some botanical terminology.
Perhaps 洋香菜 is used by some people to refer to parsley, and by some people to refer to a different kind of cilantro/coriander leaf.
Or, twocs, could your wife actually have been talking about flat-leaf parsley?
Actually, come to think of it, that’s probably what it is. Flat-leaf parsley is definitely in the coriander family so it makes sense to call it a kind of foreign cilantro.
She isn’t 100% sure about it. But one name for cilantro is Chinese Parsley. I always thought that it was quite tangy, unlike what I think of as parsley.
You can check out a chinese language threads where they argue about this distinction like: http://www.supervr.net/foodbbs/topic.cgi?forum=8&topic=26
Plus there’s this link with a long list of vegetable translations that includes:
[quote=“http://www.laowei.com/show.php?id=445”]香菜 Cilantro ：国内的香菜
洋香菜 Parsley：有卷曲的三层复叶，只有老外买。 [/quote]
And here, with pictures.
Nice links! Thanks.