You know, there are a lot of different cuisines out there … and a lot of different dishes. It’s not too surprising that some of these are going to sound a little odd to English speakers. Now, wouldn’t it be fun to put those all in a listicle?
To make all this manageable, though, I had to come up with some ground rules. In particular, I limited it to stuff I could find on Wikipedia. Basically, I just looked at articles for every national and regional cuisine I could find, keeping a special eye out for lists.
Not too surprisingly, I found a ton. In fact, I had to break them into no less than – hold on, let me count ‘em up – nine groups!
Bon appetit!
Something Just Doesn’t Sound Right
- Plov – what rice pilaf is called in Central Asia
- Snert – the Dutch version of split pea soup
- Chaunk – in Bangladesh, “a garnish made by frying mustard seed, asafoetida, and other whole spices in oil or ghee to release the flavours. Can be added to soups, curries, etc., at the end of cooking.”
- Guthuk – “a noodle soup in Tibetan cuisine. It is eaten two days before Losar, the Tibetan New Year and is a variation on Thukpa bhatuk.”
Unfortunately, Guthuk just so happens to look just like it sounds
False Cognates
- Financier – a small French cake made with almonds
- Rolex – “an egg omelette and veggies wrapped in a chapati,” popular in Uganda
- Dodo – fried plantains, in Nigeria
- Sundae – Korean blood sausage
- Pap – corn porridge, a staple of the Bantu
- Munkki – cardamom donuts, a food eaten in Finland on May Day
- Brik – the Tunisian version of bourek, a savory, stuffed pastry popular in the Balkans and throughout the Mediterranean region
- Fool – an English dessert made with stewed fruit and custard or whipped cream
- Cat’s Ear – a kind of Chinese noodle, shaped like a … cat’s ear
- Ear-hole fried cake – a fried Chinese pastry filled with bean paste and looking like … a human ear!?!?
- Walkie talkie – chicken feet, heads and giblets, served with pap (!!!) and popular in South Africa
- Bra – an Italian cheese from the village of … Bra
"Excuse me, waiter,
there's a cat's ear in my stew."
False Cognates II
- O mai – salted or sugared dry apricot, a street food in Vietnam
- Seen dat – Laotian-style barbecue
- Wet tha chin – a Burmese dish of preserved minced pork and rice
- Phat mama – stir-fried instant ramen noodles, popular in Thailand
Yo mama's so phat
Pure Poesy
- Floating island – a French dessert of meringue floating on crème anglaise
- One man thousand – fried anchovies, popular throughout West Africa
- The Four Northeastern Simmerings – pork with cellophane noodle, free range chicken with honey fungus, catfish with eggplant, and pork ribs with common bean
- Protect the country dish – a soup made for the Chinese emperor when he was fleeing from the Mongols (way back in the 13th Century)
- Angels on horseback – oysters wrapped in bacon
- Pig in a blanket – the American version of sausages wrapped in pastry, a dish actually popular throughout most of northern Europe
- Bubble and squeak – a British breakfast made up of whatever was left over from last night’s dinner, though traditionally it should include potatoes and cabbage
- Hoppin john – rice and beans with bacon or ham, popular in the southern US
- Crossing the bridge noodles – a noodle soup from China
- Buddha jumps over the wall – a version of shark’s fin soup so delicious that Chinese monks would abandon their monasteries and vows to partake of it
- Ants climbing a tree – another Chinese dish, this one made up of noodles and ground meat (which clings to the noodles, giving the dish its name)
- Toad in the hole – sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter, from the UK
Bubble and squeak
(and, quite possibly, the original "dog’s breakfast")
Back to Basics
- Water-cooked meat – a soup from the Szechuan region of China (and, despite the name, very spicy)
- Goat water – goat stew, the national dish of the Caribbean island of Montserrat
- Oil down – a stew from the Caribbean island of Grenada
- Run down – a seafood soup served throughout the Caribbean
- Naked oats noodle – a Chinese noodle dish, made from Avena nuda, a type of oat that separates easily from its hull
- Fried triangle – a stuffed dumpling, popular as a street food in Beijing
- Stir-fried starch knots – a kind of Chinese pasta, cooked with meat and veggies
“You gonna eat your knots?”
