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It sounds like the issue is the fact that Florence said "gooseberry" as opposed to "cape gooseberry." Is that right?

Its annoying when people get things wrong that we (whoever we are, whatever our background/knowledge base) know are wrong; but I'm not sure I'd go with "preached" for Food Network shows....oversimplified information that's sometimes in the neighborhood of accurate, maybe.

My favorite is "sear the outside to seal in the juices." This has long since been debunked although some real heavyweights (like Julia C.) really believed it to be so. Searing caramelizes the outside of the food but does nothing to seal in juices.

Mispronunciations really grate on me. Mar-sca-pone is one of the biggest offenders. Ex-presso runs a close second.

My point is - where's the fact checking?

If they had fact checkers on TVFN, Shamdra would not have lasted one single season.

Actually, Alton was right in correcting the NFNS contestant. Of course it has been a long time since I watched it, but I remember Alton asking her if chiles and peppers where the same thing. She said yes. She was wrong.
The term "pepper: to describe jalapeno, Anaheims and the like is a misnomer given to them because they were hot like black pepper (aka Piper nigrum). So Alton was right in correcting her. :)

Lessee, there was an episode of one of Tyler Florence's shows where he said that the difference between corned beef and brisket was the cut of meat.

And Emeril said that the difference between cilantro and coriander was the age of the plant.

There have been a few others where I wanted to throw shoes at the TV, but those two stick in my mind.

Ah, there was another where the host said that aioli always had saffron or it wasn't aioli.

And an episode of Good Eats where AB fed his dog the leavings from something he made, and it contained onions. In a rerun, that bit was cut, and some scrolling text made the point that onions are bad for dogs, but if you want to feed the leftovers to your pet (some other animal) that was fine. So at least they corrected that one after the fact.

The tomato/gooseberry thing I can forgive, depending on how it was being explained. So, if it was, "The tomatillo is not actually a green tomato, which many people think, but is in fact more closely related to..." that would be fine. But if it was said that tomatoes and tomatillos are entirely unrelated, that would be a different thing. I know the show you're referring to, but I don't recall the exact wording.

As far as gooseberry vs. cape gooseberry, could it be that the cape gooseberry is commonly just called a gooseberry? I don't know, I'm just askin'. I don't think I've ever seen an actual gooseberry, whether it was wearing a cape or not. :-)

As far as the chile vs pepper thing, bell peppers, anaheim peppers, jalepenos and all the rest are commonly called peppers in the US, but AB was thinking of the other pepper (as in salt-and-pepper, black pepper) when he asked the question.

If the contestant thought AB was asking whether mild bell peppers and hot chile peppers were related, she was correct. If she thought that bells, the peppers commonly known as chiles, and black pepper were all related, she was wrong. However, we really don't know what question she thought she was answering.

The problem is that when AB said "pepper" he wasn't entirely clear on what he was really asking. While it may be botanically incorrect to call a bell pepper a "pepper," that's the common name for it in the US. So when he simply said "pepper" it wasn't clear what he referred to. Which may have been on purpose. Maybe he hoped she would ask for a clarification of what he meant when he said "pepper" or maybe he hoped she'd just explain the whole thing.

We've got a whole lot of foods that we mis-name, if we want to be botanically correct, but I really have no problem calling things by their common names. It's nice to know the differences, but I really don't need a host explaining the difference between cassia and true cinnamon every time they add a teaspoon of that spice to a dish.

On the other hand, if it's going to be more confusing, I think things need to be explained. Like when a non-American host was talking about pumpkin, it would have been useful if he would have noted that to him, all winter squashes are pumpkins so that the US audience wouldn't have been baffled at seeing a butternut squash suddenly appear.

@chif--You're just jealous because Aunt Sandy's tablescapes are SO AMAZING--and her color coordinated kitchen (that perfectly coordinates with her wardrobe and its ever-plunging necklines)--perfection. Sheer perfection. Must now clean up the puddle of oozing sarcasm. Anywho, does anyone really watch her show for the food anyway?

@bessfour- I know what you mean about her "L" sounds. She also says "lil" instead of "little".

@Keronsina, I actually was just reading Ruhlman's Elements of Cooking and this came up -- apparently caramelization DOES only refer to something with sugar, anything else (protein etc) that browns is due to the Maillard Reaction. It's used interchangeably all the time although it's not technically correct. So I think you're right. :)