ottawa foodies

* In English, entrée refers to a main dish even though it means appetizer in French.
* In India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, mutton often refers to goat.
* In India, a poached egg is often a fried egg.
* In the southern USA, Coke refers to any kind of soda pop.
* In many parts of the USA, wheat bread means whole wheat bread in contrast to white bread, even though white bread is of course made entirely of wheat.
* In the UK, pudding refers to dessert in general.
* The word hamburger is violated when the "ham" is replaced by a different ingredient (e.g. chicken burger, tofu burger). What would you call a burger made with ham anyway? You don't see this happening with frankfurters... a lamb sausage isn't a lamb furter! ;-)

Can you think of more?

In Frankfurt “hot dog” sausages are known as “Wieners” (or “Viennese” in German). In Vienna (called Wien in German) they are called Frankfurters.

In the UK, tea is a meal as well as a drink.

I think the “ham” in “hamburger” might be misleading. The root of hamburger is probably Hamburg, Germany, although I doubt that the meat was served between 2 slices of bad bread.

I don't know if this still applies, since it happened to my grandmother 50-ish years ago, but:

* In the UK, weaners are suckling pigs. So don't go to the butcher and ask for a dozen weiners, meaning hot dogs. They'll think you're crazy. Or you're cooking for an army.

The only contribution I have is Chips

UK- chips are french fries. Crisps are potato chips
NA- chips are potato chips, french fries are fries.

Ooh, that's a good one.

How about the liberties that are taken with the word bisque?

To many, a bisque is any soup that contains cream and is smooth as silk.

The classicist will say that the only bisque is lobster bisque, and that's that.

Bisque: I think technically means thickened w/ ground shellfish shells, so there could be langostine, shrimp, crab bisque etc. but certainly not "roasted tomato bisque". That's my understanding, but Momo you are right it is definitely abused.

Ah, indeed. Thanks for the clarification. Wikipedia has now helpfully informed me that, and I quote:

The Academie Française Dictionary defines a bisque as: BISQUE n. Potage fait d'un coulis de crustacés. Une bisque de homard, d'écrevisses. (Soup made of pureed crustaceans, e.g. lobster or crawfish.)

So I guess as long as it's got shellfish, you're safe.

the word that comes to my mind in these sort of discussions is "curry", which Wikipedia describes as a likely appropriation of the Tamil's word for sauce -- "kari."

Catsup is another (Obi made this point a couple months ago), and there's probably a ton of other food-related neologisms / malapropisms / borrowed words.

And that raises a point of debate/question: once terms like these have acquired a critical mass of users, can we continue to call them "mistaken"? What say you, socio-linguists?

What about dinner versus supper? To me, dinner is lunch. But then again, I lived in Germany for a while, which biases me towards the direct translation of things.

Dinner = le diner = mittagessen
Supper = le souper = abendessen (not to be confused with evening bread, or abendbrot)

"hamburger" - bzzzzt. Hamburgers originated in Hamburg

In brewing there are 3 main forms of hops - OK 4, but the 4th (hop oils) are used mainly by pros.

pellet hops
plug hops
"leaf" hops / whole hops

But they are not really the leaves, they are the flowers!

In Ontario, the term "brown bread" is used to mean "whole wheat bread"

In the Maritimes, there is "whole wheat bread". "Brown bread" is something else altogether. It is a bread made with white flour that has some molasses added to colour it brown.

I was in New Hampshire and a server at an Inn asked me what kind of toast I wanted with my breakfast.
The women at the shared table all laughed and one said "Aww honey, all toast is brown!"

Don't get me started on the dinner/supper debate.

I grew up with dinner and supper being interchangable terms.

Living in rural Manitoba I always had to clarify- do you mean dinner as in 6pm or so or at noon?

Lunch and dinner tend to be fairly standard terms in Winnipeg but once you get beyond the perimeter, all hell breaks loose.

I've got one - hamburger steak. An attempt to make a low-grade minced beef product sound fancy.

Also, using the word "chocolatey" to denote something that has no real chocolate in it. For example, "marshmallow cookie with chocolatey coating and REAL raspberry filling!" (well, this is not mistaken, but deliberately misleading).

Oh, and how about those stupid Starbuck's coffee sizes where a "tall" (which to me means BIG) is actually a small cup! And then those venti and whatever they call the other size... When I go there I just stubbornly say "I want a small coffee!"

A propos nothing, here's a food expression I like: "mutton dressed up as lamb". Conjures up a funny picture of a wrinkly old lady with rouge on her cheeks and scarlet lipstick.

How about the term "mocha". When used in the context of coffee, it means chocolate-flavoured (viz. cafe mocha). When it's used in the context of chocolate, it means coffee-flavoured (viz. mocha icing).

