Culinary Terms that Should be Banned!

[IndyRob]

I guess I was thinking about encountering this in a more current usage.  I'm not really arguing that it's wrong - i.e. that it can't be a noun - just that it's not a good usage in the sense I was referring to, and is generally unnecessary.

 

"I love her baked goods", to me is preferable to "I love her bakes".  As I said, the latter grates on me.  But that is an opinion.

[Anna N]

4 minutes ago, IndyRob said:

But that is an opinion.

I think almost all of us have some bone to pick with the language. We all have expressions that make us shudder. Most of the time they are perfectly legitimate uses and we just have a hangup up about them. But if we were all allowed to make a preference a general rule I suspect we would be incapable of communicating anything at any time to anybody.  But I still empathize with you. 

[IndyRob]

1 minute ago, Anna N said:

I think almost all of us have some bone to pick with the language. We all have expressions that make us shudder. Most of the time they are perfectly legitimate uses and we just have a hangup up about them. But if we were all allowed to make a preference a general rule I suspect we would be incapable of communicating anything at any time to anybody.  But I still empathize with you. 

 

This is true.  In fact, I suffered this in silence while watching The Great British Bake-Off.

 

But then I came across a 9-page topic of opinions on which culinary terms should be banned.  It seemed like a good place to file my own opinion (and not without some agreement if I look back at the original post's likes).

 

But it could be a Britishism that falls hard on my American ears.

[Alex]

4 hours ago, IndyRob said:

"I love her baked goods", to me is preferable to "I love her bakes".

 

I'd worry that someone would misconstrue the latter sentence by thinking it's an inappropriate, and possibly sexist, euphemism for some body part.

[liuzhou]

I just read this word mince on a London restaurant's website and had to take a sedative.

 

"Built on a studio ethos, we are a restaurant, bar, art and performance space that moves and shifts with the seasons via its curated collective program."

 

Utter pretentious nonsense.

Edited March 5, 2023 by liuzhou
typo (log)

[Anna N]

1 hour ago, liuzhou said:

Utter pretentious nonsense.

But can you eat it?

[liuzhou]

1 minute ago, Anna N said:

But can you eat it?

 I wouldn't.

[Alex]

3 hours ago, liuzhou said:

I just read this word mince on a London restaurant's website and had to take a sedative.

 

"Built on a studio ethos, we are a restaurant, bar, art and performance space that moves and shifts with the seasons via its curated collective program."

 

Utter pretentious nonsense.

 

Indeed. But also nearly a one-sentence win in Restaurant Bullshit Bingo.

 

For those not acquainted with Bullshit Bingo (also called Buzzword Bingo, so as to not offend some bluenose or get trapped by some puritanical Internet filter), it's a way to help pass the time during an interminable, jargon-filled, sleep-inducing meeting or presentation. Here's one example. It's even better if you form a text or other IM group ahead of time with other attendees.

[rotuts]

@Alex 

 

' metric '  should be added to BB.

[Kerry Beal]

Maybe not exactly on point - but ran across this today while looking for more information on a local chocolatier who is interested in an EZtemper. This is the not the fellow I was looking for. 

 

Reminds me of the definition of conceit - a flea floating down the river with a hard on yelling 'raise the drawbridge'!

 

Kudos from France

“Until recently, there were 3 world-renowned chocolatiers, known as William Curly of London, UK; Patrick Rogers of Paris, France and Jacques Torres of New York, USA. But now there is a 4th, and he is Kevin Richards of Barrie, Canada. As a matter of fact, Kevin is “Le Grand Maître Chocolatier” — the Grand Master of All, as the City of Barrie has now found its place in this World of Art Making Chocolate Mastery with fabulous, most refined and tasty chocolate delicacies possible!”
       ~ G. Olivier, Chocolat Connoistre - France

 

 

[TdeV]

4 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

Reminds me of the definition of conceit - a flea floating down the river with a hard on yelling 'raise the drawbridge'!

 

My keyboard just barely escaped the spurt!

[heidih]

1 hour ago, TdeV said:

 

My keyboard just barely escaped the spurt!

I know! I've only heard the snail on the tortoises back yelling "weeee! - look at me!" The flea is much better.

[liuzhou]

I was just reading a menu online and came across this idiotic two or three (hard to tell) word phrase that defies anything resembling sense.

 

"wildfarmed bread"

 

In my universe, if it's wild, it isn't farmed and vice versa. And how the hell do you farm bread? Or what is wild bread?

 

Moronic, semi-literate, pretentious drivel.

AngloThai-Chefs-Selection.pdf

Edited January 11 by liuzhou (log)

[Tropicalsenior]

19 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

Moronic, semi-literate, pretentious drivel.

Just happened to find this on Google. It's a real thing and it is so good and so good for you.

Hey, you can't blame this on us Yankees. That is a website from the UK. They're charging good pounds for this stuff.

