Same name, two different things

[BobB]

A comment on an Italian sausage thread brought to mind the confusion that can result, especially in international travel, when two different things get called by the same name in different places. That one was about pepperoni, which is a spicy dry sausage here but a green pepper in many other countries.

Others that come to mind:

A martini. Order this in a bar in France or Belgium and you'll get a glass of vermouth - if you want what English-speakers think of as a martini, you need to order a martini cocktail.

Andouillette sausage. In the US it's a garlicky pork sausage, in France it's made from chopped pig's colon and is very much an, um, acquired taste (as I found out to my dismay in Paris a few years ago).

And of course there are the common ones like potato chips (flat & crispy in the US, french fries in the UK).

Even staying here at home we have things like the sloppy joe, which in most of the country is a loose mix of ground beef and tomato sauce served on a hamburger bun, but in New Jersey is a cold deli sandwich made with cole slaw.

Any other more obscure good ones to watch out for?

[hypomyces]

Chicharrón.
Depending where you are in south of the border, you will get anything from crispy fried pork skin (yum) to stewed shredded pork (double yum).

[butterfly]

Another meaning: in Spain, chicharrón is a cold cut that is an amalgamation of different pig parts pressed together, sometimes with pistachios added:

http://www.7hermanos.com/novedades.html

Pork rinds here are "cortezas de cerdo" (crust/bark).

[AmyH]

Or chunks of pork (with bone) fried in their own grease, as it's done in Bolivia.

[LorenM]

I am kind of surprised no one mentioned "gravy". I would never describe a tomato sauce or an au jus as gravy but apparently some folks do. I was confused the first time I heard it used this way. To me a gravy is just a thickened stock or drippings (like turkey gravy or sausage gravy) or a white gravy which is just a bechamel.

[barryg]

In South Philly gravy means red sauce. Same in other parts of the East Coast, too, I think.

Also in Philly, depending where you are, a "steak" means a steak sandwich and probably but not necessarily with cheese on it. Pizza and sandwich shops have signs that just say "steaks" but you can't get any steak there that isn't fried, thinly sliced ribye on an Italian roll.

Also in the Phila region if you go into a bar and order a "lager" you get specifically a Yuengling lager, no questions asked.

[travelmad478]

In India, gravy means pretty much any kind of sauce in a dish. Indian dishes tend to be either soupy stew-like (with "gravy" that you can mop up with bread or mix with rice) or "dry," which can mean anything from tandoori-cooked to stir-fried things.

[John E.]

Is that because all the Hindi (and the many other languages of India) words for the various sauces translate to the English word 'gravy'?

[thew]

and a dish with gravy may be the only working definition of a curry

[BobB]

Yes, you'll find gravy used to refer to red sauce in any place in the US with a large Italian population, especially by the older generations as the youngsters tend to have their speech homogenized by more exposure to mass media.

It tends to be more of an at-home term though, at least around here (Boston). I don't recall ever seeing it on restaurant menus except in the peripheral text.

[barryg]

Also rare to find on menus here but it's making a comeback. A couple restaurants advertise "Sunday gravy" meals.

[Pipenta]

I was in Atlanta this summer and stopped by a bakery called Henri's in Buckhead (I think). I saw doughnuts in the case and asked the clerk for one of the crullers. She looked at me like I had asked for a Martian floor mop.

"I'm sorry. I didn't hear that. What did you want?"

"A cruller?"

The clerk looked very confused. I pointed to the tray of crullers in the case. Relieved, she reached in and selected one for me. She wanted to know where I was from and how I spelled cruller and if everyone where I lived called them crullers. Well, gosh, I had never thought about it before. I only get doughnuts as a very once-in-a-while treat, and then usually because they are made on the spot and those, usually, are cider doughnuts and in the conventional doughnut shape.

She called crullers "twists". I have since seen twists in other places, such as the Chicago area. I saw them labeled thus in the very same bakery where I saw the flat folded jam pastry labeled a popover. The goods were good, I'm not gonna argue with them. But I like crullers and I like the word cruller. It sounds like more something I want to sink my teeth into than a twist.

Dunkin' Donuts, by the way, doesn't make crullers anymore. They don't make twists either. Seems that they are totally automated now. It is too expensive for them to hire human beings to do the complicated (rolling my eyes here) procedure that is giving the dough a little twist. And they don't have a machine to do it, so they just said %$#@ it. They don't make them. Sometimes they'll offer something called a dough stick. They should be more imaginative. They could call it a dough turd. It would be more descriptive of how it tastes. Feh! This company that cuts corners on language, on labor, on ingredients, on flavor, on wholesomeness (and you might argue, with reason, that a doughnut is not the healthiest of foods, but I would come back and say that when the ingredients used to make the doughnut come out of a laboratory, not a farm, it can get a whole lot LESS healthy, but then I'd be off on a rant, and who wants that?) just repels me.

[tzurriz]

My husband picked up a dozen donuts from DD just a few weeks ago and got 3 crullers in our dozen here in the Chicago suburbs.

[Pipenta]

They called them crullers and they were twisted, not straight? Great, two out of three that you can't get back here. But even in Chicagoland, they still taste like the artificial product of the industrial food-science laboratory that they are.

[tzurriz]

they called them crullers and they were twisted. I dunno how they tasted, I didn't eat them. The kids grabbed them straight away.

[onceadaylily]

I think I understand where you're coming from. I'm in Chicago, but grew up in Michigan. Crullers were my favorites as a kid (okay, top three), but I haven't had what I think of a cruller in *so* long, no matter what it's called in the bakery case. The ones I grew up on were far more fragile than your average doughnut, with an airiness that made them disappear all too quickly in a bite. Now, they're just 'twisted' glaze doughnuts. Still good, but not the same. In junior high, I used to buy a cruller and a small (sweet and light) coffee on my way to the bus stop.

[Caitlin McGrath]

Doughnuts, and doughnut terminology, are very regional, I have learned. Cruller, for instance, means different things in different areas of the country. And there are doughnuts that are standard types in some areas that are unknown in others. West coast, east coast, Midwest - all have doughnut differences.

[buttertart]

The cruller I grew up with (and have never seen in the US) was a non-yeast-raised type doughnut, long, twisted, and inundated with a white, sharpish orange glaze with grated orange peel in it. THAT was a doughnut.

[chowser]

And then there are the Taiwanese crullers which aren't even sweet, just light fried stick dough--although I'm sure they got their name from the appearance than anything else. Deep fried stick of dough. But, then I've never heard churros called crullers.

[buttertart]

You tiao...m m good.

[huiray]

I've always known it as "yow chao kwai" (my approximation) in Cantonese. ["yau ja gwai" according to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtiao

]

Also commonly eaten with Bak Kut Teh.

[buttertart]

Funny the 炸 (deep-fried) falls out in the Mandarin version and they're just 條 sticks and not 鬼 devils...the Cantonese name is 更 可 愛 cuter than the Mandarin!

[Pipenta]

I was in Chicagoland for a couple of weeks and visited a delightful Danish bakery with cases overflowing with all kinds of buttery deliciousness. One of the types of items offered was a popover. Having spent my formative years in Connecticut, to me a popover looks like the love child of a muffin and a chef's hat. It is made with a thin batter that is largely eggs. It is hollow and really needs to be eaten hot out of the oven. You put a bit of butter in it to melt, and perhaps a bit of jam or jelly. But the true sensualist will just use butter and a pinch of salt. Sit one of those alongside a mug of good coffee and your favorite section of the New York Times on a Sunday morning and you will feel that all is right with the world.

I'm sure this "popover" is very nice too. It is, as you can see from the photograph, a flat dough that has been cut into a round shape and filled with jam and folded over. Cherry filling is hard to beat. But I would call it a turnover. But this very same bakery had turnovers for sale. They were triangular. Go figure.

[ursy_ten]

Almond bark - from what I understand, is a) like a candy coating that you melt and dip things in, similar to white chocolate. It contains no almonds, and b) a mix of chocolate and almonds, more of a confection (I think the first instance is more of an ingredient)

I'm in Australia and we have neither. I came across it in a recipe recently and it took me quite a while to figure it all out, what with all of the conflicting information google was bringing up!

[John E.]

Actually, almond bark, at least here in Minnesota, does contain almonds. It's not even white chocolate but some kind of white block of stuff that's made from hydroginated oil. If the stuff is melted with almonds stirred in and then poured out onto a pan and then broken up when cooled, it's almond bark. I've seen it with other nujts, then it might be pecan bark or walnut bark. I used to like it a lot when I was a kid. Maybe the stuff was better then, maybe not.

