Well more specifically when did tortillas start getting called “shells”?
It’s almost surely an Americanism, but I wonder who coined it. Maybe it was Bell of Taco Bell fame who popularized the term?
Hard or Soft Shells are equally valid for Tacos, Fuck your "Only soft shells are Authentic" bullshit
Also it’s still odd, because one doesn’t normally eat the shell of something. The only other thing I can think of off hand is “stuffed shells” and that’s just the name of the shape of the pasta in English.
Then, tacos with “shells” are NOT street tacos.
Here is a patent from 1951 filed by Edward De Gonia which reports to be a description of a utensil used for “frying taco shells”.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US2740349A/en
Taco Bell was founded in 1962 so it certainly didn’t originate from there.
Note that the idea of something crunchy and edible referred to as a “shell” can be seen at least as far back as 1937 in England, when H. I. Rowntree began selling the candy Smarties, which still exist today (though now made by Nestle) and were the inspiration for M&Ms. When first offered in 1937, they were marketed as, “Milk Chocolate in a Crisp Sugar Shell.” So that certainly predated the popularity of crunchy tacos.
But really, it’s a bit of a silly question. The word “shell” simply means a hard exterior, and the usage of that word goes back before the 12th century in Middle English. A crunchy taco “shell” is the same as the shell of a turtle; it’s a hard thing on the outside that protects the inside.
So it’s not an “Americanism”, it’s absolutely English.
Puff pastry shells have been consumed in France since at least the early 1300s.
That seems to contradict the official definition of “shell”.
It’s a bit ironic, the only reason fried tortillas are called “shells” is because they are hard. So once people accept the idea that a fried tortilla is a shell, they call unfried tortillas “soft shells”. It’s an oxymoron though.
I was addressing a comment that said (somehow) tacos on unfried tortillas do not qualify as street tacos. Which is ludicrous since I have yet to encounter a hard shelled taco as a “street taco”. I can’t prove that someone somewhere hasn’t called a hard shell taco a street taco, but I can confidently say if you order one there is a 99.9% chance you will be handed a small taco on an unfried corn tortilla.
ETA: @Atamasama two posts up.
IANA culinary terminology expert, but if we can have “soft-shelled crabs” I’m not sure that “soft-shelled tacos” are any less logical or any more oxymoronic.
Imagine my confusion when a customer at the store asked me where the “burrito shells” were.
Sorry about the ambiguity of my post; I was agreeing with you. Street tacos are invariably on soft tortillas (in my experience at least) so they don’t have shells.
Correct, in the sense that “soft-shell crab” is illogical and oxymoronic.
A soft-shell crab is a crab that has recently molted, and you eat it before its exterior has an opportunity to harden into a shell. It would be more accurate to call it a “non-shell crab” but that’s not what they call them.
I’d have directed them to the manicotti. :evil grin:
That’s fucking genius.
Sorry if I sound cranky. For non-diabetic reasons I’ve been wearing a continuous glucose monitor and have just recently discovered that corn tortillas (fried or not) are glycemic as fuck. They spike like a Snickers bar.
It’s the Pit, you should apologize if you didn’t. 
Taco shells have been called “taco shells” as far back as I can remember. It always meant a corn tortilla folded into a trough and fried.
When the same basic food, on an unfried tortilla, became popular, we needed a way to describe it. What else would you call it except a “soft shell taco”? It’s rather like “accoustic guitar”; we didn’t need a special term for it as long as there was only one option.
We had salmon burgers for dinner last night. I’m always just a tiny bit uncomfortable calling them burgers, but, hey, turkey burgers are a thing.
Was the salmon ground? Because if it’s not ground meat, it’s not a hamburger - it’s just a hot meat sandwich.
Yes. I’ve befriended the fish lady at the supermarket. They sell ground salmon patties as a way to use up about to expire salmon fillets. If I pick out some nice salmon fillets she will grind them and label them as salmon burgers for me. In exchange I bring her dog toys we have in excess from a bark box subscription.
If it’s made with ground meat, I’m fine calling it a burger. When it’s made with whole muscle it makes me want to just call it a sandwich.
For almost as long as I can remember, hard shell was the default when ordering at Taco Bell. At some point the soft tortilla option became a thing and now I have be careful to specify “crunchy” when ordering.
There was a minor Twitter fracas a few weeks ago upon the discovery of antipodean burger ontology.
This is a chicken burger in Australia because it’s served on a burger bun vs the American distinction being patty based.
I didn’t see that particular brouhaha, but I have noticed that elsewhere burgers don’t make the ground meat distinction. The origins of burgers was basically putting a Hamburg steak or frikadelle on a bun, which is a ground meat patty or meatball.