Culinary name

Foods may come to have distinct culinary names for a variety of reasons:

• Euphemism: the idea of eating some foods may disgust or offend some eaters regardless of their actual taste
  • Testicles: Rocky Mountain oysters, Prairie oysters, lamb fries, or animelles^[1]
  • Fish milt: soft roe or white roe to disguise that is actually sperm not eggs
  • Thymus gland and pancreas gland: sweetbreads^[2]
  • Kangaroo meat: "Australus" has been proposed as a euphemism^[3]

• Attractiveness: the traditional name may be considered dull, undistinctive, or unattractive
  • Kiwifruit: a rename of the Chinese gooseberry which has now become its standard name^[4]
  • Mahi-mahi: the dolphinfish is often referred to with this name to avoid confusion with dolphin (the marine mammal) meat^[5]
  • The Patagonian toothfish is marketed as the Chilean sea bass^[5]
  • The African cichlid found in many aquaria is presented as tilapia
  • The spinal marrow of veal and beef is called amourettes^[6][7]
  • The meat of Asian carps has been marketed in the United States as silverfin^[8] or copi^[9] to avoid the social stigma and promote it as a commercial food

• Poetic / fancifulness: Many dishes have fanciful or jocular names.
  • Drumstick, a chicken's calf
  • Angels on horseback, oysters wrapped in bacon
  • Pigs in a blanket, various dishes of sausage in dough
  • Floating island, egg whites on custard sauce
  • Ladyfinger, a type of sponge cake
  • Ladyfinger, okra
  • İmam bayıldı 'the Imam fainted', eggplant and onion

• Grouping of a variety of sources under a single name
  • Tuna, sardine and mackerel are all common names that include a variety of several different (and sometime unrelated) species of food fish

• Evocation of more prestigious, rarer, and more expensive foods for which they are a substitute
  • Lumpsucker (or lumpfish) roe is named lumpfish caviar
  • Cassia bark is called cinnamon
  • Langostino is sometimes called lobster or "langostino lobster"
  • In North America, many flounder species are called soles, e.g. Microstomus pacificus is named "Dover sole"

• Evocation of a specific culinary tradition
  • Shrimp in Italian-American contexts is often called scampi
  • Florentine refers to dishes that include spinach
  • Squid is often called by its Italian name, calamari, on menus^[10]

• Different terminology stemming from diglossia
  • The words beef, veal, pork, mutton, venison and poultry are derived from the words used by the French-speaking lords in post-Conquest England^{[citation needed]}

• Other
  • In French, chestnuts are called châtaignes on the tree, but marrons in the kitchen
  • "Laver" is a culinary name for certain edible algae,^[11] usually species of Porphyra such as Porphyra umbilicalis, although "green laver" may refer to species of Monostroma or Ulva; species of Ulva are also known as "sea lettuce"
  • Truita de patata (lit. 'potato trout') in Catalan cuisine, a potato omelette: "if you don't catch a trout, you've got to have something more humble for dinner -- something to pretend is a trout".^[12]
  • Cappon magro (lit. 'fast-day capon'), a seafood salad

Humorous exaltation often takes the form of a dysphemism disparaging particular groups or places.^[13] It has been observed that "Celtic dishes seem to receive more than their share of humorous names in English cookbooks".^[14] Many of these are now considered offensive.^[15] See List of foods named after places for foods named after their actual place of origin.

• Welsh rabbit, melted cheese on toast. "Welsh" was probably used as a pejorative dysphemism,^[13] meaning "anything substandard or vulgar",^[16] and suggesting that "only people as poor and stupid as the Welsh would eat cheese and call it rabbit",^[17][18] or that "the closest thing to rabbit the Welsh could afford was melted cheese on toast".^[19] Or it may simply allude to the "frugal diet of the upland Welsh".^[20]
• Welsh caviar, laverbread, made of seaweed;^[21]
• Essex lion, veal;^[22]
• Norfolk capon, kipper;^[22]
• Irish apricot, apple, grape, lemon, plum, etc., potato;^[22][15]
• Scotch woodcock, scrambled eggs and anchovies on toast;^[23]
• Dutch goose, a stuffed pig's stomach in Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine;^[24]
• French goose, a kind of sausage stew;^[24]
• English monkey, melted cheese with breadcrumbs soaked in milk, served on toast or crackers;^[25]
• Albany beef, Hudson River sturgeon used as a substitute for beef.^[26][27]
• Sea kitten, fish. A renaming proposed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, in the hope of dissuading people from eating fish, by likening fish to appealing companion animals.^[28][29]

• Trade name
• Brand

• "Culinary terminology" in Oxford Companion to Food, 1st edition, s.v.
• Andre Simon, A concise encyclopedia of gastronomy mentions 16 different 'culinary names' passim