[ursy_ten]

Yeah, I guess there's heaps of versions out there. I had never even heard of it until a couple of weeks ago when I was surfing about for recipes!

[Michelly]

There's chili: the plant, the fruit of the plant, the spice made from the fruit of the plant, and the stew made with the spice from the fruit of the plant. (And don't spell it "chile"; that's the country in South America).
And one of my favorites: a sweet rice cake called "puto", which, in Spanish, means...well, you know what it means.
My husband and his family call the tail of any roasted bird "the Pope's nose". Anyone else do this?

[Caroline1]

Is your husband or his family from British roots? My mother and her parents came to America when Mother was 7, and they called it the Pope's nose. For some reason, and I have no idea why, I thought it was probably Henry VIII's way of calling the Pope an a--hole?

[jumpingmonk]

Possiby but I shoud point out that its called the Parson's Nose in a lot of places, partiucularly in the American South and Midwest where (presumably) the village parson was usually well respected. I think the name is just becuse the pucked tail of a bird does look a little like a nose. The Pope thing may just be becuse someone though it looked most like a Roman (Aquiline) nose.

[Paulustrious]

And it was the Parson's nose in the bits of England I lived in.

Pope (according to google hits) is the preferred nasal option.

[thew]

http://www.simpleinternet.com/recipes... -
International Recipes

" pope's nose

Also known as a parson's nose, this is the stubby tail protuberance
of a dressed fowl. It seems to have originated as a derogatory term
meant to demean Catholics in England during the late 17th century. "

[nomadchowwoman]

Interesting. I grew up in a very Catholic part of the South (if you can call New Orleans and environs the South; culturally, it's quite distinct from what most people consider the American South), in a very Catholic family, at least on my dad's side, and we always called it the Pope's Nose. But then, again, folks in these parts do a lot of self-mocking (most likely to beat others to it).

[tzurriz]

Egg rolls. In an Asian restaurant a deep fried combination of veggies and shrimp, pork, or chicken wrapped in a very thin pancake like wrapper.

In a Jewish style deli or bakery, a miniature loaf of challah, roll sized, often used for sandwiches.

[Bob W]

The term "rice cake" on a Chinese menu can mean a variety of things.

[jumpingmonk]

Ah yes I still remember the time I told someone (when recommending a chinese resto) how good their rice cakes with pickled cabbage were and the look of discredultiy I got from him, Turns out what he was imaginng as the dish were the puffed rice things we in the west think of as rice cakes covered with sauerkraut!

[onceadaylily]

Panade. I was thinking about that one yesterday as I mixed the binder for my meatloaf, but was also thinking about the leek and cheese panade (casserole) I'm making soon. I know if I say I'm making a panade, everyone will know that there is bread and liquid involved, either as a binder or (in the case of a soup) for flavor.

Or everyone could be wrong, because I could be forging metal to make a mean knife. Panade also means dagger. I could then use my panade to make breadcrumbs for the rest of my panades.

[Caroline1]

Okay, it's been a few years since I last shared this so maybe the "oldies" have forgotten it and the "newbies" might enjoy it. Biggest mix-up word for me? TRUFFLES! Our first Christmas in El Paso, I decided to make my version of beef Wellington for Christmas dinner. My version includes rows of sliced black truffles laid in rows atop the duxelle/pate layers before wrapping the tenderloin in the puff pastry shell that holds the whole glorious thing. The truffles give such an added depth of flavor, it just wouldn't be a Christmas beef Wellington without them. I went to every store on our side of El Paso, including some that advertised themselves as "gourmet." No Perigord truffles anywhere! Someone told me that they had seen them in the Gourmet Shop in Dillards Department Store waaaaay on the other side of town. Well, before I drove thirty miles each way, I was gonna make sure! So I called and asked to speak to the manager in the Gourmet Shop. Yes, she assured me, they DID have black truffles in stock! Hooray! So I drove all that way and.... You've already guessed, haven't you? She handed me a box of truffle candies! I made roast goose for Christmas dinner that year. At least I could find chestnuts, and no one tried to pan water chestnuts off on me. <sigh>

[masha]

This dual use of the word truffles for both the fungus & the candy transcends English. Years ago, when we were in Rome, I ordered pasta with black truffle sauce for lunch, off of a menu written exclusively in Italian. It was our first day there and I was a bit jet lagged, so when my husband asked me what I'd ordered, I blanked on the translation for truffle. He then pulled out a menu translation guide, which described the dish as "chocolate-covered balls" instead of just providing an exact translation, which led him to suggest that perhaps I'd ordered a dessert by mistake. I pointed out that the dish was listed under the pasta section, but I did have a few minutes of unease until the dish was delivered to the table.

[scubadoo97]

Dolphin the fish and dolphin the mammal. Both are eaten

[John E.]

"I'm not that hungry, I'll just have the one mahi".

[limster]

Laksa - Singapore style laksa uses a coconut flavoured curry broth, thick rice noodles, cockles etc., while the Penang style laksa uses a tamarind flavoured broth, thinner rice noodles, and fish (e.g. sardines). (Some common ingredients like bean sprouts etc which I didn't list.)

[thew]

i don't think that qualifies. that would be like saying "soup" means 2 different things because there is soup made from peas and soup made from fish.

laksa is a noodle soup. those are 2 different varieties of laksa, not 2 different things

[limster]

Nope, Laksa is not a generic term like "soup" or "noodle soup".Laksa is a specific type of noodle soup that is used to refer to only those 2 dishes.

[John E.]

I heard Bourdain say one time that there are hundreds of kinds of laksas.

[limster]

That's definitely not what we think of in Singapore. When we say laksa, it's a clear and specific reference to those dishes that I've mentioned. There might be minor variants (e.g. some of my friends request no cockles) but it's not a generic term.

[thew]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laksa

[limster]

What's the specfic point that you're trying to reference in the link?

[thew]

just an overview on laksa.

[limster]

Thanks, it's not as useful as the on the ground eating, and it's not fully accurate (e.g. I wouldn't consider curry mee with wheat noodles as laksa). But hopefully it will serve to inspire folks to try stuff directly and thus understand the term and the dishes better based on empirical experience.

[debbiel]

Sloppy Joes--I grew up with sloppy joes meaning a heavenly sandwich of hamburger in a spicy-sweet tomato sauce (with onions and celery), piled high on a bun. It was through chowhound that I discovered a sloppy joe elsewhere (NJ?) is some sort of ham/salami/cheese sandwich. Which, frankly, doesn't sound very sloppy at all.

[BobB]

Uh, yup - I mentioned that one in the post that started this thread.

[debbiel]

Sorry about that. I'm guessing that by the time I read through responses, I had forgotten that.

[Querencia]

British: American = porridge:oatmeal; mince:ground meat; aubergine: eggplant; baked beans: canned pork & beans; crisps: potato chips; rasher: slice of bacon; biscuit: cookie; digestive: graham cracker; treacle: molasses; courgette: summer squash, zucchini; chipolata: sausage; swede: rutabaga; golden syrup: Karo,corn syrup; fish fingers: fish sticks; Swiss roll: jelly roll, rolled cake; Victoria sandwich, layer cake; sultanas: raisins; chips: French fries; jelly: jello; joint: roast (of meat). Also, in the UK a high tea is an early supper, a substantial tea with meat or egg, while in the US it means an elegant tea, a tea with a high degree of formality---just the opposite of the original meaning. The confusion goes on; once in London I bought jelly doughnuts, also known worldwide as Bismarcks or Kaisers, but on Marylebone Lane they were called strawb'ry tarts. And then of course there's the classic English steamed currant pudding called spotted dick, a term which in the US sounds more like an unmentionable medical diagnosis......

[Caitlin McGrath]

I disagree that in the US "high teas" means "an elegant tea, a tea with a high degree of formality." I think that's what many people *assume* it means, but I have not seen places that serve afternoon tea (including ones that fit this description) use the term "high tea." I think it's a misapprehension people have, but would not go so far as to say that it's the American meaning of the term. After all, when people are talking about tea as a meal in the US, they are generally talking about something they understand as British, not an American version of afternoon snacks and hot drinks.

For US vs. British terminology, there's a 500-plus-post thread, "The US and the UK: Divided by a Common (Culinary) Language": http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/615004

This thread really has turned into "same thing, two different names," rather than the opposite, which the title indicates, hasn't it?

