Meaning & use
daube
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Meaning
nouncountable or uncountable
A French dish of meat, usually beef, cooked slowly with wine, vegetables, and herbs until very soft.
Grammar: Countable when you mean one dish ('a daube'); uncountable when you mean the food itself ('we ate daube').
Patterns
- a beef daube
- daube of beef
- cook something in a daube
She served a rich beef daube with boiled potatoes.
The daube had been simmering in red wine for four hours.
On the menu was a daube of lamb with olives.
Word forms
| plural | daubes |
|---|
Common combinations
- beef daube
- The beef daube was the most popular dish at the bistro.
- daube of lamb
- He ordered a daube of lamb with white beans.
- a rich daube
- We shared a rich daube on a cold evening.
- slow-cooked daube
- Their slow-cooked daube takes a whole afternoon.
Synonyms and how they differ
Word family
- daubière noun
- The traditional French pot used for cooking a daube.
Commonly confused: daube or daub?
daube vs daub
'Daub' is a verb meaning to spread a substance roughly on a surface; it is not related to the food.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'daube' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Daube' is a slow-cooked meat dish, so 'let the daube simmer' fits. Option A uses the unrelated verb 'daub', and the others use 'daube' as a verb or a piece of writing, which it is not.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “daube”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.