Category Archives: food and drink

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Holiday Food Words: Dundee Cake, Not Just Any Fruitcake

dundeecake

Yesterday we kicked off a mini-series on some of our favorite holiday food words. While we started with the well-known clementine, today we’re examining a lesser known edible tradition, at least to those of us on this side of the Atlantic: the Scottish Dundee cake.

The Dundee cake, a rich cake made with raisins, currants, sultanas, and sliced almonds, is named for Dundee, Scotland, its place of origin. The earliest citation the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has for Dundee cake is 1892 although the BBC says an early version of the recipe can be traced back “a kitchen in Dundee in the 1700s.” It wasn’t until the mid-19th century that the cake began to be mass produced, namely by the company, James Keiller & Son.

Prior to the Dundee cake, James Keiller & Son was famous for its Keiller’s marmalade, named for its supposed creator, Janet Keiller, James’s wife. Legend says that James bought a large shipment of oranges, which after being held up became “less fresh.” Rather than let the oranges go to waste, enterprising Janet turned them into marmalade. (The word marmalade, by the way, is French in origin and ultimately comes from the Greek melimēlon, “honey apple.”)

But the real story, as real stories often are, is less interesting: the Keillers simply “adapted an existing recipe [for marmalade] for manufacture, by adding the characteristic rind suspended in the preserve.”

dundeemarmalade

Keiller’s marmalade is also known as Dundee marmalade, which the company trademarked in 1880, according to the OED.

As for the Dundee cake, Scotland recently launched an official bid to obtain European protected status for the hearty sweet. Food and drink under such a status are protected from “the unfair competition and misleading of consumers by non-genuine products, which may be of inferior quality or of different flavour.” In other words, products that have originated from a particular region — such as Gorgonzola cheese or Champagne  — “can only be labelled as such” if they actually come from that region.

A Scottish baker said that Dundee cake “has become so far removed from its roots that it has almost become a catch all term for any fruit cake with peel and almonds in it.”

Other Scottish foods that already have protected status are the Scotch Beef brand and Stornoway black pudding, which has been called “the best sausage made in the UK.”

[Photo via Flickr, “Dundee cake (icing),” CC BY 2.0 by Lucy Downey]
[Photo via Flickr, “Marmalade Jar,” CC BY 2.0 by Smabs Sputzer]

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Holiday Food Words: The Darling ‘Clementine’

clementines

What’s better than holiday treats? How about the origins of some of those treats, linguistic and otherwise? That’s what we’ll be taking a look at this week in this mini-series on holiday food words. First up, the clementine.

Along with all those chocolates, cookies, and giant cans of gourmet popcorn, you may also receive a box of juicy clementines. The clementine — also known as the Christmas orange since the breed peaks during the winter season — is a cross between a tangerine and an orange. It began as an “accidental hybrid,” says Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

The word seems to have originated in French around 1902 and might be named for Father Clement Rodier, a French missionary who is said to have discovered the breed “in the garden of his orphanage in Misserghin, near Oran, Algeria.”

The OED’s earliest citation in English is from 1926 — “The Clementine orange (a cross between tangerine and sour orange) is very severely affected [by citrus rust]” — although the Online Etymology Dictionary says the fruit might have been introduced into the U.S. as early as 1909.

Clementine is also an adjective that refers  to “various popes who took the name Clement.” This is much older, originating around 1705. The name Clement comes from clement meaning mild in temper or weather, which in turn comes from the Latin clementem, “mild, placid, gentle.” Clemency is “a disposition to show mercy, especially toward an offender or enemy.”

The female name Clementine pre-dates the orange variety, although by how long we couldn’t find. A famous Clementine — Princess Marie-Clementine Bagration — was born in 1810 while the song, Oh My Darling, Clementine, is from about 1884.

Now how about what a clementine actually is? Like we said, the OED and other sources say it’s a cross between a tangerine and an orange. However, others describe it as a cross between a mandarin and an orange, and still others call it an “often seedless mandarin orange.”