[John E.]

Baked beans and pork & beans are used interchangably in the U.S. (at least it is in Minnesota), same for summer squash/zucchini. I bought a can of Spotted Dick made by Heina just to keep around the kitchen for laughs when people come over and we offer them dessert. Childish, I know, but still funny stuff.

[Phood]

Not OT, but parallel...
1970, young midwesterner on Cape Cod for the first time.
Ice cream cone dips in Chocolate, Vanilla, and Camel.
It was tan and tasty, yet only when I grew older did I realize that Caramel in Bayspeak had only two syllables. For years I was convinced it was named after the ship of the desert.

[BobB]

Camel dip - now that's appetizing! (not!)

[limster]

Tokay -- resolved now by AOC designations to some complaints -- but could be the Hungarian sweet wine or Alsatian Pinot Gris.

[cheesemaestro]

Or the Italian wine from Friuli called Tocai friulano. This name is in the process of being changed to prevent confusion with the wine from Hungary.

[soypower]

Pie - pizza or fruit filled pastry

When my friend from NY first asked me if I wanted to get a pie, I told her I wasn't feeling like having dessert yet.

[BobB]

Yes, but there are also savory (meat) pies. In fact I think the word goes back further in the savory sense than the sweet. So in the broadest sense, a pie is a dough crust with a filling of some sort, be it savory or sweet.

[jumpingmonk]

I'd say any sort of starch crust, after all a shepherd's pie and a cottager's pie can have crusts that are made of mashed potatoes, not dough and there are plenty of variations on "taco pie" that use some sort of corn chip crust

[lagatta]

Where is that - NYC and New Jersey?

[junescook]

CT as well

[soypower]

My friend's from Brooklyn, I'm from Seattle.

[GraydonCarter]

I asked for a pie at Caserta Pizzeria at Federal Hill in Providence, RI, the waitress took great pride in saying "we don't serve pie, we serve pizza."

[chowser]

Lemon drop--different for kids than in a bar.

[John E.]

When I was in high school a German exchange student lived with our family. He came back for a class reunion. He wanted to order a lemoncello drink but didn't know how to say it in English or Italian for that matter so he ordered a 'lemon vodka'. You guessed it, he got a shot of vodka with a wedge of lemon. It wasn't a classy bar.

[nomadchowwoman]

Spent part of a summer in Rhode Island once, and I never got used to my dairy-loving host's suggestion that we go to a nearby ice cream shop and order a "cabinet."

[chowser]

A cabinet and a grinder! Wicked good combination.

[nomadchowwoman]

Love this thread. Ain't language a wonderful thing? And regional variations for food names particularly fascinating?

I'd love to know how that "cabinet" name came about--and why it is peculiar to RI (if indeed it is).

[chowser]

I moved there from Ohio and worked at McDonald's. I thought people were giving me a hard time at first when they ordered a cabinet! Oh, and jimmies on ice cream.

[BobB]

Jimmies have a broader geographic range - throughout New England, I believe. Cabinet is pretty much exclusive to RI.

[Caitlin McGrath]

At least at one time, they were jimmies in NY. My mother is a New Yorker, and grew up calling them jimmies.

[GraydonCarter]

If you guys are going to mention something, please tell us what it is, some kind of definition. Are jimmies the same as sprinkles?

[Caitlin McGrath]

Yes.

[thew]

i'd heard jimmies, but lways called them sprinkles. grew up (and still live) in manhattan

[masha]

In Baltimore, where I grew up, as I recall, "jimmies" was the term applied to chocolate, elongated sprinkles, whereas "sprinkles" referred to the multi-color, spherical topping.

[Jen76]

This is what I remember from growing up in Milwaukee, too. Jimmies were chocolate. Sprinkles were multi-colored.

[thew]

chocolate or rainbow sprinkles were the choices i grew up with

[Pipenta]

Jimmies are the long soft ones, also called shots. Sprinkles are the hard round crunchy ones that leak a streak of color onto whipped cream or melting ice cream.

[cheesemaestro]

The quintessential RI cabinet is the coffee cabinet, made with coffee syrup and coffee ice cream, although other flavors of syrup and ice cream can certainly be used.

No one really knows the derivation of the name. I've heard a couple of theories, which both seem dicey to me. Some people say that the name came from keeping the blender used to make a cabinet in--what else--a cabinet. According to another theory, a cabinet originally referred to another ice cream concoction, the ice cream soda. Soda water contains sodium bicarbonate. Since Rhode Islanders, like many New Englanders, don't pronounce their r's strongly, carbonate came out sounding like "caahbonate," which got further distorted to "cabinet." Eventually, the word was applied to milk shakes instead of ice cream sodas. However, I haven't seen a shred of evidence that ice cream sodas were ever called cabinets, so I think this explanation is pure fancy.

[nomadchowwoman]

True or not, it's a great story! (similar to our po' boys).

[BobB]

As an amateur etymology buff, I have to say that "caahbonate" (whether derived from sodium bicarbonate or carbonated water) rings more true to me as a possible derivation than the place you keep the blender. But we'll never know...

[thinks too much]

Sliders: Mini-hamburgers vs. Biscuits and gravy

[bbqboy]

where is B& G called slider(s)?

[thinks too much]

I've come across the term in NJ within a group of friends and their families. Not sure where they got it.

[CarmenR]

Order tea at brunch in the northeast, you will almost always get get hot tea.
Order tea at brunch in the southeast, you will ALWAYS get sweetened, iced tea. If you want hot tea, you must order just that- "hot tea."

[eclecticsynergy]

Then there's pop.
In most of the States, it's a popsicle or maybe a Tootsie pop.
In New England, it's soda...

And there's soda- bicarbonate of (baking soda) or carbonated sweet drink, or club which is also called seltzer...

And seltzer- usually means club soda, but sometimes means the carbonated, slightly salty mineral water more commonly known as Vichy.

[Karl S]

Pop is used in parts of the Midwest, not New England, to denote soda.

[bbqboy]

I wonder if these guys will ever update this, but here goes:
http://popvssoda.com:2998/countystats...
A soda is what you get at a fountain.
Seltzer is a staple of the 3 Stooges.

[TuteTibiImperes]

I wonder what causes the huge cluster of 'Soda' drinkers around St. Louis in an otherwise heavily 'Pop' territory.

[Karl S]

The same pattern obtains around Milwaukee and points north: It must be the beer....

[greygarious]

I grew up near NYC, a carbonated soft drink was a soda. At college in western NY it was pop. When I moved to the Boston area 35 years ago it was tonic but in the intervening years that has mostly given way to soda.

[Karl S]

Syracuse marks the frontier between Northeast and Midwest in terms of speech pattern shifts.

[junescook]

The chocolate soda we drank at the soda fountain in New Haven was the same as the egg gream they had 75 miles away in NYC.

[Pipenta]

And alas, now, there are hardly any places where you can get a chocolate soda or any other kind.

An ice cream soda is basically an egg cream with a scoop or two of ice cream balanced on the edge of the glass.

You can still get a very delicious ice cream soda at Ashley's in New Haven. The only failing it that you get it in a big paper cup, when you really want a glass, sitting in a metal base with a handle, all atop a saucer.

[thew]

i always thought an ice cream soda was like a root beer float

[grayelf]

It can be pop in western Canada too cf The Pop Shoppe (o stubby bottles of fizzy deliciousness of my youth).

[Tripeler]

Uncle Ben's, perhaps? I loved that label with the crewcutted Uncle Ben in a flannel shirt.

[tastesgoodwhatisit]

Ah, pop shoppe! Yeah, I'm Canadian and I grew up with pop rather than soda.

For another one - egg roll can mean a filling in a wrapper, deep fried (as in a Chinese restaurant), but it is also a cookie crispy hollow cylindrical cookie.

[eclecticsynergy]

I spent a couple of years there (New England); back then it was called pop- but that was 35 years ago now- things change, especially in regional vernacular.

sort of off topic
It seems English in general is more flexible and changes faster than many other languages- had an interesting discussion about that with a Libyan fellow a few years back. Modern English speakers need special instruction to really fathom Shakespeare, while I'm told most Spanish speakers can easily understand Cervantes from about the same era. And Arabic speakers can read the original Koran from over a thousand years ago as easily as yesterday's newspaper. Go figure.

[thew]

babies grow faster - english is a young laguage

[DarkRose]

Pop is a predominately Great Lakes regional thing.

