This has to do with cabbage. It’s a mash up title of a term of endearment and an old song. So my current ear worm is I’ll be glad when you’re dead ( you rascal you). Okay great song especially sung by Louis Armstrong but there’s a part where he says you asked my wife for some cabbage and you ate just like a savage I’ll be glad when you’re dead yry.
Then while watching The Crown S2, Prince Philip toasts QE on her birthday with Mon petit chou. Which google is telling me means my darling cabbage. But isnt chou is a pastry? Whatever. Anyway It’s known the Duke gave his wife the nickname of cabbage. I don’t know why or what it means to be called a cabbage. Or why asking for some cabbage makes you a savage.
The light airy pastry used in cream puffs and eclairs is choux pastry (so named because the buns made from the dough when it was first introduced.resembled small cabbages).
From this article at vice Green’s Dictionary of Slang Link A bit of summer cabbage (circa 1895)
“Summer cabbage” is hard to work out, I must admit. It means to have sex. “Cabbage” itself is used in slang to mean the vagina, as has the “cauliflower,” the “mushroom,” and the “artichoke.” There’s also “take a turn among the cabbages” to mean have sex. Let’s put this one down to a late Victorian slang joke.
“Mon petit chou” is a common term of affection/endearment in French, just as “sweet pea”, “cupcake”, “pumpkin” and so on are in English. As such, it obviously indicates a relationship of some intimacy, but doesn’t necessarily or exclusively mean sex, and someone who uses it isn’t necessarily saying “Get 'em off!”
Messieurs les Balgentiens, he shouted across the bridge, vous n’êtes pas de belles gens du tout ! Vous n’êtes que des chats ! And he said to the cat: Viens ici, mon petit chat ! Tu as peur, mon petit chou-chat ? Tu as froid, mon pau petit chou-chat ? Viens ici, le diable t’emporte ! On va se chauffer tous les deux.
I have heard (but not from someone who speaks french) that “Mon petite chou-chou” is an endearment partly because it looks like you’re blowing kisses when you say chou-chou
I sometimes wonder whether Victorians ever got laid at all, given how creative they got with their produce. I mean, how long of a dry spell does it have to be before you consider an artichoke.
In the 1965 episode “Anthony Stone” of The Dick Van Dyke Show, Sally’s mysterious boyfriend calls her “mon petit chou.” Buddy asks what it means, and Rob gives an explanation very similar to PatrickLondon. Rob is very suspicious though, because, you know, it’s French, and seems to imply a level of intimacy Sally didn’t have with, say, Herman Glimscher.