A tangerine (named for Tangier, Morocco, its place of origin) seems to be either a kind of mandarin orange or closely related. Thus, using tangerine and mandarin interchangeably appears to be acceptable.

And while we’re at it, where does the name mandarin come from? The Online Etymology Dictionary says it’s after the color of the robes worn by mandarins, or imperial Chinese officials. However, the OED describes the mandarin as “the better kind of Chinese orange” (although better than what, it doesn’t say) and suggests that mandarin here “carries connotations of choiceness.”

The word mandarin, by the way, is Portuguese in origin and ultimately comes from the Sanskrit mantrī, mantrin-, “counselor.”

[Photo via Flickr: “Clementines,” CC BY 2.0 by Paul Asman and Jill Lenoble]

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Favorite Food Words: Celebrating Julia Child’s 100th Birthday

Today marks what would have been the 100th birthday of Julia Child, the former OSS worker turned chef, writer, and television personality who introduced the American public to French cuisine. We’re celebrating Child with some of our favorite eating words, from French terms, to cuisines, to types of eaters. Bon appetit!

bonne bouche

“The Old Vic keep their bonne bouche to the last. Vol-au-vent, anchovy toast, devils on horseback? (These culinary similes naturally attach themselves to a play which has such a lot of eating in it; have the psycho-analysts got on to that?)”

Christopher Small, “Wilde Masterpiece Was Clear and Crisp,” The Glasgow Herald, October 31, 1960

A bonne bouche is “a choice mouthful of food; a dainty morsel: said especially of something very excellent reserved to the end of a repast.” Translated from the French as “good mouth,” bonne bouche is also used figuratively to mean a delightful ending.

In contrast, an amuse-bouche, a type of hors d’oeuvre, comes at the beginning of the meal and differs from appetizers in that it is “not ordered from a menu by patrons, but, when served, [is] done so for free and according to the chef’s selection alone.”

cuisine minceur

“It’s true, Michel Guerard says. He did indeed invent cuisine minceur to win the lovely Christine. . . . ‘Vous savez, Michel, if you would lose some weight, you’d look great,’ [Christine] said.”

“‘Minceur’ chef shifts to chocolates,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 23, 1982

Cuisine minceur is “a low-calorie style of French cooking,” and translates as “cooking thinness.” Other types of French cuisines include haute cuisine, “elaborate or skillfully prepared food” (where haute means “high or elegant” and also give us haute couture); cuisine classique; and nouvelle cuisine, “a contemporary school of French cooking that seeks to bring out the natural flavors of foods and substitutes light, low-calorie sauces and stocks for the traditional heavy butter-based and cream-based preparations.”

epicure

“No; the epicure is the lady’s humble servant, the Prince d’Athis, a man of cultivated palate and fastidious appetite, spoilt by club cooking and not to be satisfied by silver plate or the sight of fine liveries and irreproachable white calves.”

Alphonse Daudet, The Immortal

An epicure is “one given up to sensual enjoyment, and especially to the pleasures of eating and drinking.” The word originally meant “follower of Epicurus,” says Online Etymology Dictionary, where Epicouros was an ancient Greek philosopher “who taught that pleasure is the highest good and identified virtue as the greatest pleasure.” By the 1560s, epicure came to be used “pejoratively for ‘one who gives himself up to sensual pleasure,’” and non-pejoratively by the 1580s.

Some of our favorite synonyms for epicure include bon vivant, “a person with refined taste, especially one who enjoys superb food and drink”; opsophagist, “one who habitually eats dainties”; and trencher-critic, “a person curious in cookery and table-service.” Some gluttonous words we like are belly-god, “one who makes a god of his belly, that is, whose great business or pleasure is to gratify his appetite”; grand-paunch, “a greedy fellow”; and lick-fingers, also “often used by the Elizabethan dramatists as the personal name of a cook.”

gastronomer

“On the heels of the French Revolution, gastronomy developed as a self-conscious aesthetic, modeled on the eighteenth-century discourse of taste. The gastronomer around the turn of the nineteenth century began to make a fine art of food just as his better-known peer, the dandy, would do of fashion.”