[jumpingmonk]

Thank you, You just explained a small mystery to me. Until very recently the labels on bottles of Borjomi (a VERY salty mineral water from Georgia (the country not the State)) described the contents as selzter. This always confused me as I had always been taught the definition of seltzer was a water that had been given carbonation artificially, and the bubbles in Borjomi are, as far as I know, 100% natural.

[junescook]

I wonder what you get if you order gin and tonic in RI? Is that where they call a soda a tonic, or is it a frappe?

[Pipenta]

If you order a gin & tonic in Little Rhody, they know EXACTLY what you are talking about. They'll give you a gin and tonic and if you are lucky it will be Tanqueray and Schweppes.

It is a small state. They hang on to the names out of loyalty, but it's not like they've never heard the other expressions. The conversation about cabinets and milkshakes comes up very regularly. And the Newport Creamery's Awful Awful was never, to the best of my knowledge, called a cabinet. It's a frappe/milkshake on steroids.

I think the tonic thing is Massachusetts anyway. And likewise, if you order a gin & tonic, they will know just what you want.

[Txgal]

And if you order unsweetened iced tea.....you'll get a glass of ice, and a little pot of hot tea.......or at least that's what I got in Bainbridge Georgia 40 years ago...AFTER strange stares from the waitress and other diners!

[justlizikaria]

Invite someone home for 'tea' in New Zealand and you get to feed them dinner! You only want to give them drink of tea? Then you say "Come over for a cuppa".

[otps]

Pigs in a blanket. My mother rolled beef around pork with onions and seasoning. I see the breakfast ones that are a sausage rolled inside a pancake.

[TuteTibiImperes]

I've never heard of the beef rolled around pork variety (though it sounds interesting from the meat overload perspective).

The pancake wrapped around sausage seems to be a new pre-packaged bastardization of the dish.

Traditional pigs in a blanket are some sort of dough (biscuit, croissant, your choice really) rolled around hot dogs, sort of a corn dog minus the stick and made without cornmeal.

[eclecticsynergy]

Yep, to me pigs in a blanket were Vienna sausages (or small pork breakfast sausages) with biscuit dough around them, always served with peppered Bêchamel sauce ("country gravy" to the Southern side of the family).

[onceadaylily]

Where I grew up, pigs in a blanket were balls of pork wrapped in cabbage, often cooked in, or served with, a tomato sauce.

[John E.]

The dish you describe was made with ground beef and rice wrapped in cabbage leaves in our family. It's called holubtsi in Ukrainian and called cabbage rolls by Americans not of eastern European descent.

[onceadaylily]

My mother made a ground beef and rice (but no cabbage) dish as well as the one I mentioned above, only *that* one was called 'porcupines'. The pork dish was made by my mother, as directed by my paternal grandmother (though whether the dish was a product of her German-American background or plucked from the pages of the Ladie's Home Journal, I don't know).

[rockandroller1]

"Sarmi" in macedonian cooking.

[onceadaylily]

And if I ever happen to make the dish myself, that is exactly how I'll report it on the What's For Dinner thread. It has a bit more cache than 'porcupines'.

[justlizikaria]

"Sarmades" in Greece. As opposed to 'dolmades' which are traditionally made with vine leaves.

[thew]

holishkis in jewish cooking

[small h]

Gwumpkies! I don't eat them, but I love the word.

[DarkRose]

My partner's family called them Glumpkies. I had never heard of them called this and thought it was just a made up family word, until you posted this! In my family they were just called cabbage rolls.

[small h]

My college roommate (of Polish descent) and my spousal equivalent (ditto) both use that term. You and I both came up with phonetic interpretations of the actual word, which is golabki. I pluralized it incorrectly, I see now.

http://polishfoodinfo.com/polish-food...

[sisterfunkhaus]

I'm from Texas and call them Glumpkies. I had never had them until I was an adult and found the recipe somewhere. Probably why I call them Glumpkies--b/c that was what they were called in the recipe.

[Parrotgal]

Our pigs in a blanket were sausages wrapped in a pancake.

[greygarious]

Sherbet in the U.S. is sorbet make with some dairy, but not enough to be ice cream.
Sherbet in the U.K. is a fruit-flavored powdered confectionery item.

[smartie]

sherbert is also slang for a beer in London!

[Pipenta]

Isn't a sherbert also a middle eastern beverage?

[Lizard]

Lady fingers = biscuits or okra.

[GraydonCarter]

Manzana bananas are called ladyfinger bananas.

Of course, manzana means Apple.

[Veggo]

My first huaraches - the food, an oblong masa pancake shaped like a shoe print, with choices of meats and cheese then heated and topped with sauces, onion, cilantro, cost about 25 cents.
My first huaraches, the shoe, had soles made from old automobile tires and cost $2.00.
Today, I can hardly find huaraches to eat, and Nike makes foot gear called huaraches that cost upward of $175.
Give me back Mexico in the 70's!

[Harters]

"A martini. Order this in a bar in France or Belgium and you'll get a glass of vermouth - if you want what English-speakers think of as a martini, you need to order a martini cocktail."

May be a European thing, Bob, rather than just language. As with Belgium & France, if you went into a British pub and ordered a martini, you'd also get vermouth. It's with Martini being the most well known producer of vermouth.

My mother would have called the cocktail a "gin & It." (It. as in Italian) to differentiate it from a "gin and French" (which would have been with Noilly Prat or similar)

[buttertart]

I thought the "it" was grenadine. But that's a pink gin I suppose.

[Paulustrious]

A pink gin is with bitters. (Angostura) Fairly rare these days.

[Caitlin McGrath]

Some confusion about "gin and it": http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/411172

[The Librarian]

Before I met my husband-to-be, the only kind of scone I knew about was the British baked good. But, to his Mormon Western American family, scones are small discs of fried bread dough, served with butter and maple syrup. They're yummy, but the name still bothers me!

[Paulustrious]

A meal of meal
Endive
Squash (a cordial in some places)
Pot
Char (cup of char, charred steaks, arctic char)
Gram (flour)

There are many other words that have two meanings but are still connected, such as rice (potatoes) , chop (Barnsley), Tea (the meal) etc.

[Sherri]

Florentine = includes spinach
Florentine = cookie

Gnocchi can be made with semolina or potatoes or spinach/ricotta & AP flour. Very different products for the same named dish

[thew]

i believe gnocchi (the word not the dish) is derived from the word for a knot in wood. so anything with that shape could be calld gnocchi

[limster]

Some Roman-style semolina gnocchi come as rectangles or squares.

[thew]

the point is that the name does not come from the ingredients but the shape, so it isnt a surprise that the same sort of general thing, even with different ingredients, has the same name

[limster]

Yep - got the point the first time - was pointing out that things with different shapes can have the same name.

[thew]

clearly

;)

[smartie]

Casserole - in the UK it means a stewed, slowly cooked dish in the oven ie a beef casserole or lamb or vegetable. In the US it's used for many dishes - I have yet to really understand what it means - perhaps someone can tell me what a tuna noodle casserole or green bean casserole really means!

[Glencora]

The UK and US meanings are similar in that they are both one pot dishes. But while something like coq au vin is slowly cooked in a pot and then served, casseroles are layered together and baked, more like a lasagna. For what it's worth, I haven't made or been served a casserole in at least a decade.

[greygarious]

An American casserole is a starch, like pasta or rice, baked with some form of sauce and usually a meat/cheese of some sort, sometimes also with vegetables. There are variations but everyone recognizes egg noodles, canned tuna, and a can of cream of mushroom soup diluted with milk, then baked, as tuna noodle casserole. Cheese and/or vegetables can be added, and there may be a topping of bread crumbs or crushed potato chips (crisps to you!). The casserole is usually a main dish. Some are side dishes and some can be both (like macaroni&cheese). Potatoes au gratin or scalloped potatoes are casserole sides. So is the green bean casserole, which is green beans, the cream of mushroom again, and canned fried onions. Your definition explains Lamb Liver Casserole for Sam Fujisaka, which Americans would consider more of a braise than a casserole.

[John E.]

Old thread I know, but in Minnesota what you have described in your post is called a "hotdish" or sometimes just "hotdish". I think the term is also used in the Dakotas, Iowa, and at least western Wisconsin. Tater Tot Hotdish is a good example of the term. But we also have Tuna Noodle Casserole (not called hotdish but still with the crushed potato chips on top, I hate it and will not eat it).

