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Whether you're dining at a new restaurant or cooking dinner at home with friends maximum of the food that you come across will be self-explanatory. Whatever is on your plate—chocolate cake, mashed potatoes, or scrambled eggs—you can usually tell without much explanation. However, a few of the delectable dishes that have become staples have peculiar names that might leave you curious about their intriguing beginnings.
Our desire to eat food is largely determined by the mental image it triggers in our minds. Even though phrases like "mashed potatoes" or "roasted chicken" bring clear images of the food in our minds, there are a few dishes that sound so strange that you might want to reconsider ordering them.
Culinary adventures know no boundaries, and these intriguingly named dishes prove that. From the peculiar to the downright fascinating, these foods with their quirky names offer a glimpse into the diverse, inventive, and sometimes surprising world of global cuisine.
Video Credit: YouTube/Gordon Ramsay
1. Bangers And Mash
Not another album of pop music! A dish called "Bangers & Mash" is a dish prepared with finger sausages and mashed potatoes topped with gravy on the side. Indeed, it tastes just as good as it sounds and is available all over the UK.
2. Hot Dog
The dish that doesn't actually include dogs has gone entirely mainstream with so many sausages on the grill. Where did it originate, though? According to some food historians, the term "wieners" originated from early jokes and songs that implied banger meat originated from dogs. A more reasonable explanation, however, is that German butchers gave the early American frankfurters the nickname "dachshund sausages" in honour of the long, lean dogs they looked like; this term was later abbreviated to "hot dogs."
3. Head Cheese
Making head cheese does not involve dairy products. Actually, the dish looks more like a meatloaf than it does like a wedge or slice of spreadable cheese. This is due to the fact that head cheese is actually an aspic, a savoury block of gelatin that has been shaped into a block and packed with leftover meat. The name comes from the meat of the butchered hog heads that go into the dish. Even though the dish isn't a cheese, it's probably given that name because early recipes instructed pressing the boiled meats into a mould similar to that of cheese. Butchers in the United Kingdom refer to this dish as "brawn," while German meat eaters call it "souse."
4. Pumpernickel Nickel
What precisely is a "pumpernickel," then? This dense, dark bread has German origins and is made with rye flour, molasses, and sourdough starter. The dough is baked at a low temperature for an entire day. The use of yeast and wheat flour by several American pumpernickel bakers expedites the process, resulting in a lighter loaf that lessens or eliminates the pumpernickel's eponymous side effect: flatulence. The bread's ability to produce gas was once recognised by German bakers, who gave it the obscene moniker pumpern, which means "to break wind," and nickel, which means "goblin or devil." When combined, the translation means "devil's fart," alluding to how rough pumpernickel might be on the stomach.
5. Dutch Baby Pancake
Dutch babies, sometimes referred to as pfannkuchen or German pancakes, are a cross between popovers and crepes that are baked in a big skillet or cast-iron pan and then topped with powdered sugar, syrup, or fruit. So how did these pancakes, the size of a dinner plate, come by their most well-known name? According to culinary legend, the misnomer was caused by the daughter of a restaurant owner in Seattle, who mistook the word "Dutch" for the German word "Deutsch." The restaurant called the pancakes "Dutch babies" and sized its versions into tiny portions.
6. The Imam Fainted
Another name for this dish is "the priest fainted." The dish's name alone never conveys the true nature of this Ottoman delight, which consists of whole eggplants, garlic, and tomatoes. It seems to be so delicious that the Imam passes out.
7. Clootie Dumpling
The mere mention of this dish may suppress our hunger rather than increase it. However, Clootie dumplings are another example of how much the British love strange names. According to this dish, clootie is a piece of cloth or leather that has a dumpling inside of it. If you are thinking this is Asian dumpling, you are absolutely wrong! The dessert consists of dry fruits, dough, and sugar.
8. Spotted Dick
Other strange names for spotted dick include "spotted dog" and "railway cake." It's a custard with origins in the United Kingdom that's typically made in cloth and can be either sweet or savoury. This dish consists of suet, animal fats, and dried fruits.
9. Dhokla
This is an Indian dish, which might have a weird name but it is extremely delicious. It is an amazingly soft and fluffy, slightly sweet and savoury cake. You can savout the dhokla with some coriander chutney, mint, or garlic chutney.
