The Dishes That Sound Like One Thing & Show Up as Something Else Entirely
Food names aren't always interested in helping you out. Some sound healthier than they are, some suggest ingredients that are nowhere to be found, and others make you picture one kind of dish only to have something completely different hit the table. Here are 20 foods with the most bafflingly inappropriate names.
1. Sweetbreads
Sweetbreads sound like a pastry you would find in a bakery case next to cinnamon rolls and fruit tarts. Instead, they're organ meat, usually the thymus or pancreas of an animal, which is a fairly dramatic turn from what the name suggests.
Baby soft at English Wikipedia on Wikimedia
2. Head Cheese
There is no good way to hear “head cheese” and think you're about to get a normal dairy product. In reality, it's a meat jelly or terrine made from parts of an animal’s head, and cheese is not the point at all. The title manages to be misleading in more than one direction, which is almost impressive.
3. Rocky Mountain Oysters
If you ordered these expecting seafood, you would have a memorable evening for all the wrong reasons. Rocky Mountain oysters are actually fried bull testicles, which is not information the name goes out of its way to share. In hindsight, it doesn't make much sense to find oysters in the mountains anyway.
4. Welsh Rabbit
This name gives you every reason to expect rabbit, or at the very least something hopping-adjacent. What you get is melted cheese on toast, which is much less dramatic but also wildly unrelated to the title. The alternate name, Welsh rarebit, makes a little more sense, though not enough to stop confusion entirely.
5. Mincemeat Pie
A lot of people hear “mincemeat” and assume there will be actual minced meat involved, which is a completely fair assumption. Modern mincemeat is usually a mixture of chopped dried fruit, spices, sugar, and sometimes suet, which gives it a much sweeter personality than the name suggests. It sounds hearty and savory, then arrives acting like dessert.
6. Ladyfingers
Ladyfingers sound like either a flower, a cookie, or something that shouldn't have been named by a committee. They are indeed a type of cookie, but the name is so oddly specific that it still catches people off guard. If you had no context at all, you would never land on “delicate sponge biscuit” as your first guess.
7. Spotted Dick
This famously unfortunate British dessert name doesn't do itself any favors. It's a steamed pudding with dried fruit, and the “spotted” part refers to the currants or raisins throughout it. The dish itself is much less shocking than the words you have to say out loud to order it.
8. Blood Orange
Blood orange sounds far more intense than the fruit actually is. It's just an ordinary orange with crimson-colored flesh, not some gothic citrus experiment that escaped from a castle kitchen.
9. Egg Cream
You would think a drink called an egg cream would contain egg, cream, or ideally both. Instead, the classic version is made with milk, seltzer, and chocolate syrup, which is a charming but confusing setup. It's one of those names that feels like it's based on a private joke nobody explained to the rest of us.
10. Bombay Duck
This is neither duck nor even remotely poultry-shaped. Bombay duck is actually a type of fish, usually dried, and the name has been confusing dinner guests for a very long time. Anyone expecting roast bird is going to have a very different dining experience than planned.
11. Prairie Oysters
Once again, the word “oysters” is doing a lot of misleading work. Prairie oysters are not shellfish at all, but a dish involving raw egg and, in some versions, animal testicles or strongly seasoned ingredients meant to revive the exhausted or hungover.
12. Mock Turtle Soup
The word “mock” does at least try to warn you, but the name still raises more questions than it answers. Traditionally, mock turtle soup was made to imitate green turtle soup using calf’s head or other less exotic ingredients. It sounds whimsical, yet the backstory is much stranger than you might expect.
Wilfried Wittkowsky on Wikimedia
13. Jerusalem Artichoke
This vegetable is not from Jerusalem, and it's not an artichoke either. It's actually a tuber related to the sunflower. You can see why first-time shoppers often pause in front of the produce bin, looking mildly betrayed.
14. Sweetmeats
Sweetmeats sound like they should be some kind of glazed meat dish, which is a very unhelpful first impression. In reality, the term traditionally refers to candies or sweet treats, so the name points you in exactly the wrong direction. The name originates in the 15th century, when "meat" just meant food.
15. French Toast
French toast is beloved, simple, and not especially interested in providing its passport. The dish may have French associations in the minds of many diners, but versions of bread soaked in egg and fried have existed in many places for centuries. It's not exactly fraudulent, but it does make the dish sound much more geographically settled than it really is.
16. Hamburger
A hamburger sounds as though ham should be involved somewhere in the process. Instead, it's made with beef, and the name comes from Hamburg, Germany, rather than from the pork product most people first think of. It's such a normal word now that people forget how little sense it makes.
David Foodphototasty on Unsplash
17. Scotch Egg
This name sounds like it might be a way of preparing eggs with whisky, oats, or something unmistakably Scottish.
What you actually get is a boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat, breaded, and fried or baked. It is delicious, but the title doesn't exactly guide you there in a straight line.
18. Shoofly Pie
Shoofly pie sounds like a joke, a trap, or something that shouldn't be edible. It's actually a molasses pie that likely gets its name from a popular 19th-century brand of molasses, which is much more normal than the name makes it sound. If you weren't familiar with it and saw it on a menu with no context, you would probably have several questions.
19. Coffee Cake
A lot of people assume coffee cake contains coffee because, well, why would it not? In many cases, it's simply a cake meant to be eaten with coffee, not flavored by it. That's a small distinction, but it's big enough to disappoint anyone hoping for a bold mocha situation.
20. Boston Cream Pie
This dessert isn't really a pie in the way most people use the word. It's actually a sponge cake filled with cream or custard and topped with chocolate, which sounds wonderful but also very much like a cake pretending to be something else. By the time you finish a slice, you probably don't mind, though the name is still lying to your face.
KEEP ON READING