[Bada Bing]

The term hotdish was indeed used in North Dakota when I lived there. As an outsider, I found the name provocatively vague. The usual ingredients were ground beef and onions, tomato sauce, short pasta (like elbows), and--ahem--Velveeta. All was done in a pot on stovetop.

And here's a true, funny story: years later when I lived with a very international crowd of graduate students in California, we decided to have a potluck party where people brought foods from where they were from. An Air Force brat, I wasn't from anywhere,, with all our moving, so I decided to make hotdish for the first time, presenting myself as a North Dakotan.

Couldn't find Velveeta (I didn't realize it was a non-refrigerated product kept on the shelf by the motor oil), so I subbed in Colby, and I made it in a big baking dish in the oven, because of the large quantity I needed. At that party, with people bringing Middle-Eastern savory baked goods, Thai curries, and all kinds of amazing stuff, the hotdish was snarfed up before you could even get a second look at it!

[John E.]

I was being a bit vague myself when I said I thought the term was used in North Dakota as well. Of course it is since the people of North Dakota are pretty much the same as the people of Minnesota, culturally speaking. Remember the movie Fargo? Even though it's named after a ND city it takes place mostly in Minneosta. While we don't all speak with the exaggerated accent like those in the movie, I will say that parts of the same five states has a large portion of the population with that accent. Just listen to Jesse Ventura.

[soypower]

I always thought casserole meant anything baked in a casserole dish. Lasagna is a type of casserole, the same way quiche is a type of pie?

[greygarious]

Lasagna IS a casserole, but a dessert (e.g. fruit crisp) baked in a casserole dish is not.

[smartie]

not in the UK it's not!

[coney with everything]

"Goulash" to my mom and I think a lot of Americans is ground beef, tomatoes/tomato sauce, and macaroni.

Not much like true Eastern European "goulash"

According to Wikipedia, "goulash" has a lot of different interpretations

[linguafood]

Wow, I've _never_ heard that interpretation of goulash before. Mind you, Germans probably make some bastardized version of the Hungarian dish, but it definitely has no ground beef, tomato sauce, or macaroni in it. Fascinating!

[BobB]

I'm sidetracking my own thread here, but what really fascinates me about this is that this dish of ground beef, tomato sauce and macaroni is near-universal in the US and a perennial on school lunch menus, but has different names depending what part of the country you're from. I've seen the goulash reference before, and around here (New England) it's commonly called American Chop Suey, but my favorite name is one used in parts of the Midwest, where it's called Johnny Marzetti - I kid you not!

[bbqboy]

http://www.post-gazette.com/food/1999...

[TuteTibiImperes]

In Delaware the school lunch menus referred to it as Beefaroni.

[soupkitten]

i have no idea who johnny marzetti is. in my part of the midwest we call what you describe "mac&beef." i know-- weird, huh ;-P

[rockandroller1]

We grew up with "Johnny Marzetti" on the school lunch menu, but it was always made with spaghetti, and topped w/cheese. The ground beef/tomatoes/onion thing was just called goulash.

[soypower]

In the midwest, I've heard it called hotdish. I call it hamburger helper no matter if it's made from the box or not.

[onceadaylily]

Huh. Where I grew up in the Midwest, the term 'hot dish' was used interchangeably with 'casserole'. Mac and beef was a type of hot dish (I hope I never wind up in the place where it is the *quintessential* hot dish ;)).

[gordeaux]

In my household, "turkey" is meat from a specific bird.
At Subway, and other random sandwich places, "turkey" is a yellow substance with an odd gelatinous consistency.

[ospreycove]

Gord.....And means turkey lips, waddles, tails and toe nails!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[scubadoo97]

good one!

[Hue]

Barbecue, BBQ, etc means many different things across the country!!

[bbqboy]

I disagree. I think the tide is turning as far as recognition of smoked meat cooked over indirect heat being call BBQ. Grilling is the proper term for backyard cooking.
I can hope anyway.:)

[smartie]

not in the UK - BBQ means outdoors, grilling is putting it under the broiler.

[southernitalian]

The tide might be turning for you BBQboy, but in the Northeast, BBQ is a verb.

[livetocook]

It's a verb in Western Canada too. When I first heard it referred to as a noun I was really thrown off :P

[Harters]

Multi-purpose word in the UK.

"I'm having a BBQ next week. I'm going to BBQ some steaks on the BBQ."

[bbqboy]

BBQ the noun refers to a style of food defined by indirect heat and smoke.
like this

http://www.bodeansbbq.com/
:)

[John E.]

I agree with you, but I'd have to say that many people, at least outside the heavy BBQ areas of the country, say BBQ when they mean grill, especially out in California.

[decolady]

Since it became a trend in the 50s, bbq has been used to denote grilling outside. And then there are Barbeque Shrimp, a Louisiana favourite which are prepared nowhere near a grill nor a smoker.

[junescook]

In North Carolina, BBQ is the chopped smoked pork shoulder laced with a vinegar sauce, sometimes formed into a patty and grilled, and served on a roll with slaw. Oh God I miss NC!

[meatn3]

Macaroon.

[soupkitten]

adobo

[TuteTibiImperes]

I seem to remember what we in the US would call Egg Salad, Chicken Salad, or Tuna Salad, the British call Egg Mayonnaise, Chicken Mayonnaise, and Tuna Mayonnaise.

Also, what the British call a kebab would probably be a pita or gyro in the US, a kebab in the US almost always means grilled meat and or vegetables served on the stick.

[small h]

That is the opposite of this thread's theme. You've given examples of a food that has several names, rather than a name that refers to several foods.

[BobB]

Well, half and half actually - Tute's description of kebab fits the bill.

[small h]

Ah, right you are. I should turn on the a/c, maybe. My brain is melting.

[michelley]

In England, if you order chicken salad, you get sliced chicken with lettuce and tomato. Same for ham salad and egg salad.

[bbqboy]

what if you make them without mayo?

[michelley]

I don't know, I just know that when I was in the UK I had to order "Ham salad" to get a sandwich with lettuce and tomato, and my friend went on and on about how Americans don't know what a chicken salad sandwich is when she ordered one at the diner next door....

[gentlyferal]

"Egg Mayonnaise, Chicken Mayonnaise, and Tuna Mayonnaise" -- makes perfect sense, actually, because the British names show the composition.

The only reason Americans call these compounds "salad" is because crazy home economists during the 1920s decided "salad" was the right name for anything you could put on a lettuce leaf. Apparently, Americans weren't all that crazy about raw vegetables back then.

I believe I found that tidbit in a book of Laura Shapiro's. I believe it was "Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads." A lovely read.

[small h]

To me, salad just means something cold that has several ingredients. I was saddened in Italy when I ordered a mushroom salad and was served a plate of sliced white mushrooms. No dressing, no lettuce leaf, no nuthin'.

[linguafood]

That is a sad salad indeed. They couldn't even add some olive oil and a spritz of Basamic?

Che insalata triste!

[small h]

Nuthin'. I like mushrooms fine (or I wouldn't have ordered them), and I don't mind simple foods, but this was austere in the extreme. Maybe if I were one of them raw foodists, I would've appreciated it more. On the upside, the pizza at that restaurant was very good. It was in Rome somewhere - I'm sure that narrows it down.

[linguafood]

Oh yeah! That one pizza place in Rome. I know *exactly" which place you speak of. Their mushroom pizza is awesome. It comes with baked dough.

[pikawicca]

Surely, there were olive oil, salt and pepper on the table? I've encountered plates like this all over Italy, and one is expected to dress one's salad to one's own taste.

[small h]

Not that I recall, but it was 20ish years ago. And I was unaware of what one was expected to do, it being my first time in Italy and all, and the guidebooks I'd read didn't address this issue, nor did I have your cell phone number, perhaps because cell phones weren't yet ubiquitous, so you see how I might have been confused. Or maybe you don't, judging from the tone of your post.

[alkapal]

the "cell phone" would've required it's own baggage 20 years ago. http://30.media.tumblr.com/ahLApMt1Vp...
(oh, it was a "mobile" phone, then.).

[BobB]

Linguistic side note: while the term cell phone is now nearly ubiquitous in the US, they're called mobile phones in the UK.

[Paulustrious]

I think the word 'phone' has been dropped.

[Harters]

And "Handy" in Germany.

I may be the last remaining Brit not to to own a "mobi".

[Paulustrious]

Not joined the mob then?

