Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Food and smell 185
Culinary euphemism is often motivated by the need to make something that
is intrinsically unappetizing or mundane sound better by giving it a nice
name. A scarcity of meat was perhaps the motivation for the description
Welsh rabbit and also Welsh rarebit, a genteel variant of the name of this
cheese dish that appeared in the eighteenth century. The name Alaska strawberries
sounds tastier than the reality of dried beans. Luncheon meat sounds
mouth watering for poor man’s SpamÔ. Chicken-Ham à la Princesse was a
1950s combination of canned cream of chicken soup with cubed spam and
evaporated milk. 23 Prime examples of this sort of culinary hyperbole can be
found on the names of pet foods. On supermarket shelves we find cat food
labelled Tuna Flakes Fusion with Whitebait in Tuna Jus and Greek Isle Feast
with Calamari, Lamb and Rice. 24
Cookbooks, restaurants and cafes sometimes offer fine examples of this
kind of inflated language. Much of it is French-inspired vocabulary to connote
culinary refinement. How much classier a meal becomes when a leek tart is
changed to flamiche aux poireaux, oxtail to queue de boeuf and tossed salad
to salade composée. Soup versus potage de whatever, stew versus casserole,
slice versus tranche, aged versus affiné, swimming versus nageant, in aspic
versus en gelée, reheated versus rechauffé – all distinguish the mundane from
the elegant. Of course, French can capture finer gastronomic distinctions than
English: we have no term for ‘a chunk of meat or fish that is longer than it is
wide’ or ‘the edible heart of a vegetable’ – French tronçon and trognon plug
these gaps. For those in the business of food, it is important whether the
vegetables are chiffonade ‘cut into very thin ribbon-like strips’ or julienne
‘cut into fine matchstick strips’. There is probably a significant difference
between vegetables that have been diced into a brunoise (tiny cubes) and
those that have been diced into a mirepoix (not so tiny cubes). And let’s face
it, there is not a lot of poetry in names like mushy peas, spotted dick (and
treacle dick), toad in the hole, Sussex puddle, bloated herring (or bloater). 25
‘How-to’ books for menu designers in the US advise using foreign languages
to ‘continentalize your menu’. 26 As the Zwickys illustrate in their glorious
account of American restaurant menus, the language of ‘restaurantese’ can go
to extraordinary lengths in the quantities of French dressing applied. 27
Frenchifying a menu might simply involve a dash of token phrases like du
jour and au added onto strings of otherwise English words: Turtle soup au
Sherry and Split Filet of Tenderloin au Burgundy. Other linguistic condiments
include au gratin and en casserole: Ravioli parmagiana, en casserole; Au
Gratin Potatoes en Casserole. (English gratin ‘topped with grated grilled
cheese’ has moved a long way from the original French, which referred
simply to a crispy baked topping or any crisped surface.) But the examples
go beyond the straightforward incorporation of loan words; aspects of French
grammar are also used much like pieces of garnish. Just the French definite