Just Plain Weird
- Beer duck – duck cooked in beer, a popular dish in the Chinese regions of Hunan and Szechuan
- Sea spider salad – a salad made from spindly marine animals (of the class Pycnogonida), popular in Croatia
- Snow fungus soup – a Chinese soup made from a white tree fungus (also known as white wood ear)
- Golden Muscle Wine – a kind of Cambodian liquor (and with a picture of a bodybuilder on the label)
- Turtle shell with smilax pudding – a jelly-like desert made from ground-up turtle shell and roots of the smilax plant, popular in China for its medicinal properties
- Jade rabbit sea cucumber – a Chinese dish that, though it does indeed involve sea cucumber, does not appear to involve either jade or rabbit
- Caterpillar fungus duck – duck stuffed with a fungus that grows out of dead caterpillars, a rare delicacy (and supposed aphrodisiac) in Tibet and the Himalayas
- Flower mushroom frog – a Chinese dish combining frog and a kind of mushroom called … flower mushrooms
- Fiery pupil immortal duck – another Chinese dish, this one combining duck and ham
- Stinking bishop – an English cheese with a strong odor
Half caterpillar, half fungus – all gross
Ew, Gross!
- Japanese fluvial sculpin – a “rather ugly fish,” but with a “very sophisticated. sweet taste” (“fluvial” simply means it lives in rivers)
- Bile up – “the cultural dish of the Kriols of Belize: a combination of boiled eggs, fish and/or pig tail, with cassava, yams, or sweet potatoes, plantains, and tomato sauce,” all “boiled” together
- Dried water buffalo skin – a kind of jerky, popular in Laos
- Wood tar – in Finland, a flavoring “made from tree sap extracted from burning wood, most commonly pine” and used in “alcohol, ice cream, sweets, chewing gum, lemonade, and meat”
- Edible dormouse – a species of mouse, Glis glis, eaten by the Romans and still popular in the Balkans
- Bat curry – a curry … made from bats, popular in Asia
- Goat/sheep's intestine filled with blood – a dish popular in Beijing. Need I say more?
- Monkey gland sauce – a sauce used on hamburgers and such, popular in South Africa (and which “does not involve monkeys in any way”)
- Pig blood curd – basically a kind of blood pudding found in Southeast Asia, also known as “blood tofu”
- Jellied moose nose – kind of like the Canadian version of head cheese
"You want some fries with that dormouse?"
Gross False Cognates
- Rag pudding – a British dish a “consisting of minced meat and onions wrapped in a suet pastry, which is then cooked in a cheesecloth”
- Skirts and kidneys – an Irish stew made from pork kidneys and skirts (trimmings from around the diaphragm)
- Botok – in Indonesia, coconut meat, mixed with meat or fish, then steamed in banana leaves
- Plazma cake – a Serbian cake made from ground-up Plazma-brand biscuits
- Pocari Sweat – a Japanese sports drink
- Krap – how you say “carp” in Montenegro
- Barfi – an Indian sweet made from milk and sugar
- Cholera – a baked Swiss tart, made of potatoes, cheese, vegetables, and fruit
Not sure which are the skirts and which are the kidneys
(though I know those white things are potatoes)
Just Slightly Off Color
- Crystal balls – in China, a type of candy as well as a dumpling
- Faggots – meatballs made from offal, popular in the UK
- Khao poon – a spicy soup made with rice and vermicelli and popular in Southeast Asia
- Pig’s organ soup – a Chinese soup made with pig offal (in particular, liver, heart, intestines, stomach, tongue, and blood cubes)
- Diks – a Moroccan drink
- Spotted dick – a British desert, made with suet and dried fruit
- Phat prik – a spicy, dry Thai curry
Not to be confused with Mr. Faggot’s Pork Brains
(in a Rich West Country Sauce)