Pan Bagnat: Interesting you should mention that - I wonder how specific this is to Manitoba. I grew up in Winnipeg, but my boyfriend grew up in Souris (just outside Brandon). To me "dinner" and "supper" are the same thing; to him "dinner" and "lunch" are the same thing. Weird weird weird. There is much potential for a comedy of errors whenever we make plans for a meal *eyeroll* I suppose they say "dinner" for "lunch" in the UK too; I'm thinking "Jamie's School Dinners" with Jamie Oliver.

Also interesting point about "Coke" meaning "pop" in parts of the states, FF. When I worked for an international market research firm, I recall a survey that we did once which was tracking consumption and purchasing behaviors regarding beverages. The client/script team had decided to word the survey using the term "soft drinks". The people in the area that we were calling into (somewhere in the US) had NO IDEA what "soft drinks" were, which caused many problems for us because to keep the research statistically accurate, we could not define the term for the survey respondents (it must be up to thier interpretation unless there is an approved consistent definition from the client/research team). Lesson learned: terms for pop is very very specific according to region - pop, soda, soda pop, coke, soft drink, cola etc.

Where I'm from in NS we had breakfast, dinner and supper

zym: and where I'm from (South Shore and Annapolis Valley) it was breakfast, lunch and supper! I find THAT really interesting, as while there are regional differences within NS, I never would have thought that was one of them. :)

Fresh Foodie - Interesting topic. Ok, I grew up in a house with both a British-Scottish influence (older relatives) as well as my North American roots... and a lot of times we interchanged terms so it all did become a tad confusing.

Breakfast - Lunch - Supper...> Canadian
Breakfast - Lunch - Dinner...> American
Breakfast - Dinner - Supper...> Scottish
Breakfast - Dinner - Tea....> British
Seems I was always asking for an explanation of what time we were intending to eat. LOL

Here is another one for the books...

What the heck is a Spatula?

At home all the pictured implements were known as Spatulas... But of course I've also come to know them by other names... for example, a Bowl Scraper (blue one pictured) or an Icing Spreader (white one pictured)... although that term is technically incorrect because there is an instrument that is used to perform that function that looks like a flat wide knife (also called a spatula). The other 3 pictured, are commonly known in North American culture as Flippers or Turners... although some would say that a wooden kitchen implement used to stir or flip, is automatically called a wooden spoon.

Wiki tells me I am not the only one who seems to confuse all these items... see their article on Spatulas at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatula

i'm glad you brought that last one up F&T, because really unless you can provide context (ie. i'm baking...therefore i need a scraping spatula), my sous-chef/fiance never knows what i mean

F&T - one of the most hilarious things is listening to people trying to pronounce spatula. Two memorable ones (where I almost died laughing):
Paula Deen - Spatch-you-lar
Ricardo Larrivée - Spat-ooh-lah

Lady Who Brunches - LOL, gotta ask, when you say Sous-Chef Fiance, are you referring to the fact that he is indeed a Sous-Chef, or just "your" Sous-Chef when you are cooking / baking. ;-)

"The Man" is my personal Dishwasher (sweetheart that he is) whenever I am cooking (READ - using every frickin implement in the kitchen... ya think I was hosting a cooking show!)

Chimichimi - Spatch-u-lah is how I say it... however, whenever I see it written I too think of the crazy pronounciations... My all time fave is spaa-tooooo-lah

Where the first syllable rhymes with bat (without the t), second is a drawn out two, and then ya finish up with lah... cracks me up just thinking about it.

Spat-u-la is how I say it.

And, nope. Not a sous-chef is he. He is a painting contractor (shameless plug!) with his own business. He's actually more of my line cook than my sous-chef...ahem.

I also never wash the dishes. But I've taken that task upon myself for the next week, because I feel just_that_guilty.

Whew! Nobody beat me to it!

F&T
Breakfast - Dinner - Tea....late night meal...supper> British

Other Brit terms:
chippy...fish and chip shop
bacon butty...bacon sandwich
chip butty...french fry sandwich
scrumpy...alcoholic cider
sah-nee...sandwich
take away...take out
sweed...rhudabaga
aubergine...egg plant
courgette...zucchini

and of course...
JACKET POTATO...BAKED POTATO!!!

Zym - amazing! That brought back some childhood memories!

Spatulas: I have also heard the rubber "scraping" spatulas refered to as a "Scotch spatch". Something to do with scottish people being cheap and not wanting to waste a single drop of what's in the bowl.

I personally refer to rubber spatulas as "spatcha-loo" to differentiate from a standard spatula- but I made that up myself lol