Misleading Menus: Don't Be Fooled by These 12 Foods With Really Tricky Names
Don't let these oddly named ingredients throw you off.
“What’s in a name,” Williams Shakespeare once wrote. Well, everything. Food-wise, when it comes to names, the particular label or nickname an ingredient or dish carries can be mean the difference between enjoying your meal, being repulsed by the mistake of placing an order for testicles when you really just wanted seafood. Of course, naming mistakes can also lead you to miss out on the treats of the world, like Russia’s Herring in Furs (?!), and when it comes to these foods, the names just don’t suit the edible item they’re describing. Read on to prevent from being misled the next time you look at a menu.
1. Rocky Mountain Oysters
These rustic-sounding fruits de mer may appeal to the Western-loving diner, but don’t be fooled by the regionally appealing moniker this dish has. Not bivalves or seafood in the least, Rocky Mountain Oysters (also called prairie oysters) are the cooked testicles of bulls, sheep and other animals, with, well, meatballs.
Rocky Mountain Oysters made with bison testicles, served at The Fort in Morrison, Colorado. (image: Wally Gobetz/Flickr)
Typically served deep-fried (because what can’t a deep fryer make taste better?), this dish is indeed more popular in land-locked regions, where the thought of swallowing an entire piece of seafood raw may also inspire some gagging.
2. Herring in Furs
This traditional Russian dish sounds… fuzzy? “No one knows how it originally got this name, but herring in furs—also known as herring under a fur coat—was most likely some kind of culinary joke made over 100 years ago,” says Ilya Denisenko the chef at Teremok in the United States. (The chain has more than 300 locations in Russia).
Herring in furs, also known as dressed herring, is one of the traditional dishes served at Christmas and New Year celebrations in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other countries of the former USSR. (image: Paul Frankenstein/Flickr)
The name refers to a salad made with diced pickled herring covered with layers of grated vegetables, like potatoes, carrots, beetroots and chopped onions that is comparable to whitefish salad or egg salad, Denisenko explains about the fur-free dish. “The vegetables add a nice textural contrast to the herring.”
3. Sweetbreads
One of the most misleading culinary names on menus today, sweetbreads are neither sweet nor bread. Instead, sweetbreads are made from animals’ pancreas and thymus glands, usually lamb or calf.
Country-fried sweetbreads served with a honey mustard cucumber 'pasta' salad and hot sauce. (image: Lucas Richarz/Flickr)
These tender nuggets of meat are often served fried and savory, not sweet, and are served at Michelin-starred restaurants around the world
4. Spotted Dick
Though it may sound more like an STI symptom than a dessert, spotted dick is a traditional English cake made with mutton fat and raisins or dried fruit for the spots, and rolled into a circular shape.
Spotted dick was first mentioned in Alexis Soyer'sThe modern Housewife or ménagère, published in 1849. (image: SarahPresleey/Flickr)
5. Toad in the Hole
While the name of this breakfast dish may evoke images of an adorable toad peeking out of a discreet opening in a lily pad, it is completely amphibian-free.
Toad in the hole is made in a variety of forms; the English way places sausage links in Yorkshire pudding, with Americans frying an egg in a piece of toast with the center cut out.
A cooked toad in the hole in a baking dish. (image: Robert Gilbert/Wikipedia)
6. Blood Oranges
These gorgeous ruby-hued oranges may be the gem of the citrus family, but blood? Pass. Scarlet oranges, crimson oranges or vermilion oranges may be more appetizing names for this sweet and visually appealing fruit.
Blood oranges. (image: Jessie Pearl/Flickr)
The distinctive dark red color of blood oranges comes from anthocyanins, a type of antioxidant pigments common to many flowers and foods, like blueberries, black rice and purple cauliflower.
7. Grapefruit
We already have grapes. We already have fruit. If anything should be called a grapefruit, it should be actual grapes. If oranges get to be named by their color, why can’t grapefruits be called yellows or pinks? Or, this may be a reach, tart oranges?
The grapefruit started as a hybrid of the Jamaican sweet orange and the Indonesian pomelo. (image: liz west/Flickr)
Its name, etymologists suggest, comes from the fact that grapefruits grow in clusters, like grapes on a vine.
8. Chicken fingers
Not only is chicken the least fortunate animal in that it doesn’t get a cute euphemism for its flesh (cows get beef, pigs get pork and sheep get mutton), but some perverse cook decided to let us delude ourselves even further into eating parts a chicken doesn’t even have.
Chicken fingers are made from the pectoralis minor muscles of a chicken. (image: raymondtan85/Flickr)
Chicken talons or chicken feet may be a more accurate way to describe chicken fingers. Chicken tenders, on the other hand, refer to a piece of the chicken breast that is, indeed, called a tender.
9. Submarine sandwich
There’s probably on worse thing to eat underwater than a sandwich loaded with meats and mayo and who even knows what else because a sub sandwich can refer to pretty much anything slapped between two slices of bread. The dish itself would get soggy on any submarine expedition longer than a few hours and no, even a foot-long turkey provolone on a baguette does not look like an actual submarine.
Submarine sandwiches are also known as subs, hoagies,heros, grinders, spuckies,po' boys and wedges. (image:jeffreyw/Flickr)
10. Ants on a log
This nickname for celery sticks filled with cream cheese or peanut butter and often topped with raisins or other crunchy snacks isn’t super appealing, nor is it helpfully descriptive. Ants on a log has no standard preparation, nor does the dish involve ants or logs. Unless you’re an upscale New York chef, that is: Alex Stupak, at Manhattan’s Empellón, recently debuted an “ants on a log” rendition that indeed uses the protein of the future: Ants.
Ants on a log served in a bento box. (image: Bunches and Bits {Karina}/Flickr)
11. Head Cheese
Not in any way a dairy product, this charcuterie item, often found chilled in the deli case from brands like Boar’s Head, is, indeed, made from boar’s (or pig’s) heads. A sustainable way to truly practice snout to tail eating, head cheese uses the entire pig’s head, cooking it in a stock pot with vegetables and aromatics in order to gelatinize and form the loaf that will later become a sandwich ingredient.
Head cheese, also known as brawn, originated in Europe. Above, commercially sold Dutch preskop (a type of head cheese) as a cold cut on bread. (image: Takeaway/Wikipedia)
12. Duck sauce
Unlike oyster sauce, this ingredient typical to American Chinese restaurants does not use any duck in it. In fact, the jelly-like, sweet orange sauce is completely vegetarian. Originally served alongside fried duck, the sticky condiment gets its name from its ideal protein pairing, rather than how it’s made, and is often served as a sugary compliment to egg rolls, wonton strips or other fried foods.
Packets of duck sauce commonly accompany Chinese takeout meals. (image: Plastic klinik/Wikipedia)
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