Food Name Redundancies
Although I do realize that many not true redundancies, because they are used to distinguish the exact type of a thing, they still crack me up. What type of fish? Tuna fish! A few others that come to mind…
• Cheese quesadilla. It's just a quesadilla, a little quesada. Queso=cheese, –ada=–ful, and –illa=small. Obviously it's meant to distinguish a plain (or real) quesadilla (tortilla filled with cheese) from the now ubiquitous gringo-ized versions (e.g., chicken and bean quesadilla), but seeing it on a menu always makes me cringe.
• Shortbread cookies. I know it’s meant to describe the exact type of cookie, but shortbread is shortbread is shortbread. The word cookie isn’t even necessary, okay?
• Chai tea. Chai means tea. I know that many Americans think chai is a specific spiced tea drink (actually masala chai) but do the coffee houses have to perpetuate this error by listing chai tea latte (tea tea milk) on their menu boards?
• With au jus. Since au jus means with juice or in its juices, the word “with” is not needed. I know in the US we actually use the entire term “au jus” as a noun, as in, “Please put the au jus on the side”, but still…
• Real horseradish. Okay. It’s not actually a redundancy. But please. Is there fake horseradish out there? Without fail, when I request plain or pure horseradish (i.e., not creamed), the server responds, “So you want the ‘real’ horseradish, right?” Oh jeez.
Feel free to list the others I missed…
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46 Comments:
OK, in keeping with your last one LoCo... anytime a pizza place asks if you want parmesan cheese and hand you a shaker of what has the apperance and smell of hoof shavings.... don't ask how I know what hoof shavings smell like.
Pavlov at 5:17PM on 10/20/08
Unsalted butter. Kinda like unsalted cream, only with a tougher consistency.
LunaPierCook at 5:20PM on 10/20/08
@LoCo ~ I love this topic, and hope others can contribute. I'm drawing a blank. The only thing that comes to mind is a restaurant in a movie, not a food. Remember "The La Trattoria" in Mickey Blue Eyes? Translates as The The Trattoria. They knew and didn't care. .George Carlin would have picked up on some redundancies, I'll bet.
PerkyMac at 5:24PM on 10/20/08
I could never figure out "chicken leg quarters" since chickens only have two legs, not four.
Prosciutto ham. Prosciutto is Italian for ham, so ... ham ham?
LunaPierCook at 5:31PM on 10/20/08
The quaters describe how many pieces the whole chicken has been cut into, and them which of the quarters you're getting - leg quarters or breast quarters.
I guess I'm drawing a blank too, but the one none food one that always bothers me is "ink pen". Have you ever seen a pen that doesn't write in ink?
eatingoutwest at 5:38PM on 10/20/08
ATM machine and PIN number.
I can't think of anything foodly either, though.
nightowl at 5:46PM on 10/20/08
Pizza pie!
CookiePie at 5:49PM on 10/20/08
Not a redundancy, but cringe-worthy nonetheless: the word balsamic is an adjective, however it's used as a noun more and more often, and I honestly can't understand why.
brooke29 at 5:50PM on 10/20/08
I always just thought "balsamic" was being used as shorthand for balsamic vinegar.
nightowl at 5:53PM on 10/20/08
@eatingoutwest, I've never seen "breast quarters" anywhere ... or "wing quarters" for that matter.
Some people believe "deer venison", "elk venison", etc. are redundancies, or even that venison simply means "deer meat". Venison can actually refer to any hunted meat.
LunaPierCook at 6:01PM on 10/20/08
Chicken fried chicken.
beth1 at 6:01PM on 10/20/08
frozen french fries made with 'real potatoes' yikes! what are those others made with?
NanaJoie at 6:34PM on 10/20/08
@beth1, there's a restaurant near here that serves both chicken-fried steak and chicken-fried chicken, which I though was pretty weird. I figured that chicken-fried chicken was just fried chicken, but I was wrong. The meat is flattened so it's the size and shape of the meat you'd get in a chicken-fried steak, and and cooked and served the same as the steak would be. So in a convoluted way, it make sense.
