In the end

[Rachel Adams]

What should I use in my sentence instead of "in the end"? Is it wrong?

"It's made of cabbage, potato, spices, and in the end we add sour cream. You can cook it spicy or not."
I am talking about a soup.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

What should I use in my sentence instead of "in the end"? Is it wrong?

"It's made of cabbage, potatoes, and spices, and we serve it with sour cream. You can cook it spicy or not."

I am talking about a soup.

If you add the sour cream when the soup is already in bowls at the table, you can say, "we serve it with" or "it's served with."

If you put the sour cream in the pot and mix it into the soup before serving, you can say, "last" or "at the end."

 

[GoesStation]

"In the end" doesn't work. You could say served with a dollop of sour cream.

Sixty-five years ago when my parents first moved to southwest Ohio, my mom went to a supermarket in the small, rural city they initially lived in. She was looking for a certain dairy product when a clerk approached her and asked if he could help her find something. She said "Yes! Do you have any sour cream?"

His response? "I sure hope not, lady."

Can you guess why he said that? Hint: the meaning of the phrase "sour cream" changes depending on how the syllables are emphasized or, in this case, heard.

 

[GoesStation]

 

[Rachel Adams]

"In the end" doesn't work. You could say served with a dollop of sour cream.

Sixty-five years ago when my parents first moved to southwest Ohio, my mom went to a supermarket in the small, rural city they initially lived in. She was looking for a certain dairy product when a clerk approached her and asked if he could help her find something. She said "Yes! Do you have any sour cream?"

His response? "I sure hope not, lady."

Can you guess why he said that?.

No. Could you please explain?

 

[GoesStation]

Sour cream: a fermented dairy product. Neither word is stressed.

Sour cream: cream which has spoiled. Both words are lightly stressed.

In those days in Xenia, Ohio, the supermarket didn't carry the dairy product and the clerk had never heard of it. He heard my mother inexplicably asking for cream that had spoiled.

 

[Rover_KE]

To avoid this misunderstanding, it's usually called 'soured cream'.

 

[emsr2d2]

I've just searched the online stores of three of the top UK supermarkets and there seems to be a fairly even split between "soured cream" and "sour cream" for the product that just has that one ingredient. However, when it's used as an adjective to describe the flavour of a more complicated product, "sour cream" wins hands down.

 

[GoesStation]

To avoid this misunderstanding, it's usually called 'soured cream'.

That's a possibly useful distinction. We don't use the term in American English, but it wouldn't help much in the spoken language. Most Americans would pronounce it the same as sour cream, especially in quick, casual speech.

Come to think of it, my mother might have said soured cream at the Xenia supermarket. She'd only been in the States for three or four years and, according to my father, still retained a lot of the English accent and usages she'd learned the language with. He was disappointed when she lost them; he'd found the accent attractive.

I remember when she Americanized her pronunciation of restaurant, which would have been eight years or so later. She retained one Englishism for the rest of her life: she'd say tisn't when disagreeing with something.