Saturday, October 31, 2020

Funny Name: Scare Quotes Edition

Sometimes I find a recipe name that really shouldn't make me laugh, but it does. It's just a bit of punctuation that cracks me up. Let's see if you can spot it in this recipe from Saint Edward's Cookbook (undated, ca. 1970s).


Herbed Bread Sticks sounds boring, but I will always stop to try to figure out what's going on with Herbed "Bread" Sticks. What are they really made out of, if not bread? Was this an early prototype of the popular cauliflower, egg, or almond flour based "breads" now?

Nope. Apparently Mrs. Fisher did not consider hot dog buns to be bread, for some reason. That's kind of disappointing... which is kind of what one would expect from a recipe that ends by insisting that the end results will be "appetizing."

A couple writers really liked unneeded quotation marks, so here's a bonus name that should not be funny:


Is anybody else picturing "Sticky" Caramel Buns as being so dried out that they look mummified-- like a pan of mummy caramel buns coughing out a tiny plume of powdered sugar? Just me? Fine. Be that way. I was just trying to get a little Halloween into a post that's nearly as scary as a scare quote.

Happy Halloween anyway! 

4 comments:

  1. I was hoping that the "sticky" buns were made of ingredients all measured in sticks. They start well with a stick of butter, but then they lost it. Why not bread sticks tossed with a stick of butter. Do/did they make caramel sticks that can be melted? You could call for a ground up stick of cinnamon, and maybe a pecan roll (stick) chopped up for topping. Then they would be quite "sticky".

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  2. I'm grossed out by stale hot dog buns so I can support the scare quotes there. I love your description of mummified caramel buns.

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    1. I guess I'm unfazed by the hot dog buns because they sound like something my grandma would have made if she was the fancy type who bought hot dog buns rather than using a slice of bread as a bun.

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