Denise Gigante, “Romantic Gastronomies,” Romantic Circles, University of Maryland

A gastronomer is “one versed in gastronomy; one who is a judge of good living; a judge of the art of cookery.” Gastronomer or gastronome is a back-formation of gastronomy, a word that was coined, says Online Etymology Dictionary, in 1800 by Joseph de Berchoux. Gastronomy comes from the Greek gastro, “stomach,” and nomos, “arranging, regulating.”

Gastrology refers to either “the art of cookery or of catering to the demands of the stomach,” or “the scientific study of diseases of the stomach and of their treatment.” A gastro-tourist is, in the words of chef and writer Anthony Bourdain, “somebody who travels to eat.”

goluptious

“Mr M. Nothing! Mis Muddlebrain? You’re insulting! Is it nothing to be able to make a goluptious soup from oyster shells? That’s done by chymistry.”

Douglas William Jerrold, Nell Gwynne

Goluptious is a now obsolete term that means “delicious,” and, according to The Century Dictionary, is a blend a glorious and voluptuous.

kummerspeck

“Kummerspeck is a German word which literally means grief bacon: it is the word that describes the excess weight gained from emotion-related overeating.”

Georgina Pattinson , “Tingo, Nakkele and Other Wonders,” BBC News, September 26, 2005

Mental Floss gathered together some other wonderful non-English food words including shemomedjamo, literally, “I accidentally ate the whole thing,” a Georgian word that refers to continuing to eat when one is already full because the meal is so delicious; pelinti, translated from Ghanian as “to move hot food around in your mouth”; and pålegg, a Norwegian word that refers to anything that might go in a sandwich.

mouthfeel

“Swallowing oysters whole, therefore, is surely akin to dousing them in Tabasco – it means you don’t have to taste them. The swallow-only camp, however, argues that oysters are a sensual experience that’s more about the ‘mouthfeel‘ than flavour: I think they’re just scared.”

Felicity Cloake, “Oysters: Pearls of Wisdom,” The Guardian, February 17, 2010

Mouthfeel refers to “the texture of food or drink as perceived by the mouth,” and seems to have originated in the 1950s.

organoleptic

“If you haven’t had enough by now, drive across the Charles River to Central Square, Cambridge, for an exotic jolt of ice cream or sorbet at Toscanini’s, a funky laboratory of the organoleptic.”

Raymond Sokolov, “Boston Goes Way Beyond Cod,” The Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2009

Organoleptic means “making an impression on an organ; specifically, making an impression on the organs of touch, taste, and smell,” and comes from the French organoleptique.

smell-feast

“As vagrant followers hover on the verge of a camp, or watchful vultures circle around their prey, so these lower parasites (distinct from the other well-born, more aristocratic genus of smell-feast) prowled vigilantly without the castle walls and beyond the limits of the royal pleasure grounds, finding occasional employment from lackey, valet or equerry, who, imitating their betters, amused themselves betimes with some low buffoon or vulgar clown and rewarded him for his gross stories and antics with a crust and a cup.”

Frederic Stewart Isham, Under the Rose

A smell-feast is “one who finds and frequents good tables; an epicure,” as well as “a parasite; a sponger,” and “a feast at which the guests are supposed to feed upon the odors only of the viands.”

toothsome

“There are two sorts of these pies, both made of mincemeat, but the one is made in a dish like an apple pie and eaten hot – rather rich with its hot grease, you may think, but very toothsome I can assure you.”

“A Farmer’s Christmas in the Dales,” The Guardian, December 26, 1903

Toothsome means “palatable; pleasing to the taste,” as well as “pleasant; attractive,” and “sexually attractive or exciting.” The Online Etymology Dictionary says that the “pleasing to the taste” sense is from the 1560s while the figurative sense of “attractive” is “a bit older,” from the 1550s.

For even more celebrating, be sure to check out the special Julia Child page at PBS.

