Culinary is the adjective for everything relating to cooking and the kitchen — culinary skill, culinary tradition, culinary school, the culinary arts. It marks the boundary between food as raw material and food as prepared dish: a culinary herb is one used for flavouring rather than medicine, and culinary training is training in professional cookery rather than nutrition or food science. The word carries a professional weight; the culinary arts are treated as a discipline with its own techniques, standards, and career ladder, from commis to executive chef. In industry language it also segments products — culinary oils, culinary creams, culinary-grade matcha — signalling that an ingredient is formulated for cooking performance rather than table or cosmetic use. At its simplest, culinary just means “of the kitchen.”