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Convenience store
Convenience store: small-format retail shop selling snacks, beverages, groceries, and often fuel, with extended hours; originated 1927 in Texas (7-Eleven), 151,975 US stores selling 80% of US fuel, and a distinct dense Japanese konbini variant.
Conversations on Russian Culture
Conversations on Russian Culture (Беседы о русской культуре) is a book by Yuri Lotman on the daily life and traditions of the Russian nobility, 18th to early 19th century.
Conveyor belt sushi
Conveyor belt sushi (kaiten-zushi, 回転寿司): Japanese restaurant format where plates travel on a belt past diners. Invented by Yoshiaki Shiraishi, first shop Mawaru Genroku Sushi, Osaka, 1958; belt speed 8 cm/s; major chains Sushiro, Kura, Hama, Kappa.
Cook Out (restaurant)
Cook Out is a privately held American fast-food chain founded by Morris Reaves in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1989, known for char-grilled burgers, barbecue, and over 40 milkshake flavors.
Cook Up a Storm (决战食神)
Cook Up a Storm (決戰食神) is a 2017 Hong Kong–Chinese culinary comedy-drama directed by Raymond Yip, starring Nicholas Tse, Jung Yong-hwa, and Ge You, released in China in February 2017.
Cook's Country
Cook's Country from America's Test Kitchen is a PBS cooking series, first aired September 6, 2008, reimagining American regional and family recipes with test-kitchen testing, equipment reviews, taste tests, and Toni Tipton-Martin food-history segments.
Cookbook
Cookbook (cookery book): a book of recipes and food-preparation information, a handbook-genre nonfiction form dating to Mesopotamian clay tablets ca. 1700 BCE, flourishing in late-medieval manuscripts and fifteenth-century printing.
Cookie
Cookie (Dutch koekje; UK biscuit): small sweet low-moisture, high-fat, high-sugar baked good; texture set by spread, gluten setting, and Maillard browning; $140bn global market.
Cookie Crisp
Cookie Crisp: chocolate chip cookie flavored breakfast cereal launched in 1977 by Ralston Purina, now made by General Mills (US) and Nestlé (UK, Middle East); mascots Cookie Jarvis, Cookie Crook, Chip the Wolf.
Cooking
Cooking: applying heat to food to improve flavor, safety, and digestibility. Covers heat transfer, moist and dry cooking methods, nutrition effects, food safety temperatures, and the history of cooking from fire use to sous vide.
Cooking oil
Cooking oil, edible fat of vegetable, animal, or marine origin composed of glycerides of fatty acids; includes virgin, cold pressed, and refined grades. Smoke point depends on free fatty acids; used cooking oil is now a major biofuel feedstock.
Cooking show
Cooking show (also cookery show, cooking program): television program presenting food preparation in a studio kitchen, from BBC's 1946 Cookery and James Beard's I Love to Eat to Julia Child, the 1993 Food Network, competition franchises, and streaming docuseries.
Cooku with Comali
Cooku with Comali (குக் வித் கோமாளி), also Cook with Comali, is a Tamil comedy cooking competition on Star Vijay and Disney+ Hotstar, pairing celebrity cooks with comedians since 2019 across seven seasons.
Cookware and bakeware
Cookware and bakeware are kitchen vessels: cookware for stovetop or oven cooking (saucepans, skillets, stock pots), bakeware for oven baking (cake pans, muffin tins, baking sheets). Key distinctions include materials, heat behavior, PFAS coatings, and safety limits.
Cool Britannia
Cool Britannia: late-1990s British cultural boom and New Labour rebranding, punning on Rule, Britannia!; coined by Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (1967), revived by Newsweek 1996, disavowed by Tessa Jowell in 2001.
Cool Whip
Cool Whip is Kraft Heinz's frozen whipped topping, invented by William A. Mitchell at General Foods' Birds Eye division and launched in 1966. Made of water, corn syrups, hydrogenated vegetable oil, and stabilizers, about 200 million tubs sell yearly.
Coonskin cap
Coonskin cap: a raccoon-fur hat with face and tail, tied to Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. Never widely worn historically; became a 1950s fad via Fess Parker's Disney show, selling 5,000 caps a day.
Coors Brewing Company
Coors Brewing Company, founded 1873 in Golden, Colorado by Adolph Coors and Jacob Schueler, is the American brewery behind Coors Banquet and Coors Light, now a Molson Coors subsidiary; known for surviving Prohibition, the 1959 aluminum can, and the long Coors boycott.
Coors Light
Coors Light is an American light lager introduced in 1978 in Golden, Colorado, known as the "Silver Bullet" and among the best-selling beers in the United States.
Cooties
Cooties are an imaginary playground contagion in American children's folklore, passed by touch, and also the name of Cootie, a Schaper bug-building game from 1949, now sold by Milton Bradley/Hasbro and known in England as Beetle Drive.
Copenhagen (tobacco)
Copenhagen is an American moist snuff (dipping tobacco) brand introduced in 1822, owned by Altria's U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company; high nicotine delivery, FDA modified-risk status in 2023, plus Skoal as sister brand.
Copper ion antimicrobial packaging
Copper ion antimicrobial packaging embeds copper or copper-releasing microparticles in food packaging films to kill microbes and extend shelf life; FDA GRN 1147 cleared copper(II) ion at 100 mg/m² in polyolefin packaging.
Coq au vin
Coq au vin: classic French dish of rooster or chicken braised in red wine with lardons, mushrooms, and pearl onions; Burgundian pinot noir version is the reference, with Alsace riesling, Jura vin jaune, and Champagne variants.
Coquette aesthetic
Coquette aesthetic: a hyper-feminine fashion trend of bows, lace, pearls, and pastels drawing on Victorian, Rococo, ballet, and Japanese Lolita influences; viral on TikTok from 2021, peaking 2023–2024; distinct from balletcore, cottagecore, and twee.
Coquito
Coquito is a thick, creamy Puerto Rican holiday drink made with coconut milk, sweetened condensed milk, Puerto Rican rum, and warm spices, often described as the island's version of eggnog.
Cordon bleu (dish)
Cordon bleu (cordon-bleu, "blue ribbon") is a breaded cutlet filled with ham and melted cheese, a Swiss classic attributed to Brig, Valais; the name comes from the Order of Saint Esprit and also denotes a skilled cook and the Le Cordon Bleu school.
Corduroy
Corduroy, also called Manchester cloth, is a cotton cut-pile woven fabric with lengthwise ribs (wales) formed by cutting extra weft floats; wale count, from featherwale at 25 to elephant cord at 2 per inch, sets its texture and use.
Corinthian helmet
Corinthian helmet: the full-face bronze helmet of the Greek hoplite, named from Herodotus, hammered from a single bronze sheet, used from about 700 BC through the 4th century BC and widely copied in Italy.
Cork taint
Cork taint is a wine fault causing musty, wet-cardboard odors, mainly from 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA), first identified in 1982. It affects an estimated 2-5% of bottled wines, costs over a billion dollars yearly, and is largely prevented by screw caps and technical corks.
Corn flakes
Corn flakes are toasted corn breakfast flakes invented at the Battle Creek Sanitarium by John Harvey and Will Kellogg in the 1890s; Will Kellogg founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company in 1906 to mass-produce Kellogg's Corn Flakes.