Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

180 Forbidden Words
Culinary camouflage – gastronomic red herrings
In this section, we consider euphemistic aspects of the language that
English speakers use in talking about their food. A metaphorical red
herring is, of course, any sort of misleading distraction; the expression
derives from the early practice of drawing a smelly dried red herring across
the path of a hunted animal to sharpen up the skill of the hounds. John
Ayto 14 extended the term to gastronomy, in order to describe foods such as
Scotch woodcock, Bombay duck and Welsh rabbit, whose names suggest
something they are definitely not. Scotch woodcock is scrambled eggs on
toast, topped with anchovy fillets. Bombay duck involves fish, generally
dried and eaten with curry; the fish floats near the surface which perhaps
explains the description duck. Welsh rabbit is a mixture of melted cheese,
ale or wine and butter or mustard on toast – ‘for a rich rabbit, fry the toast in
bacon fat’. 15 We extend the term gastronomic red herring to include any
sort of misleading (and generally euphemistic)languageoffood;forinstance
I can’t believe it’s not butter, and the range of fake meat products for
vegetarians. It is language that disguises, distorts, deceives, misleads,
inflates, obfuscates – language that makes the unpalatable seem palatable,
the negative seem positive, the unpleasant seem attractive, the ordinary
seem extraordinary.
Most English speakers are distant from the source of much of the food they
eat, and this can be a trigger for culinary camouflage. Many of us don’t like to
think of the living originals of our meat and fish dishes. Butcher shops no
longer have a backdrop of hanging carcasses and sawdust to soak up the
blood. Cooking now eschews its once close association with the slaughter of
animals. Creatures are today seldom served whole; a roasted pig with head,
tail and trotters intact is repugnant to some. Most people who still eat meat
buy cuts. Many prefer their meat wrapped in neat plastic packs, perhaps
already crumbed and marinated or turned into burgers, so that it bears little
resemblance to a creature once living. Because they are said to be healthier,
some even resort to soy products that imitate the taste and texture of meat.
Carving at table has become a rare sight, and the special vocabulary that once
accompanied it has disappeared, along with the skills. The Compleat Housewife
or Accomplish’d Gentlewoman’s Companion of 1729 advises on how to
tulk a barbel, souce a capon, frush a chicken, unlace a coney, transon an eel,
barb a lobster, splay a bream, wing a partridge, disfigure a peacock, allay a
pheasant, thigh a pigeon, splat a pike, mince a plover, chine a salmon, tranch
a sturgeon, lift a swan and culpon a trout. 16
Death is banished from the modern kitchen, and instructions in early
cookbooks appear gruesome to modern readers. Here are a few examples
from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: 17