Food Language Class: Food on the MAP

There's plenty of food on the map: Bacon, Georgia; Cherry, Nebraska; Rice, Minnesota; Pine Apple, Alabama; Orange, Florida; Orange, Indiana; and Orange, Texas for starters. Here's the right turn down the road to locations that sound appetizing enough to dig on.

We're going to talk about places named for foods, and foods named for places.

Mayonnaise : Mahon, Spain

Who doesn't know this basic dressing? Basically, mayonnaise is an emulsion (oil-in-water emulsions that are stabilized with egg yolk lecithin). It is made by slowly adding oil to an egg yolk, while whisking vigorously to disperse the oil. This sauce goes well with shrimp and chicken. But what is the relation between this dressing and a name of a place? 

Mayonnaise

Yummy mayo!

It must have been one fun parteyyy! The year was 1756. The french army, under the duke of Richeliu, had just defeated the British on the island of Minorca, off the coast of spain. Even the duke's chef honored the victory with some great food for the celebration, including a special new dressing. He called it mahonnaise, after the island's port city, which named Mahon. Later the name was changed to mayonnaise. 

Turkey : Africa

I wonder where did turkey come from? Was it from Turkey literally? Lets put in a little history here. 

400 hundred years ago, the African guinea fowl found its way onto English dinner plates. This tasty bird originated in Africa, but it had been imported to Turkey before being introduced in western Europe. Since it had come to England from Turkey, the English called it the Turkey-cock. 

Im a turkey but i'm not Turkish!

When the English came to North America, they was a native bird and assumed it was the same guinea fowl they were already familiar with, the turkey-cock! So the called the American bird a Turkey. Later it was discovered that this American bird was not the same species, but by then everyone recognized it by the name turkey. (Surprisingly, the natives called it a furkee.) 

So the american bird retained the name of a country it had never even visited. And today Thanksgiving would hardly be Thanksgiving without the un-Turkish Turkey. 

Sardines: Sardinia

Why can't you buy fresh sardines at the grocery store? The answer is surprising: Because a sardine is not a sardine until it is packed in a sardine can.

Actually, there is no living fish called a sardine. Any one of twenty different species might end up as a canned sardine. The most common are young herring and pilchard. The name sardine comes from the island of Sardinia, where sardines were first canned in 1834.

Can you point out where Sardinia island is?

Buffalo Wings: New York

They sound like part of some kind of mutant bird. But actually, this is a dish of chicken wings that was originally made in Buffalo, New York - Buffalo chicken wings, more commonly known as Buffalo wings. 

Teressa Bellisimo and her husband ran the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, in 1964. One night her son and his friends came in and wanted a snack. So Teressa mixed a new sauce for the chicken wings she had on hand. She added some celery and dipping sauce and served the snack.

Everyone loved the wings. Their popularity spread first across town and then across the nation. They became known as Buffalo wings, and today people everywhere ask for them. Chillis, TGI fridays also have buffalo wings and it's really goodddd.. Thank you Teressa :)