[Photo: Via Wikipedia]

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Scottish Food Words: Celebrating Robert Burns

Robert Burns Day, otherwise known as Burns Night, honors the birthday of Scottish poet, or makar, Robert Burns. Lovers of Burns, Scots poetry, and haggis gather together every January 25 to celebrate with a Burns supper, which involves a toast to the lassies, a recitation of Burns’ poetry, and the ingesting and imbibing of many Scottish eats and drinks.

For the first course, you may start with some cockieleekie, “soup made of a cock or other fowl boiled with leeks,” or Scotch broth, “a thick soup made from beef or mutton with vegetables and pearl barley.” Afterward is the “entrance of the haggis,” at which time bagpipes (or zampognas, gaidas, cornemuses, or loures) play some music, such as a pibroch, “a wild, irregular kind of music, peculiar to the Scottish Highlands, performed upon the bagpipe.” The word pibroch comes from the Scottish Gaelic piobaireachd, “pipe music,” which ultimately comes from the Latin pipare, “to chirp or peep.”

Just so you know what you’re in for, haggis is “a dish made of a sheep’s heart, lungs, and liver, minced with suet, onions, oatmeal, salt, and pepper, and boiled in a bag, usually the stomach of a sheep.” The origin of this word is unknown. It may come the Old French agace, “magpie,” playing on the idea “of the odds and ends the bird collects,” and the odds and ends in the dish. Another possible origin is the Middle English hagese, which may be related to haggen, “to chop.” Haggen also gives us haggle, perhaps with the idea of “hacking or chopping” prices.

Haggis

Haggis by tjmwatson on Flickr

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by tjmwatson]

Along with haggis, Burns supper diners might also have some neeps, otherwise known as the rutabaga, the Swedish turnip, or the swede, and which “originated as a cross between the cabbage and the turnip.” The word neep may be a corruption of “new turnips.” Don’t forget your potatoes or tatties, which presumably comes from the -tat- of potato (see tater), or perhaps some clapshot, “a traditional Scottish dish comprised of boiled potatoes and boiled swede (or Scottish turnip) mashed together with chives.”

Haggis, Neeps and Tatties!

Haggis, Neeps and Tatties! by tjmwatson, on Flickr

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by tjmwatson]

While the origin of the word clapshot is unknown, World Wide Words speculates it may be similar to that of the Irish dish colcannon, a dish of “mashed potatoes and cabbage, seasoned with butter,” which was “pounded together in a mortar,” and “that vegetables such as spinach were formerly pounded with a cannon-ball,” hence, the cannon of colcannon. Col is derived from cole, or cabbage (see coleslaw). Clapshot may imply the clap or loud and sudden noise of a cannonball shot.

You may end the evening with some cranachan, “a traditional Scottish dessert made with whipped cream, whisky, oatmeal, honey, and raspberries.” The word is Gaelic in origin and originally referred to a kind of churn or “beaten milk.” A similar British dessert is syllabub.

Of course no Burns Night would be complete without Scotch whisky (otherwise known as usquebaugh, Gaelic for “water of life”), whether a dram, a tappit-hen, or a quaich. Too much usquebaugh? Try the Irn-Bru, a “fizzy orange-gold drink” touted as the Scottish hangover cure, or a few rounds of the Highland Fling, “one of the oldest of the Highland dances that originated in the Gaelic Highlands of Scotland,” and an ancient Scottish cure.

According to the Porridge Lady, to prevent a hangover before a ceilidh (from the Old Irish célide, “visit”) or a gilvarage (perhaps a combination of gild and ravage), have some crowdie.

And remember: we warned you about the haggis.

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Drinks Week: Beer

Three mini beers.

Every year from late September to early October, beer lovers around the world celebrate Oktoberfest, “an autumn festival that usually emphasizes merrymaking and the consumption of beer.” What better way for Wordnik to celebrate – and to wrap up Drinks Week – with some words about this grainy fermented concoction.

Back in the day, beer was often referred to as barley-broth, “used jocosely, and also in contempt.” Thus, barley-sick means to be intoxicated. Nowadays you might ask for a brew, named for the brewing process; a brewski, perhaps modeled on Russky, an offensive term for someone of Russian descent; some suds, referring to the frothy head of a beer; or a cold one.