[Jen76]

I had a somewhat similar experience in Rome. I ordered Pasta E Fagioli and that's literally what I got. A bowl of little tubes of pasta mixed with beans and - what I refer to as - bean water (the water the beans were cooked in). It was completely unseasoned. No herbs, no onion, no garlic, no salt, no pepper, nothing else at all. It was gray (not sure what kind of beans those were, but they were small and brownish gray) and very bland.

[rockandroller1]

I had this same salad recently at a new, northern-Italian restaurant here. It was very much not what I expected. I mean, sliced up, plain, raw mushrooms? How is that a salad?

[decolady]

I love that book!

[buttertart]

The "Fashionable Food" book is very fun but it's by Sylvia Lovegren. I believe you're thinking of "Perdection Salad" by Laura Shapiro?

[gentlyferal]

You're right, buttertart. I discovered both authors at about the same time last year -- hence the confusion.

[buttertart]

They're both a joy.

[John Manzo]

British Kebab=American Gyro=Canadian Donair, more or less.

[alkapal]

a "kebab" in england = http://eastofmain.com/gyro-donair-sha... ?

[linguafood]

not so fast. in MY BOOK (my own, personal head book, that is), both gyros and shawarma are discernable as coming from meat. that is, *actual* meat slices are on the spit grill. with döner, it's usually some prepared meat paste (ugh) that resembles sausage more than anything. i'll take a gyros or shawarma pita over döner or "donair" any day.

[chowser]

It's been years (decades really) but those donner kebabs hit the spot at 2am when I was at university.

[linguafood]

I'd say most foods that are available at 2 am hit the spot '-)

[chowser]

Good point, especially when you've had a few pints, or in my case, one.;-)

[Bob W]

Donner kebabs? I don't think I want to know what kind of meat was in those. 8>D

[linguafood]

Usually, it's lamb or beef or a mix of both.

[BobB]

Bob's just making word play with the misspelling of doner as donner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_P...

[linguafood]

just got that one. haha. you bunch of jokers.

[Bob W]

This is a well-read crowd, you know 8>D

[linguafood]

i thought it was just bad spelling.

[Txgal]

I hope it was just bad spelling!

[jumpingmonk]

Sheesh, and when I read it I thought you were implying kebabs made of reindeer meat!

[Tripeler]

At least they weren't talking about
Organ Doner Kebabs...

[Bob W]

Well, in a way, I think we were!

[Paulustrious]

Ok then, Organic Doner Kebabs.

Odd thing that word Organic. The word organ originally meant a part of the body. So an organic vegetable would be a part of the body you don't use a lot. (cf: carrot and onions.).

[John E.]

I understand they taste very similar to Reed kebabs.

[thew]

great party food

[Paulustrious]

In the UK (15 years ago) they were called donner kebabs. (Not sure of the spelling). Kebab (minus the donner) to me were lumps of meat and veg on a stick, unless it was Indian in which case is was a spicy-skinless-sausage-on-a-stick.

[linguafood]

Yup. A kebab (shish kebab, to be exact) should be solid chunks of meat on a skewer.

[bbqboy]

Then should we call the ones with a tomato/green pepper/onion
component?

[linguafood]

durr. i meant as opposed to a meat mass, or mince meat. veggies are, of course, not only acceptable, but required.

[bbqboy]

cool, though an all meat meat skewer sounded tasty too.

[travelmad478]

A Turkish person (and I) would disagree with you on that "solid chunks of meat" thing. My favorite Turkish kebab--and it is definitely called a kebab in Turkish--is the Adana style. It's made with ground meat, with spicy peppers in there too. Yum!

[Paulustrious]

Whoops.

That's the spicy skinless sausage one. When I said Indian I was naturally including Turkey and large swathes of the Middle East, North Africa, South East Asia etc.

[travelmad478]

> When I said Indian I was naturally including Turkey and large swathes of the Middle East, North Africa, South East Asia

You have a rather unique understanding of geography!

In any case, Adana kebab is not sausage. It's ground meat and peppers shaped into strips and cooked on skewers. But it's definitely a kebab.

[linguafood]

I guess kebab just means skewer, and the shish part refers to the meat.... yeah, now that I think of it, I've seen kebabs with ground meat on 'em.

But the chunk ones are better.

[buttertart]

Vice versa lf dearie, the shish is the skewer. Kebab is "beyti" in Turkish, just to muddy the waters. And the best thing I've ever had as a "kebab" in a Turkish restaurant was tiny cubes of lamb tenderloin spiced with cumin and hot pepper that never saw a skewer (if Barbie's dream house came with skewers, a few of these woulkd have fit on them).

[linguafood]

Ah c. My Turkish is rather rusty these days. Clearly.

What I do know that most Turks (or Armenians, for that matter) will have a hard time screwing up a lamb dish. Quite the contrary :-D

[buttertart]

Indeedy. If you're ever in NYC, check out Taci's Beyti in Bklyn.

[Paulustrious]

Sounds a bit like spadini / spaducci.

Except they don't use tenderloin.

[buttertart]

Little wee cubes? like 1 cm3 at most?

[Paulustrious]

And here is the thing you make them with:

http://toronto.kijiji.ca/c-buy-and-se...

Looks like I mis-spelled spiedini.

[alkapal]

that looks like a PITA to use!

[Paulustrious]

More so if you don't have one. You need a sharp serrated knife.

Then you eat them with pita bread.

[buttertart]

Is that an upstate NY thing? Don't they have st like it in Binghamton* or somewhere? Or is that a different critter.
*perspective issue - Binghamton is way downstate to people in St Lawrence County, where we lived for 2 glorious, fun-filled years. It's upstate to me now, thankfully.

[Paulustrious]

Just wherever there are Italians. So if by 'upstate New York' you mean Toronto, then yes.

[buttertart]

Aha. No, Toronto is Toronto. I don't recall seeing this in these NJ or NY parts however.

[Caroline1]

"Vice versa lf dearie, the shish is the skewer. Kebab is "beyti" in Turkish, just to muddy the waters. ".....................buttertart

My Turkish is VERY rusty when it comes to trying to carry on a conversation, but I don't think it's so rusty that I can't explain that "kebap" (Turkish spelling for "kebab") simply means roasted meat. It isn't until the meat is cut up and threaded on a skewer to cook that it becomes "shish kebab". "Shish" (actually spelled "sis" in Turkish, except both ss have a little comma thingie hanging of the bottom of them indicating the "s" is pronounced like "sh") is the Turkish word for skewer. If you go to an authentic Turkish restaurant, do NOT expect all kebaps to come on a skewer or you'll be very disappointed!

[512window]

Tortilla. One is a baked dish made with potatoes, the other is a thin, flat wrapper made on a griddle.

[ospreycove]

Order a latte in a non-tourist bar in Italy....get a glass of milk.

[BobB]

I once ordered a manzanilla in a bar in Madrid, expecting to get a glass of dry sherry. They brought me a cup of herbal tea.

[livetocook]

I can't stop laughing at this. Here you're expecting booze and they bring you tea. And herbal to boot....hahahha

[BobB]

Turns out manzanilla actually has three meanings in Spanish - chamomile (hence the tea that I got), a type of sherry (what I was expecting), and also a type of small olive. I learned that day that if you want booze, you have to order "manzanilla sherry," similar to the "martini cocktail" reference above.

[John Manzo]

Another "tortilla" is a sandwich.

[Davwud]

Truffles. One is a fungus that grows in the ground and the other is a type of confection.

DT

[ttoommyy]

But at least there is a connection there: the confection is named after the fungus because the one resembles the other.

[cheesemaestro]

You don't even have to leave the US to run into language problems. Being from Boston originally, I used to call any kind of soda "tonic." If I forgot to say "soda" when I traveled and asked for tonic, the response was "You mean tonic water?" or "You want a gin and tonic?" In most of the US, if you order a Coke, you'll get Coca-Cola, but in parts of the South, they'll ask you what kind of Coke you want, as Coke there is the generic word for all carbonated drinks.

[Gio]

And then there are Frappes and Milkshakes...

[southernitalian]

I seem to recall somewhere in New England, either Martha's Vineyard or Maine, milkshakes were also called cabinets.

[BobB]

Rhode Island, as nomadchowwoman points out further down.

[ttoommyy]

"In most of the US, if you order a Coke, you'll get Coca-Cola, but in parts of the South, they'll ask you what kind of Coke you want, as Coke there is the generic word for all carbonated drinks."