Then again, I'm usually having a drink with dinner when I'm there, so that could be helping it to make sense.
As far as other redundancies, there's shrimp scampi that a lot of people mention. That doesn't bother me so much, though, because the meaning has changed so that it refers to a particular dish.
Chile pepper, maybe?
I'll have to think more about this.
dbcurrie at 6:35PM on 10/20/08
Aha. How about spaghetti noodles or spaghetti pasta? Or (gasp) pasta noodles? Can't say I've seen it printed in a menu, but I know people who say these sorts of things.
dbcurrie at 6:37PM on 10/20/08
Many people consider "spaghetti" to be a dish, so spaghetti noodles would be a way of differentiating the dish from one component of itself. Maybe?
nightowl at 6:42PM on 10/20/08
Ugh, I *hate* when people say ramen noodles or udon noodles. Do people really say spaghetti noodles or linguine noodles? Oh, wait. *roll eyes*
Wagyu beef. You can't have wagyu pork or wagyu chicken because "gyu" means cattle/cow.
Shiitake mushrooms. "Take" is mushroom. Worse yet, moronic restaurants who spell it wrong on their menu and pronounce it "shit-aki."
I can't think of more at this time (5 minutes 'til raid time). My husband and I mutter about them when we run into them. It was a favorite past time with my father when I was a child. We used to poke fun at people, but our ridicule was mostly pointed at restaurant faux pas.
Cassaendra at 7:11PM on 10/20/08
Oh yeah, and soba noodles.
Cassaendra at 7:39PM on 10/20/08
@nana--ever seen those fries that are just too perfect, the shape too consistent?
beth1 at 7:41PM on 10/20/08
Okay, I can cut some slack when people don't speak/understand the original language from which a name is derived. For example, I had no idea that "take" translated as mushroom, so I've probably said "shiitake mushroom" at least once in my life. But I'm just as likely to have said, "I'll have some shiitakes and some criminis and some....whatever, thinking that I'm dropping the noun.
But...but...but when it's bleedingly obvious what the translation is, it's a little harder. Like commercials that were running an Italian restaurant. The restaurant was named "Vinnie's Ristorante" or something else like that. And the *&%#! commercials kept calling it Vinnie's Ristorante Restaurant.
I wanted to stuff spaghetti noodle pasta in my ears every time I heard that. :-)
dbcurrie at 7:52PM on 10/20/08
@beth... OMG. Yes, the chicken-fried chicken gets me every time. WTH is THAT all about???
@cass... what about sushi rice??? Lordy, lordy...
@cookie... Pizza pie reminds me of pita bread. I seem to recall being told that pita means bread, and is therefore redundant, but I couldn't swear to it.
Again, a lot of these things are for clarification. Don't use penne noodles, don't use fettucine noodles, use spaghetti noodles (clarification as to the shape). But still.
Too funny.
LoCo at 8:31PM on 10/20/08
Kinda food related - My great aunt's name was Katherine, but she drank tea all the time so as kids, we dubbed her Aunt Tia. Didn't know back then that we were calling her aunt aunt.
Josdean at 9:10PM on 10/20/08
@LPC - Leg quarters - two chicken legs, each divided into thigh and drumstick = four pieces. "Quarters" is a weird way to put it, but at least it really describes something that's in four pieces.
But I don't get what's wrong with "unsalted butter"?
My only issue with being such a stickler about these things - someone might not know what "soba" or "udon" are - not everyone is as into food as we all are - so using "noodles" is explanatory.
However, I canNOT abide "ATM machine" and infuriatingly correct everyone I know who says it. Drives me batty.
producestories at 10:36PM on 10/20/08
Here people talk about their SIN number (Social Insurance Number number)
PeanutButter at 11:31PM on 10/20/08
Only vaguely food related, but I know someone whose pet peeve is when people say "hot water heater."
dbcurrie at 12:17AM on 10/21/08
Here's another one - ahi tuna.
brooke29 at 1:47AM on 10/21/08
Gazpacho soup.