In Australia, New Zealand, and some parts of the UK, a beer may be called a tinnie, referring to the can (which is actually made from aluminum).  Other Australian slang for beer includes amber nectar, amber fluid, coldie, and sherbet. Sherbet as slang for beer may come from the word’s original meaning, “a favorite cooling drink of the East, made of fruit-juices diluted with water, and variously sweetened and flavored,” or another meaning, “a powder made of bicarbonate of soda, sugar and flavourings, intended to be eaten alone or mixed with water to make a drink,” perhaps resembling a frothy beer.

In British English, a bitter is “a type of beer heavily flavored with hops,” while wallop is British slang term for beer and perhaps refers to the meaning “to boil with a continued bubbling or heaving and rolling of the liquor.”

Wallop helps to form codswallop, “senseless talk or writing; nonsense.” However, the origin of codswallop is obscure. Over at World Wide Words, Michael Quinion says it may come from the “testicles” meaning of cods, combined with wallop’s connection to “the dialect term meaning to chatter or scold.” Another explanation is that cod refers to Hiriam Codd, who in the 1870s “designed and patented a method of sealing a glass bottle by means of a ball in its neck,” perfect for preserving the fizz in fizzy drinks. Presumably, beer drinkers would be “dismissive of Mr Codd’s soft drinks,” and might refer “sneeringly to the fizzy drink as Codd’s wallop, and the resulting word later spread its meaning to refer to anything considered to be rubbish.”

A roadie is “a beer for the ride, for consumption while one is driving,” also known as a road soda (and definitely NOT something we’re recommending!) while a growler is “a vessel, as a pitcher, jug, pail, or can, brought by a customer for beer.” To rush the growler means “to take a container to the local bar to buy beer,” which in the 19th century was a job “often given to children.” But where does growler meaning container for beer come from? There are a few theories.

According to World Wide Words, it could refer to “the image of a hunter sending his dog rushing to fetch downed prey, so that the growler in our expression is the dog,” or “the growling noise the full can made as it was pushed across the bar,” or because the “scramble after beer” causes so much trouble. The Beer Advocate suggests that “when the beer sloshed around the pail, it created a rumbling sound as the CO2 escaped through the lid,” similar to growling, or that perhaps growling referred to the empty stomachs of factory workers before they were given beer at mealtimes.

A kegger is “a party at which beer is served from a keg.” Beer pong is “a drinking game in which players attempt to throw a ping pong ball into cups of beer,” and seems to have originated at Dartmouth College in the 1950s and 1960s. Dwile flonking is a game “in which teams take turns to dance while avoiding a ‘dwile’ (beer-soaked cloth) thrown by their opponents.” Dwile is “an old Suffolk dialect term for a dishcloth; dweil, said the same way, is the Dutch word for a floorcloth, or in defunct slang a drunkard,” while flonk may be based on flong, “the name in printing for a paper mould used to create an impression of type.”

Bad or inexpensive beer may be referred to as swill and piss. Swipes is “poor, washy beer; a kind of small beer,” and comes from swipe’s sense of “to drink, or drink off, hastily.” To be swipey is to be drunk. To be gambrinous is to be “full of beer,” and probably comes from King Gambrinus, a legendary king of Flanders, and an unofficial patron saint of beer or beer brewing. If you have beer goggles you have “the illusion that people are more attractive, brought on by alcohol consumption.” If you have a beer belly, you have “a protruding abdomen (usually in men) attributed to the consumption of beer.”

Beer and skittles is a British term referring to fun times (“Life’s no beer and skittles”). Skittles refers to “a pub game in which a ball is rolled down a wooden alley in order to knock down as many of the nine skittles as possible.” In the suds means to be “in turmoil or difficulty,” suggestive of the suds of beer. To carry the can means to “to take responsibility, especially in a challenging situation,” and may refer to “the member of a gang or party who fetches the beer for all and then has the melancholy task of returning the empty.”

