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‘That was until we discovered congee, the soupy rice porridge which is to East and Southeast Asia what oatmeal is to Scotland.’
While I was going through the examples for the word Congee in the Oxford dictionary, I bumped into the sentence. I am not sure how I should understand or parse the sentence to make it grammatically correct? And what is the sentence trying to tell us?
The sentence is setting up an analogy, and what is a placeholder for the relationship of the food to the place:
A is to B as C is to D
A : B :: C : D
congee (the soupy rice porridge) : East/Southeast Asia :: oatmeal : Scotland
[The role congee plays] in the East/Southeast is what [i.e. the role oatmeal plays] in Scotland.
The horse-drawn cart was to the 19th century what the truck was to the 20th, a vehicle to haul goods and produce.
If the sentence above had stopped at "20th." then what would refer to an unspoken, implicit idea, which we could make concrete: "a vehicle to haul goods and produce". When the relationship is not made explicit, there is only a blank, what.
Congee, the soupy rice porridge is to East and Southeast Asia what oatmeal is to Scotland, a staple food.
That was until we discovered congee, [the soupy rice porridge] which is to East and Southeast Asia what oatmeal is to Scotland.’
When we have to explain something unfamiliar to the layperson we can use the following type of construction, [term] + is to [Z] what [nearest equivalent] to [A]
Polenta is to Italians what cornmeal is to Americans
Akvavit is to Sweden what vodka is to Poland and Russia