But I think for foreign food words it really depends on whether the audience shares the same food vocabulary..
I don't get what's wrong with sushi rice though - doesn't it refer specifically to the rice portion (and not the neta) of sushi, or generally to boiled rice mixed with vinegar used for making sushi?
economyrice at 5:19AM on 10/21/08
@producestories, to me unsalted butter ranks up there with unsweetened tea and unbleached flour for ridiculousness. Sweetened tea and salted butter make sense, but to specify what isn't an ingredient? Seems as sensible as labeling a dessert as, "unpeppered angel food cake".
LunaPierCook at 6:38AM on 10/21/08
@LPC down in Alabama you HAVE to specify UNsweet tea if you are out somewhere. Otherwise you will get something with the consistency of karo syrup and sweet enough to send most nondiabetics into a coma.
I think we need to cut people a little slack if the word is in a language other than the speakers own, not everyone has had the exposure to other cultures, languages etc that others have had. to me risotto rice sounds ridiculous, to someone else its clarifying what they want. I dont see the big deal, just smile to yourself and keep going.
huneybumper at 8:54AM on 10/21/08
@cookie and LoCo - "pizza pie" bothers me, too, but it shouldn't - pizza doesn't literally translate as "pie", there really isn't a word for pie in Italian because Italians mostly don't eat what we'd traditionally think of as pies. So "pizza" refers directly to what we think of as pizza...I guess the CLOSEST thing to pie, but not exactly.
I keep seeing this commercial for an Italian restaurant (sure sign of a winner) that advertises a "melanzana eggplant appetizer" GAH!!! Makes me want to throw the clicker at my TV.
embolini9 at 10:26AM on 10/21/08
@luna, the unbleached flour came into being (I think) because the bleached flour used to be the default flour you'd find in the store. When unbleached arrived, they needed to promote it, and differentiate it from the default bleached flour. I don't think it's any more insane than products that say something like "contains no MSG" if it's a product where you might expect to find MSG. Part of that is marketing, but it also makes it easier for the shopper.
If I picked up a pound of something that said "Butter" on the label, I'd be standing there wondering if it was salted or not. I'd have to read the fine print on the label.
Same with flour. If the bag simply said "flour" I'd probably guess that it was unbleached all purpose, but I wouldn't be sure. I'd probably buy another brand that was clearly labeled.
As far as risotto rice or sushi rice, I'm not sure why that's such a terrible problem. If I sent DH to the store for sushi rice, but I told him to get sushi, he'd pick up a package of pre-made sushi, I'm sure. If I told him to get rice, he's be in the rice aisle for the rest of his life trying to figure out which rice I wanted. Or he'd buy one of each.
Same with risotto rice. If I sent him for risotto, he's be looking for prepared risotto. I suppose for both correct usage and clarity, I could tell him to go buy rice for risotto and rice for sushi, but the next question would be "what kind of rice do you use for sushi?" and I'd say, "Look for the one labeled 'sushi rice.'" unless there was a particular brand that I knew the store carried.
Or, I might tell him to look for arborio, or short grain, or sweet rice, or any of the multitude of other rice label variations I'm looking for that particular day.
Of course, these sorts of conversations are the reason I seldom send DH to the store.
dbcurrie at 12:35PM on 10/21/08
My brother and I were on a road trip and we saw the following sign on a gas station's ice machine:
"Ice-cold Ice"
GoldenEel at 12:54PM on 10/21/08
@GoldenEel....perfect! I hate lukewarm ice ;)
hammondcheese at 1:55PM on 10/21/08
Turkey Club Sandwich
If it is a turkey club - we know it's a sandwich...
Unless it is a club to wack a turkey with...
bodaciousgirl at 2:38PM on 10/21/08
Water Ice!