Edited January 11 by Tropicalsenior (log)

[liuzhou]

6 hours ago, Tropicalsenior said:

Just happened to find this on Google. It's a real thing and it is so good and so good for you.

Hey, you can't blame this on us Yankees. That is a website from the UK. They're charging good pounds for this stuff.

 

Yes, I know it's a brand name, but still idiotic. (And this place pretends to be a fine dining place, but serves supermarket bread?)

 

I didn't try to blame this on anyone, Yankee or otherwise. The restaurant is in London.

 

 

Edited January 11 by liuzhou (log)

[Tropicalsenior]

13 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

didn't try to blame on anyone, Yankee or otherwise. The restaurant is in London

I was just kidding, of course, because I have to admit we (the Yankees) are coming up with more and more stupid phrases and fads. I guess it's the internet. One influencer says something, five more think it's cute and within 2 days it's gone around the globe twice.

One thing I'm seeing a lot right now are recipes with cowboy or cowgirl in the title . As long as they can stick hot sauce or a jalapeno pepper in it, it's Cowboy dip or Cowboy scrambled eggs or Cowgirl casserole. My father was a genuine cowboy and if you had tried to feed him any of that cowboy food you would have found a cow horn impaled in places you didn't even want to think about.

Edited January 11 by Tropicalsenior (log)

[gfweb]

On 3/5/2023 at 1:24 PM, Kerry Beal said:

Maybe not exactly on point - but ran across this today while looking for more information on a local chocolatier who is interested in an EZtemper. This is the not the fellow I was looking for. 

 

Reminds me of the definition of conceit - a flea floating down the river with a hard on yelling 'raise the drawbridge'!

 

Kudos from France

“Until recently, there were 3 world-renowned chocolatiers, known as William Curly of London, UK; Patrick Rogers of Paris, France and Jacques Torres of New York, USA. But now there is a 4th, and he is Kevin Richards of Barrie, Canada. As a matter of fact, Kevin is “Le Grand Maître Chocolatier” — the Grand Master of All, as the City of Barrie has now found its place in this World of Art Making Chocolate Mastery with fabulous, most refined and tasty chocolate delicacies possible!”
       ~ G. Olivier, Chocolat Connoistre - France

 

 

 

"Hard on" needs a hyphen

 

[Tropicalsenior]

I think they should ban any recipe that has dump in the title. All of these recipes rely heavily on mixes and canned food. One site that sends me recipes has a recipe for  7 Can Dump Chili. You open seven different cans of stuff and dump it in the slow cooker. Cook for 8 hours and you have chili. Not only do you fill up the garbage container with cans, I strongly suspect that the final product should be consigned to the same receptacle.

[Shel_B]

On 11/22/2020 at 11:36 PM, JoNorvelleWalker said:

Fridge, veggies.

 

I like and use those terms, and have been using them since I was old enough to talk. Fridge was a condensation of Frigidaire, one of the, if not the, earliest, and arguably, most popular refrigerators. It entered production before 1920, IIRC. Edited to add: The first Frigidaires used blocks of ice for cooling, and was little more than an insulated box.  Electricity wasn't used to run a compressor until the mid-1920s. Grandpa Jack and Grandma Bessie didn't get an electric refrigerator until around 1946. In the FWIW Dep't, I lived with my grandparents until I was almost two years old, and had first-hand experience with these old "cold boxes" and the ice man.

 

Grandpa Jack owned a few small produce markets and he, as well as some others that I knew in the business, used the term veggies, generally when unloading the trucks and moving the produce into storage. This was not common in the industry but in NYC at the time, a few produce people used the term often.  Julie Kravitz, the produce buyer for the supermarket chain I worked for, would use veggies, vegetables, and produce almost randomly and certainly interchangeably.

Edited January 14 by Shel_B
punctuation (log)

[Smithy]

Time to bump this up again, and let everyone vent afresh (and perhaps with new terms). My news feed threw me this good-looking idea for a salmon version of club salad from Half-Baked Harvest. My teeth are still on edge from what feels like a sugar high. The idea looks like a good one, and I own one of HBH's cookbooks...but why must the writers use "yummy" so often? Why must they chirp on with things like this:

Quote

It’s become a new favorite, and I already know I’ll be making it on repeat all summer long.

 

and/or "it's so easy!" and "I have this on repeat every week!" The Kitchn is just as bad. I've pretty much stopped reading them because Every. Single. Title. (well, maybe every other title) has a formula: dishname and parenthetical augmentation:

"___dishname___ (It's so good I'll be doing it again and again!)"

"___dishname___ (It's so easy we'll make it every week!)"

or some such variant. I swear their headlines are written by algorithm.

 

Is "overused trope" a redundant phrase?