For even more beer words, check out our list of the day. For beer sizes, here’s this list and this piece from Smithsonian Magazine. Fritinancy discusses some extreme beer brands (a pint of SkullSplitter sounds relaxing), while The New York Times recently had a beer session with Garrett Oliver, the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery and editor of The Oxford Companion to Beer. And while coffee might smell better than it tastes, beer definitely tastes better than it smells.

For all things Drinks Week, be sure to check out our posts on the languages of wine, tea, mixed drinks, and coffee.

[Photo: “Beer,” CC BY 2.0 by Michelle Tribe]

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Drinks Week: Coffee

coffee

It’s National Coffee Day! We at Wordnik are celebrating by consuming as much caffeine as possible in its various forms, and with these words about coffee.

Let’s start with espresso (NOT expresso, got that?), “a concentrated coffee beverage brewed by forcing hot water under high pressure through finely ground coffee.” The word is Italian in origin and comes from esprimere, “to press out.” Crema is “the light-colored, orangish head (foam) on a cup of espresso.”

One shot of espresso is a solo or a single; two shots, a doppio or double; three, a triple; and four, a quad. A double double is a Canadian term for “coffee with the equivalent of two creamers and two packets of sugar.”

Espresso breve, literally “brief espresso,” is “espresso prepared with steamed half and half.” Ristretto, Italian for “short,” is an espresso “made with less hot water than normal.” A lungo, Italian for “long,” is espresso “made with more hot water than normal,” as opposed to an americano, which is an espresso with hot water added after it has been brewed, or a long black, which is hot water with espresso added to it. For an explanation of how the americano came to be named,  as well as a cup of joe, check out the Oatmeal’s funny and informative illustration.

A flat white is made with espresso and hot milk, while a white coffee is coffee with milk or cream added. A redeye is coffee with a shot of espresso, as well as slang for an overnight flight, and also known as a speedball, which is also “a mix of cocaine and heroin.” Affogato is “a drink or dessert topped with espresso, and sometimes also with caramel sauce or chocolate sauce,” and means “drowned” in Italian.

A macchiato is an “espresso topped with steamed milk,” and is Italian for “marked” or “stained.” A cortado is “espresso ‘cut’ with a small amount of warm milk to reduce the acidity,” from the Spanish word for “cut,” cortar. Café au lait  or café con leche (French and Spanish, respectively, for “coffee with milk”) is made of half coffee or espresso, and half hot milk.

A latte is “made from espresso and steamed milk, generally topped with foam,” while a mocha is a kind of latte with chocolate syrup. Baristas create latte art by “pouring steamed milk into a shot of espresso” in a way that makes “pattern or design” – such as a rosetta – or “by simply ‘drawing’ in the top layer of foam.” Microfoam is “foam consisting of very small bubbles, specifically as an element in the steamed milk used to make certain types of latte coffee.”

Melange – which comes from the Old French mesler, “to mix” – is a “Viennese coffee specialty, half steamed milk and half coffee,” similar to a cappuccino. A cappuccino is “made from espresso and milk that has been steamed and/or frothed,” and comes from the Italian Capuchin, an allusion to the Roman Catholic friars’ brown robes. A mochaccino is, you guessed it, a cappuccino with chocolate.

A crappucino, on the other hand, is something entirely different. Formally known as kopi luwak, it’s “coffee made from the beans of coffee berries eaten, digested and defecated by civets.” Kopi luwak is Indonesian in origin, with kopi meaning coffee and luwak, the regional word for the civet, “a carnivorous catlike animal that produces a musky secretion.” In other putting weird things in coffee adventures, there’s the eggspresso, which is exactly what it sounds like, peanut butter coffee, donut coffee, bacon coffee, and, um, haggis coffee.

For kookiness about coffee sizes, take measure of the OUP Blog post on the trenta, the largest of the Starbuck’s large, and this post from the Language Log on latte lingo, coffee sizes ridiculously borrowed from Romance languages, and 7-Eleven’s various “gulps.”

For all that can be done to a cup of joe, take a trip to this coffee house list and this one. Then again, if you’re not a cafe aficionado (a caficionado?), coffee might be one of those things that smell better than they taste.

