The Trivia I’ve Seen

The world should find a place for these homeless bits of trivial food lore. Won’t you help?

* The runcible spoon was originally a nonexistent implement. Edward Lear invented the name for his children’s poem “The Owl and the Pussycat”; “runcible” is presumed to be a form of “rounceval,” the name of a large French pea which also meant anything monstrously large. Later, various “runcible spoon” designs were marketed, usually small spoons with broad fork tines at the end.

* Biggest potato eaters in India: the Bengalis.

* “Crud” is another form of the word “curd.” In fact, it’s the original form. It just happened to survive in a nondairy context as something with a curdled texture, eventually meaning something messy or dirty.

* The European Economic Community has officially classed the carrot as a fruit.

* Traditional buffalo recipes unlikely to be revived: dried buffalo lung; buffalo blood congealed with buffalo stomach rennet into jelly; buffalo nose; buffalo intestines filled with grasses, tied off and set in the sun to ferment; raw buffalo liver sprinkled with gall bladder juice.

* A buttery sounds like a place where butter is kept, but it’s really a place where bottles are kept. The person in charge is the butler.

* “Porcupine” means spiny pig, which sounds pretty farfetched, except that porcupine connoisseurs enjoy the crackling, which is said to taste like pork crackling.