I've had the "fun" conversation at restaurants in the south while on vacation. It can start to sound like an Abbot & Costello routine! lol

[Heatherb]

People from Jersey have told me stories about going into pizza places in the South and asking for a pie, then being directed to the bakery down the street. Southerners in turn are a bit confused when they are up around here and we ask them if they want to go get a slice with us:)

[susancinsf]

as a child, I moved from Texas to California...shortly after starting at the new school, a new friend asked me if I wanted to play after school, and said, 'we can go have a soda; I'll buy', or words to that effect. I got VERY excited, as I figured she was going to treat me to an ice cream soda!

Nope, we ended up at the Coke machine.

[pasuga]

LOL... I still remember moving from NJ to Boston in the 80s... first time I bought take out coffee I just asked for coffee - which in NJ or NYC would translate as black. She asked if I wanted it "regular," I said yes and it turned out here it means with cream and sugar.

[thew]

regular, meaning milk and sugar, was the standard definition in NYC for most of my life, though i don't hear it so often any more

[cosmogrrl]

When I went to school in NY (I'm from California), I learned to say "Cawfee" rather than coffee. Mostly because the coffee vendors at the union would make fun of my accent, something I did not want to hear before I'd had my "Cawfee". It stuck with me long after I'd returned home, now they make fun of me for saying "Cawfee". *sigh*

[Karl S]

It's not only in the UK that corn=grain generically.

One famous regional usage in the cereal grain context is the fabled (but increasingly rare) "corn bread" of NYC, more typically now called "corn rye": it's a rye bread, not made with maize (except to dust the floor of the oven), and the term "corn" is a reference to the fact that rye was the staple cereal grain of the central European peoples for whom this bread was a basic foodstuff.

Then there is the fact that the corn in corned beef/pork refers to the fact that the salt used in curing was the size of cereal grains.

[southernitalian]

It's pop out west.

[Caitlin McGrath]

It is much too regional to generalize. What "out west" are you referring too? CA? Soda. PNW? Pop. The Southwest? Depends. There have been a few threads about this over the years, but you may be interested in the national county-by-county breakdown: http://popvssoda.com:2998/countystats...

[John Manzo]

Pop every in English Canada. One of their myths is that you can tell Americans because they (we, speaking as an American emigrant here) ALL call it "soda." I can't tell you how disappointed I've made many Canadians by informing that, in the Chicago area, it's "pop" as well.

[alkapal]

ha, in the south, we called it "coke" ;-). as i recall, you typically asked for a "coke" when you were wanting a "cold drink." now that i think of it, we called sodas or pop "cold drinks."

[BeefeaterRocks]

Pudding In the UK can mean any dessert, in the US its pudding.

[grayelf]

And sometimes pudding in the UK can mean... haggis cf the Robbie Burns poem Ode to A Haggis.

[Paulustrious]

Pudding (meaning dessert) was mainly Northern British as in "What's for pudding?"

This can be abbreviated to "pud" in Northern English towns.

"In the pudding club" means pregnant.

Pudding as a specific desert had the implication of a fairly solid desert, one that was taken out of the serving dish in a lump with a large serving spoon. Christmas pudding and summer pudding are examples. There are exceptions to this as in rice pudding.

Originally puddings were suausages. Still hangs around in expressions like black pudding and white pudding and various naughty extrapolations.

Later on, (as I remember in the 1960's) pudding when used as dessert often had the connotation of a baked dessert containing eggs. Hence the expression of over-egging the pudding (= Too much of a good thing).

Pudding as a savoury dish usually meant made with suet and then steamed, as in Steak and Kidney Pudding.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

[Harters]

Excellent summary - did you get to eat many on your recent trip?

[nofunlatte]

Schnapps: In the US, it's usually a low alcohol-by-volume syrupy sweet drink (think peach schnapps). In Germany, it's 80 proof and clean-tasting, an eau-de-vie (think Kirschwasser).

Corn in the US refers to a specific grain, whereas elsewhere it's a general name for a grain.

[cosmogrrl]

Interesting, i did not know that. I can now forgive Robert Graves for referring to grain as corn in his "I, Claudius" and "Claudius the God" books. It bugged the heck out of me since corn is a new world item, discovered long after the fall of the Roman Empire. Couldn't understand why he'd made such an egregious mistake.

[Caroline1]

Acually, there was a lot of "corn" around in the old and classical worlds, long before "maize" arrived from the new world. "Corn" in its original sense simply means ground bits, as in wheat, or in Scotland, even ground oats may be called corn. We here in the New World have just turned our backs on the original meaning of the word, that's all. If you delve into Greek Classics, you'll come across lots and lot of "corn." Corny, but true! '-)

[mbfant]

In fact, when I worked as an editor at the Food and Agriculture Organization, we were very careful never to use the word corn because of the ambiguity. We always used maize for what we Americans call corn. I see "sweet corn" quite a bit to indicate maize, but I can't recall who uses that designation. I first learned of the "other" meaning of corn, as you say, in my classical studies, but actually before that in high-school history class, with the Corn Laws.

[Caroline1]

I'm not sure how universal it is, but to me "sweet corn" is a term to differentiate between it and "field corn," which is a (for want of a better word) "coarser" type of maize that is often grown as animal feed. Again, I don't know if this is the standard usage for these two types of maize in the U.S. or even in other countries. I do remember as a kid I used to pick the dried field corn out of the huge gunny sackfuls of "scratch" we threw on the ground for the chickens and eat it myself, much to my grandfather's dismay. God, I must have had teeth like iron! They were like Corn Nuts on steroids!

[Blush]

I grew up in a family of farmers in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, and we also made the distinction between "sweet corn" and "field corn".

[buttertart]

I'm from London, Ont., and we did as well (had relatives and friends on farms in the area too). Sweet corn is really a post-WWII development, I remember my mom and great-uncle talking about getting field corn at just the right point of its development and enjoying it, back when.

[jumpingmonk]

Your sorta right. Sweet corn has been known pretty much from antiquity. But it was only reall in post WWII that the idea of marketable sweet corn really became feasilbe.
Here the bare bones history. Corn normally, as it matures goes through a process in which its sugars are converted into starch . Sweetcorn has a mutation of one of its genes that prevents this from happening, or at least impairs it. If you let sweetcorn mature (say if you are trying to get seed for next year) it will actually wrinkle up as it matures (because the sugar takes up less space than the starch would). Orginally sweetcorn wasn't really popular due to the fact that, once you pick it it starts conveting sugars FAST so it will lose it's sweetness very rapidly (the old rule was you got the pot for the corn boiling and THEN you went out to the field and picked it.) Mature sweecorn kernels arent really much used in cooking (some Native americna tribes used it to make forms of pinole (a corn drink) and chicha (a corn beer) but that's about it. Also that sweet mutation made the corn really sucepible to pest damage. So what most people would grow were so called "roasting corns", corns where you had a brief window whne you could pick and eat it as corn on the cob, and then let the rest mature into starchy field corn which you could grind for meal. Around WWII however a gene called SE (sugary enhanced) was discovered which if the corn had it let it keep its sweetness long enough to actually allow you to sell it. Later other gens like SE+ and SU were discovered, each of which extends that sweet period (though each one cuts the corns viability and hardiness as well).

[John E.]

What is known as field corn is actually dent corn. You're right, it is mostly used as animal feed although it is also used to make tons of other products including plastic bags, HFCS and corn meal. Indian corn is flint corn. It too is very hard but doesn't have the dent. Popcorn is a type of flint corn.

[Karl S]

The white flint corns of Rhode Island, varieties that date back to the colonial era, are still the defining corn for jonnycake, with three stone grist mills remaining that produce it (Kenyon's, Carpenter's and Gray's, the last straddling the eastern border of RI with MA). The corn is so hard it wears down millstones faster than other types of maize. But it has a unique color, texture and flavor.

Southerners often think that all northern cornbreads are yellow, sweet and cake-like. But southeastern New England has a long tradition of white unsweetened corncakes. I suspect that there's a tie to the South here, given that Bristol (first part of MA then RI) and Newport were very important headquarter ports for the infamous Triangle Trade.

[Avalondaughter]

I heard maize referred to as "sweet corn" all of the time when I took a trip to Ireland.

[masha]

Biscuit - The British use this as the term for what Americans would call cookies.

[boredough]

And the Brits call all desserts "pudding", which to us (Americans) is akin to Mighty Fine, crème brulée or pots de crème.