Redundant and yummy.
lawofmurphy at 2:53PM on 10/21/08
Haha love this topic. I used to work for a company called CPI International. The CPI stood for Clear Plastics International....It bothered me so much until finally they changed it to CPI Daylighting.
Back to food though...I'm drawing a blank too. Love the ATM machine and PIN number referenced earlier.
Hillary
Chew On That
Chew on That at 2:55PM on 10/21/08
Oh! Also not food related, but I've heard people say indignantly, "For your FYI...."
*shakes head*
nightowl at 3:23PM on 10/21/08
I just read a comment on another blog praising a restaurant's "stuffed ravioli."
I generally prefer mine unstuffed, but it is so hard to find these days.
Kerosena at 3:59PM on 10/21/08
@huneybumper, the sweet/unsweet tea debacle is an issue to those north of the Mason-Dixon line when they journey south. Also those who live south that go north. In Florida, though, if you ask for tea, it is generally unsweetened.
Being from Georgia, I can't tell you the shock I had upon ordering tea at the Waldorf when I was in NY. It came hot, unsweetened, and in a cup with a saucer. What I wanted was cold, sweet, and in a glass. Live and learn.
"When you tell somebody something, it depends on what part of the country you're standing in as to just how dumb you are."
DCraver at 4:03PM on 10/21/08
I have been trying to think of a least one thing to add to this impressive list. I feel like a complete failure..........
izatryt at 4:03PM on 10/21/08
Shrimp scampi. You're basically just saying "shrimp shrimp!"
nyclocavore at 9:02PM on 10/21/08
@bodaciousgirl--I was thinking of a place where a turkey might go to get their groove on?
buffy at 9:07PM on 10/21/08
On the pie thing...
I go to school in Central PA, and since there is a serious lack of decent pizza around here...I was so homesick for it one day. I walked into a "NY Style" pizzeria and asked for a large pie. The response?
"We don't serve pie here."
*headdesk*
I HATE BALSAMIC AS A NOUN. Ughhhh.
Also, vinegar & olive oil vinaigrette. Doesn't the term vinaigrette IMPLY o & v?
Also...when silly Rachel Ray says "EVOO, extra virgin olive oil" Why have the acronym?????
Not quite a redundancy...but I was in Starbucks this morning...the girl in front of me ordered a venti light caramel frappuccino (less sugar/calories) with whipped cream and extra caramel sauce. Uhhhh....right.
sweethunibabi at 9:30PM on 10/21/08
@sweethunibabi - thank you! I'm so pleased to know it's not just me:-) Every time I hear someone say "...add some balsamic to it" or something like that, I yell in frustration, "Balsamic WHAT????"
brooke29 at 9:45PM on 10/21/08
I hate when restaurants say prime rib (or whatever) "comes in it's own au jus sauce"...what the hell is that??? It's the ultimate redundancy.
KateRuby at 11:50PM on 10/21/08
As I read through, a few thoughts:
Chicken Fried is a technique that can be applied to a handful of things...its most often a tenderized piece of steak, coated in seasoned flour and pan fried. It can be done with chicken resulting in "Chicken Fried Chicken" with no redundancy.
A chicken leg quarter is called such because if you separate the chicken into 4 pieces it is easiest and most practical to do so into leg quarters and breast quarters. The leg and thigh (dark meat) make up the leg quarters. The breast and wing (white meat) make up the breast quarter. The backbone is usually removed and not counted, so you end up with 4 quarters. The chicken leg quarters are packaged as such because the breasts are pretty easy to sell as are the wings....legs and thighs pose a bit more trouble to unload for grocers or butchers (although not in this house where its pretty much all we eat).
Scampi is a different thing, I think, as the term has come to mean the style of preparation and so you might find "chicken scampi" or "scallop scampi."
My personal favorite redundancy is "Mesclun Mix" or "Mesclun Salad Mix."
ccbweb at 12:31AM on 10/22/08
Kabocha squash. "Kabocha" = squash inJapanese. Squash Squash.
jacquelinec at 5:48AM on 10/22/08