On a related note, I remember seeing, in sort of middlebrow restaurants with pretensions, butter described as “creamery butter.”
A creamery is just a place were butter is made. By definition, all butter is creamery butter.
Calling it “creamery butter” is just an annoying affection.
I suppose this isn’t really an alternative name, it’s a useless and pretentious adjective, but still, seems like it should be in the same category as “E.V.O.O.”
Isn’t actually a sweeper?
I guess I’ve only ever known it as Orange roughy. Although I’ve never been quite sure how to pronounce “roughy”—ruffy? Rooey?
I recall an era in the 1970s and 1980s when there were some foods—particularly seafoods that you couldn’t get just anywhere. You had to travel to the place wherein it dwelled to get a good taste. Am I remembering correctly that Orange roughy was one of those?
I recall a family trip to Colorado in which it was a big deal to have genuine rainbow trout, served whole. The waiter had to show us how to bone the fish.
Should we insist that Chilean sea bass be marketed as “Patagonian toothfish”?
Or that kiwi fruit be called “Chinese gooseberry”?
It seems to me these names were deliberately adopted to avoid possible off-putting names.
This is the only way I’ve ever heard it pronounced. Not that that’s definitive.
Certainly orange roughy was. From my cite.
“Orange roughy” was renamed from the less gastronomically-appealing “slime head” through a US National Marine Fisheries Service program during the late 1970s, which identified (then) underused species that should be renamed to make them more marketable.
Just based on the timing of when they became popular, I’d not be surprised to find “Chilean sea bass” AKA Patagonian toothfish was on that same list.
I certainly understand the desire to rename things for marketing purposes. I was being sorta facetious towards @puzzlegal, as in:
If you think ‘extra virgin’ is just silly tarting-up of a name, top this: slime head is now orange roughy!!
That’s why you’d eat “mahi-mahi” or “dorado”, and not “dolphin” or “dolphinfish”. I remember reading about them catching and eating dolphin in Kon Tiki and taking a while to catch on that it was a fish.
Also why you eat canola oil and not rape seed oil.
The rancid icing on that cake is their insistence on capitalizing the word “realtor”, as though people who have that job are superior to those in any other job/profession that doesn’t bother with pretentious capitalization. Media outlets slavishly follow the convention of capitalization, even if they aren’t dependent on real estate ads.
Alternative names for champagne miff me a bit, because of the protectionist behavior of the industry in France that insists its product is so super-special and unique that no others outside that region can legally call their product champagne even if it’s obvious that it’s produced and bottled in California, Linden NJ or wherever. Not that I drink fizzy wines though.
There’s not much call for it in daily conversation, but I prefer to use the terms undertakers or morticians. “Undertaker” conjures up an image of a guy in worn-out Western duds hauling away the deceased in a horse-drawn wagon, rather than stuffed suit “funeral directors” whispering in confidential tones in their deep-pile carpeted showrooms.
I do hear it get called rapeseed oil on British telly, on stuff like Inside The Factory.
They capitalize it because it’s a trademark. It’s a proper name. I do generally dislike the capitalization of common nouns, but Realtor isn’t a common noun. I also avoid using it myself, preferring the generic term “real estate agent.”
There are a lot of terms like “champagne” that are given special protection, usally in the form of geographical indicators (also “G.I.” or geographic indications), protected designation of origin, or sometimes collective trademarks, certification marks, or other intellectual property-type concepts. Among them:
Napa Valley wine
Sonoma Valley wine
Idaho potato
Washington apple
Prosciutto di parma
Aceto balsamico di modena
Parmigiano reggiano
Stilton cheese
Scotch whisky
Irish whiskey
Cognac
Havarti cheese
Tequila
The concept has also extended beyond food and drink to traditional crafts, although I can’t think of any off the top of my head.
You can add bourbon that list. It has the “distinctive product” label and must conform to certain requirements (including made in the US) to get the name. While it’s not universal, we have been including it in trade treaties for a while now.
Didn’t bourbon used to be only from Kentucky?
No, bourbon was not only from Kentucky (though of course Kentucky bourbon is from Kentucky). The name itself comes from the French Bourbon dynasty, though solid information about how and why the whiskey was named is apocryphal (the name first started being applied to the beverage in the 1850s). The two most common theories are Bourbon County in Kentucky, where it may have been developed, and Bourbon Street in New Orleans, where it may have been exported from internationally (both locations, of course, ultimately named for the Bourbon Dynasty). There is no solid evidence of exactly where and when bourbon was developed as a specific type of whiskey. It is generally believed to have started in Kentucky, but really from very early on it’s a name given to any American whiskey primarily made from corn and stored in a charred oak cask, and has been made all over the country. Tennessee whiskey for example (which I personally am a fan of) is legally considered to be bourbon but is usually not advertised as such. Also, Tennessee whiskey fits the “distinctive product” definition since only whiskey produced in that state can call itself that, and there are other requirements too.
Damn, all this talk makes me want to go get some Jack Daniel’s.
Boneless. Chicken. Wings.
Yes, but the more that benighted fools can be persuaded by that name to eat those nasty McNugget wannabes, the less expensive actual wings will be for those of us who know and appreciate the difference.
So it’s irritating (not aggravating 
) language with a real world payoff.
Now available at America’s favorite Italian Restaurant (the Olive Garden), Chicken Scampi.
As though the word scampi refers to a method of preparing food, that involves garlic, butter, white wine, and Parmesan cheese.
Made me go look that up. At least one reference I found says that “scampi” are not shrimp (that would apparently be “gambero” or “gamberetto”), so if you are OK with “shrimp scampi”, then “chicken scampi” doesn’t seem any worse. If the shrimp dish also aggravates you, have at it.
Now I’m wondering if
You can make tomato wine and also
Would it be any good
Scampi (the critters) are actually prawns, also known as jumbo shrimp. So “Shrimp Scampi” (the yummy seafood dish, which can be made from prawns or shrimp) bothers me not one whit. The point being that it is a seafood dish. So if “Chicken Scampi” is to be a real thing, it needs to be made from canned tuna.
Internet’s full of recipes for making tomato wine, so, yeah, it’s a thing.
I have no clue how it tastes.
One of the computers I worked on in the navy fifty years ago had an honest-to-god core memory in the AN/UYK-3s we worked with. The computer was a good fifteen years old at the time but were paid for and sufficient for our purposes (distributing multiplex teletype signals) so we had 'em.
It was a sealed metal cube about eight inches on a side and when one failed, it would be sent to a depot for repair being far beyond our capabilities. One failed in such a way it couldn’t be fixed so, being curious, we opened the cube. It was totally cool.