[gfweb]

11 minutes ago, Smithy said:

Time to bump this up again, and let everyone vent afresh (and perhaps with new terms). My news feed threw me this good-looking idea for a salmon version of club salad from Half-Baked Harvest. My teeth are still on edge from what feels like a sugar high. The idea looks like a good one, and I own one of HBH's cookbooks...but why must the writers use "yummy" so often? Why must they chirp on with things like this:

 

and/or "it's so easy!" and "I have this on repeat every week!" The Kitchn is just as bad. I've pretty much stopped reading them because Every. Single. Title. (well, maybe every other title) has a formula: dishname and parenthetical augmentation:

"___dishname___ (It's so good I'll be doing it again and again!)"

"___dishname___ (It's so easy we'll make it every week!)"

or some such variant. I swear their headlines are written by algorithm.

 

Is "overused trope" a redundant phrase?

 

Uggh.  Just brainless writing.  Yummy, amazing etc  etc,  Like  the gushing prose on a google review.

[chromedome]

10 minutes ago, Smithy said:

Time to bump this up again, and let everyone vent afresh (and perhaps with new terms). My news feed threw me this good-looking idea for a salmon version of club salad from Half-Baked Harvest. My teeth are still on edge from what feels like a sugar high. The idea looks like a good one, and I own one of HBH's cookbooks...but why must the writers use "yummy" so often? Why must they chirp on with things like this:

 

and/or "it's so easy!" and "I have this on repeat every week!" The Kitchn is just as bad. I've pretty much stopped reading them because Every. Single. Title. (well, maybe every other title) has a formula: dishname and parenthetical augmentation:

"___dishname___ (It's so good I'll be doing it again and again!)"

"___dishname___ (It's so easy we'll make it every week!)"

or some such variant. I swear their headlines are written by algorithm.

 

Is "overused trope" a redundant phrase?

As someone who writes at times for sites like these (not those specific ones) I can assure you that many of these repetitive phrases are used and reused, especially in titles, because they perform strongly in searches. Some companies have their own internal algorithms, perform A/B testing and suchlike, while others rely on tools like Google Trends (or non-Google competitors) to pit keywords and phrases against each other and decide which will perform best. 

Now everybody's trying to find ways to "disrupt" search (speaking of overused tropes) using AI (ditto), which may perhaps dent Google's dominance (don't bet on it) but in the short term will instead disrupt the entire online economy that's built around attracting eyeballs to sites. If I had any reason to expect that the outcome might be better search results for everyday users, instead of ever more-focused bubbles of attention management/manipulation, I'd be more open to it despite the short-term impact on my own industry. As it is, even leaving out issues like AI's wild inaccuracies and resource-intensiveness, I don't anticipate it being anything more than a new level of what writer Cory Doctorow calls "enshittification." 

[Smithy]

@chromedome, thanks for that. I'll admit that, although I could get the broad outlines of what you wrote, I went for more specific information (rather than derail this topic) to an online search for some of your terms. Which led to an AI answer....which, I suppose, illustrates some of your points! 😆 

[Shel_B]

On 11/23/2020 at 12:01 AM, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

Fridge, really a hundred years?  When I was growing up the appliance was called the ice box.

Fridge?  I've always understood that to have started as a shortened way of saying Frigidaire, which for many years was almost ubiquitous as the refrigerator of choice. It was invented, or first produced, around 1916, and then a few short years later was purchased and marketed by General Motors.

 

Growing up, most families I knew owned a Frigidaire, although we had a Crosley Shelvador, which I believe was the first refrigerator with shelves in the door. Nonetheless, we called it a fridge just as Frigidaire owners called their refrigerators a fridge.

 

Think of Jeep, which was a specific brand of vehicle which later became synonymous with a type of vehicle. Kleenex was another such item. Old names are sometimes slow to die. They become part of the lexicon. How many people still call aluminum foil tin foil, which fell out of favor after WWII?

 

That said, many folks called their refrigerator an ice box because, before (and during) the transition to electric powered refrigerators, one used an insulated box that was cooled with big blocks of ice. My mom's parents used such a device until almost 1949, long after the advent of the more modern refrigerator, and after we moved into our home and purchased the Crosley. I still know some folks who call their "fridge" an ice box.

Edited Tuesday at 03:46 PM by Shel_B (log)

[AlaMoi]

a recent 'article' suggested, and given the state of today's smart-phone-thumbs crowd,,,,the primary source of "news" is social media.

 

social media used to be semi-dominated by trolls.

today, social media is totally dominated by AI-bots.

 

methinks the same is happening on many 'cooking oriented' sites - """authors""" are using AI to generate content.

this morning, on a cooking forum style site, there is a new post, first post by new user, that is utterly swarmy AI garbage.

now, the site owner (of multiple declining sites....) has no objections to AI bots posting - they're in it for the money and no other reason.

 

forum type sites are dying - following a forum on a 3" cell phone screen is much more painful than following a 128 character string of tweets . . .