[masha]

Yup. One of our fond memories from a trip to Scotland with our son, was the inquiry made by the waiter in a thick brogue at the conclusion of a very fine dinner:
"And, a pudding for the wee man?"
Translation into American: "Would your son like dessert?"

[Humbucker]

Torta: Is it a bread, dessert, savory pie or Mexican sandwich?

[cheesemaestro]

Or a cheese?

[ttoommyy]

Jelly in Brit-speak is what we would call Jell-O. Imagine the look on my Australian SIL's face when I said I was going to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!

[cheesemaestro]

In the US, lemonade is a non-carbonated beverage made from lemon juice, water and sugar. Asking for a limonade in France gets you lemon soda. If it's American lemonade you want, you need to order a citron pressé.

Chorizo isn't the same everywhere, with Spanish and Mexican versions being very different. Spanish chorizo usually contains smoked or sweet pimentón (paprika), while the Mexican kind has chili peppers. Also, the word "chorizo" used by itself more likely refers to cured sausage in Spain, but fresh sausage in Mexico. Fresh Spanish chorizo would be called "chorizo fresco."

[Caitlin McGrath]

Order a lemonade in the UK and you will get a lemon or lemon-lime soda, as well.

[butterfly]

In Madrid, in the summer, particularly at festivals, "limonada" is often an alcoholic lemon drink or a type of red wine sangría.

[jumpingmonk]

As an extension of that, In much of Mexico, "limonada" actually means a limeade, since in many parts the mexican lime (what we in the US refer to as the Key lime) is used interchageably with the lemon (as a fequent used of fresh Key limes myself, I can attest to the fact that, flavorwise, they are far closer to a lemon than to what we in this country think of as a lime)

[Paulustrious]

The OP was looking for two different things with the same name. In terms of a word having a different meaning in the UK to USA a lot of that was given in the thread "The US and the UK: Divided by a Common (Culinary) Language"

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/615004

[butterfly]

Chorizo can be fresh/raw or cured or smoked in Spain, as well. If you go to a meat store here, you'll find all sorts of different items that fall under the "chorizo" umbrella. Chorizo is just the Spanish word for sausage (Latin salsicĭum>chorizo).

[Davwud]

It seems Poutine has double meanings.

In Quebec, poutine is fries with cheese curd and gravy on to while the Acadian poutine is a ball of grated and mashed potato, salted, filled with chicken or pork in the centre, and boiled.

DT

[alliciac]

I grew up with my family making the Acadian poutine. It was the highlight of the year when my grandparents would make them.

[rockandroller1]

Maybe I'm ignorant here, but don't you mean "peperone" as the pepper, not pepperoni? The word "pepperoni" is particular to the meat product, I think, so they are spelled different, and that's the distinction. And isn't the sausage "andouille?" not "andouillette?" Maybe the distinction is not as difficult. "Andouille" in French is an insult, not a food.

[BobB]

There are lots of different spellings of pepperoni, but even that exact one is sometimes used for peppers - see here http://my.gardenguides.com/forums/top... and the attached photo

Similarly, the garlic sausage in the US is typically called Andouille, but smaller ones are often Andouillette.

[alkapal]

i've never seen a recipe in cajun-creole with "andouillette". it is my understanding that these are very, very different -- not just in size -- from andouille. (here i think wiki is wrong. shocked, i know! ;-). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andouillette don't andouillettes taste like caca?

(i have some andouille in the fridge right now, and mr. alka is hankering for some etouffee). http://www.examiner.com/cooking-in-na...

[BobB]

Oops! Forgot to post the photo:

[Davwud]

Here in NA we call those Pepperoncini.

DT

[linguafood]

Isn't that just a diminutive of pepperoni?

(and, as a German, I can confirm BobB's def - if you order a pizza w/pepperoni in Germany and expect salami slices, you will be sorely disappointed. you will get low-to-medium hot green peppers, usually whole)

[Davwud]

Quite possibly, I don't know.

DT

[ospreycove]

Peperone= singular....Peperoni= plural.......... pepper

[electricfish]

Yep, this exact scenario happened to me. Quite the surprise, lol!

[AmyH]

On "Lydia's Italy" when she says pepperoncini she is talking about dried crushed hot red pepper flakes. But I'm with you in calling the little green zesty peppers in jars pepperoncini.

[pikawicca]

If you order a pepperoni pizza at an Italian restaurant in Germany, it's going to have pepperoncini on it..

[jumpingmonk]

Actually from what I understand, pepperoni as referring to the sausage is a term found ONLY in US italian (though with it's popularity the term may have spread) Assuming I have been told right, if you want pepperoni in Italy, you ask for salami picante.

Okay I have one, dough. In the western world this refers to a thick, stretchy flour based substance, which can be bake to make breads. If you are in an Indian context however, "dough" is a beverage, a mixture of (usally sweetend) yogurt and seltzer water, often with mint.

[lagatta]

I don't think US-style pepperoni exists in Italy, period.

[Karl S]

Calabrians make a spicy dried sausage (salsiccia secca, picante rather than dolce, I suppose) that is probably the inspiration for the pepperoni that was developed by Italian-Americans in the USA.

[Bada Bing]

One of my sharpest travel memories is on this point: on the first day of my student year abroad in Germany (I'm American), I managed to steer clear of the familiar Golden Arches, despite my lonely homesickness, but I was pretty dismayed at the pepper-topped pizza I got after I ordered the pepperoni pizza at a Berlin pizzeria near the train station!

[Paulustrious]

Andouillette is a particular French sausage that has the texture of pieces of rubber bands wrapped up in a condom. As you bite into it, various pieces of grapeshot explode into the mouth. It is a different beastie to andouille.

Your first andouillette is an experience not forgotten.

[Caitlin McGrath]

A vintage Chowhound account of a memorable anduouillettes experience: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/261442

[grayelf]

That link made my (insomniac) night, Caitlin, and added another item to the very short list of items I believe I won't ever be trying.

[Bob W]

The first and only time I had andouiette was at a now-gone place in Paris called Max's Cafe. After I ordered it, the proprietor and my brother Orson W. had a brief conversation in French:

Max: "Does he know what it is?"
Orson: "He is not afraid."

The andouiette was not bad, but give me some Louisiana andouille any day!

[PorkButt]

These sausages contain some combination of stomach, small intestine (chitterling), and mesentery. No colon as stated by the OP.

An andouille is a large sausage stuffed with long pieces of prepared viscera. It's typically precooked and is served as thick slices, cold or grilled. You can see the cross section of the chitterlings in the slice.

Andouillettes usually have a chopped filling but there are regional versions such as Lyon that contain strips like an andouille. The typical preparation is grilled or pan fried and then served whole.

[jmckee]

"Long pieces of prepared viscera...."

OK. I'm with Greyelf. include me out.

[alkapal]

here's a video of andouille making -- sans viscera! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63FUQo... -- just pork butt and seasonings.

[small h]

Drumstick. It's either an ice cream cone with chocolate and peanuts on top, or a skinny green vegetable. Don't mix 'em up!

[BobB]

I've heard of the ice cream drumstick, but what's the green vegetable? And of course it's also a common name for chicken or turkey legs.

[small h]

Hah! I completely forgot about the word being used for chicken legs. That's what not eating meat does to the brain.

It's the fruit of the moringa tree. I first saw it on a menu in Kerala. It tastes like mild asparagus, and it looks like this:

[Karl S]

Well there's also the problem is that people often refer to poultry drumsticks as legs, whereas a poultry leg really means the drumstick plus thigh (and a leg quarter includes the portion of the lower back that is attached to the thigh, including the oyster).

Which brings me to the words oyster and scallop. They refer to bivalves. But they also refer, respectively, to (i) choice tender morsels of flesh nestled in certain cavities like an oyster on the half-shell (ii) neatly carved cylinders of boneless flesh that resemble a scallop out of the shell.

[meatn3]

Oyster can also be the choice bit of chicken found off of the backbone by the end of the thigh.

[travelmad478]

Continuing on the Indian vegetable names theme: ladyfingers. These are either a kind of cookie (in the US/UK) or, in India, okra!

[Bob W]

One of my colleagues (who is Indian-American) wrote a hilarious article that the Washington Post published in 1998 about making her first tiramisu with the wrong kind of ladyfingers.

[AmyH]

I remember that article! It's was hysterical. Until then I didn't know okra was called ladyfingers in India.

Here's a link to a preview of the article from the WP archives:
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingto...

You can pay to see the whole thing.

[ursy_ten]

Here in Australia, you can also get Ladyfinger bananas :)