I wanted to make a pasta dish that I’ve made in the past. It has a cream sauce made with smoked salmon and dill. Went shopping for ingredients last week, and grabbed a couple of packets of smoked salmon off the cooler shelf. I didn’t bother looking at the label to see what kind of salmon it was (my bad), but assuming it would be silver or red.
When I opened the package, the meat looked fairly pale, which is a warning sign. When I looked at the ingredient list, it listed “keta salmon”. WTF? I grew up in salmon country and have never heard of it.
Well, it turns out that “keta” is part of the scientific name for what is commonly known as “chum” or “dog” salmon. It has a deserved reputation for being good for feeding sled dogs, but not much else unless it’s ocean caught. So the industry just changed the name. At least it wasn’t some salmon-like product made from soy, but even smoked it didn’t have the best flavor. Live and learn.
I know there are other products that have done this, but none come to mind.
It’s very common with fish. Particularly as fishing stocks have become exhausted and so fish species that were not considered worth fishing suddenly are and so in need of a new name. Some more examples:
Doesn’t the meat industry do this? Find some obscure muscle or bit of a beef carcass that’s not particularly valued, slap a new name on it and provide recipes for making something desirable from it.
But there technically is a difference. The pork shoulder includes both the Boston butt and the picnic ham. Boston butt is still used as a term rather commonly around here.
Remember GoldStar appliances? How about Lucky brand electronics? Well, they just changed their name to L/G and ran some TV commercials implying they were a new upscale company.