Do you suppose that the Dwarves intentionally did Bilbo a favor by cleaning out his perishable goods before whisking him away on an adventure?
- 01.141 I like six eggs with my ham,
Author: lfsaldenbirch
Fry
There’s more threatening to fry than actual frying going on, but it’s only a few mentions.
- 01.141 fried not poached,
- 05.002 He thought of himself frying bacon
- 06.074 fry them, boil them and eat them hot?
- 06.078 Bake and toast ’em, fry and roast ’em!
Flour
Thank you, Beorn, for your hospitality –
- 07.126 nuts, flour, sealed jars of dried fruits,
Delicious
The word “delicious” is around the five-thousandth most common word of British written English. There are not enough people writing about the amazing breakfasts I encountered in little rural B&Bs!
- 03.019 my dear! Isn’t it delicious!”
Cellar
The only cellars in The Hobbit are Bilbo’s at Bag-End and those of the Elvenking, and they are properly filled with food!
- 01.002 cellars, pantries (lots of these),
- 01.036 to the cellar to fill a pint beer-mug,
- 01.084 in the cellar,
- 01.123 and lanes, and tunnels, alleys, cellars, mansions and passages.
- 09.018 These opened upwards into the king’s cellars.
- 09.023 clearing the cellars of the empty wood,
- 09.030 and fortunately not far from the cellars.
- 09.035 down into the lowest cellars they crept.
- 09.039 and talking into the cellars
- 10.007 in the king’s cellars.
Update: 2016.10.04 – “cellar” is listed both as common and uncommon in my lemmatized source, although “cellars is always uncommon (less frequent than the most common ten thousand).
Boil
Most boiling is theoretical in the book, as a possible preparation method for dwarves or hobbits. In Chapter 13, it’s used as a gerundive to describe the motion of the water.
- 01.066 Dump the crocks in a boiling bowl;
- 02.002 boiled water,
- 02.080 and boil them,
- 02.086 and boil them.
- 02.087 “No good boiling ’em!
- 02.092 and boil them next time.
- 05.042 The answer’s not a kettle boiling over,
- 06.074 fry them, boil them and eat them hot?
- 13.048 there issued a boiling water,
Blackberry
We hear about the blackberries only as things that Bilbo doesn’t have at the moment.
- 04.003 and blackberrying,
- 06.039 but the blackberries were still only
Biscuit
Apparently it’s difficult to classify cram:
- 13.064 but it is biscuitish,
Berry
To my surprise, we only find reference to berries in the context of the elven parts of Mirkwood.
- 09.005 On his head was a crown of berries
- 09.053 Where the berry swells and fills
Banquet
OED gives us banquet as “a sumptuous entertainment of food and drink”, which will do for the banquets mentioned in Lake-town. I do think, however, that hobbits would approve of the obsolete second meaning of “a light repast between meals”.
- 10.039 and even after that his speeches at banquets were limited to
“banquet, n.1.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 13 May 2015.
words that you were saying 