This is the word you will find in your kitchen cabinet on the vanilla or almond extract.
“But Jamin,” you might wonder, “isn’t -ins limited to verbal nouns? Isn’t this an actual substantive noun?”
To which might answer, “Yup! Language is freakin’ weird, man.” Yes, we would normally expect a weak īn-stem noun for the substantive form (giving us **ustréni) but that’s just… not what it is. I dunno what to tell you. It can also be a verbal noun, though (“extraction”).
In Valthungian cuisine, you will also hear a non-descript “extract” called for in recipes. (My own
patnabran recipe calls for a full tablespoon of
ustrénins!) This is a little bit like curry or dumplings, in that every Valthungian grandmother has a very specific recipe, and they’re all different, and each one swears that hers is the only “correct” one. My own Valthungian grandmother taught me the “prime number rule” for making
ustrénins, and I’m not going to share it with you here, because she said she would haunt me, but it involves prime numbers of parts of vanilla, lemon, almond, and blood orange extracts, plus
Grand Marnier and a couple of other secret ingredients. It’s definitely the best I’ve tried. The bottle on the left is the
ustrénins from my own kitchen; I just refilled it! (And that’s what Valthungian cursive looks like, but that’s for another day…)
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