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Jennie Faber]

 

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Drinks Week: Funny Drink Names

What do mudslides, hurricanes, earthquakes, and flaming volcanoes all have in common? Sure, they’re natural disasters, but they’re also mixed drinks with funny names.

Where do these amusing monikers come from? Sometimes they’re named for appearance. The mudslide, “consisting of vodka, Kahlua and Bailey’s,” is named for its muddy color (Kahlúa is a coffee-flavored liqueur made in Mexico), while the grasshopper, “made with green crème de menthe,” is named for its bright green hue. The flaming volcano, “made of rum, brandy, pineapple juice, orange juice, almond syrup, and sometimes other ingredients,” is placed in a volcano bowl which creates a “crater.” The alcohol in the crater is then set aflame – voila, a flaming volcano.

Some drinks were named for how they were originally served. The hurricane, made with “fruit juice, syrup or grenadine and rum,” may have been named after the hurricane-lamp-shaped glasses used by a New Orleans tavern owner in the 1940s who “needed to create a new drink to help him get rid of all of the less popular rum.” The screwdriver, “made of vodka and orange juice,” supposedly got its name “because American petroleum engineers in Saudi Arabia secretly added vodka to small cans of orange juice and stirred the mixture with their screwdrivers.”

Others were named for their effects on the drinker. The earthquake, three parts absinthe and three parts cognac, and attributed to painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, may have been named for its tendency to shake one up. The zombie, “a cocktail of rum and fruit juices,” supposedly turns its imbibers into, well, zombies.

Then there are those drinks named after people, real or fake. Harvey Wallbanger – the drink is “made with vodka, Vanilla Galliano and orange juice” – was supposedly a California surfer who “liked his screwdrivers spiked with Galliano.” After a particularly bad day:

he had one too many. Trying to leave the bar, Harvey stumbled into both furniture and the wall. Being a regular at this bar, and despite his performance, he returned and simply became known as the Wallbanger.

The bloody mary, a mixture of vodka and tomato juice, has a variety of different origins: Queen Mary I of England, aka “Bloody Mary”; a waitress named Mary at Bucket of Blood, a Chicago bar; or the actress Mary Pickford. The Tom and Jerry, “a hot sweetened drink of rum and water spiced with cinnamon, cloves, etc., and beaten up with eggs,” was named not for the cartoon characters but for characters in a 19th century play.

The Shirley Temple, “a non-alcoholic cocktail traditionally made with ginger ale, grenadine syrup, and orange juice garnished with a maraschino cherry and slice of lemon,” may have been invented by a Beverly Hills bartender to serve to then child star, Shirley Temple. The Shirley Temple Black, a play on her married name, includes rum.

The fuzzy navel, “usually made of peach schnapps and orange juice,” is  named for its ingredients – fuzzy for peach, navel for orange. Satan’s whiskers is named for an old-timey “swear” word (sort of like a 1920s version of Merlin’s beard), and perhaps also for its reddish appearance from one of its ingredients, Grand Marnier.

Most of us have probably heard of the screaming orgasm, “vodka, Irish Cream, and coffee liqueur”; slippery nipple, “a layered cocktail shooter most commonly composed of Baileys Irish Cream and Sambuca”; and sex on the beach, “vodka, peach schnapps, cranberry juice and orange juice.” However, the origins of their names is obscure, at least as far as we could find.

Then there’s the just plain weird. The Monkey Gland, “a cocktail of gin, orange juice, grenadine and absinthe,” was named for a particular surgical technique:

Back in the 1920s, when a well-heeled gentleman’s vim and vigor were flagging, he would visit a Paris surgeon for an implant of monkey testicle tissue.

Hair of the dog, “an alcoholic drink taken the morning after to cure a hangover or withdrawal symptoms,” comes from the old Scottish belief that:

a few hairs of the dog that bit you applied to the wound will prevent evil consequences. Applied to drinks, it means, if overnight you have indulged too freely, take a glass of the same wine next morning to soothe the nerves. “If this dog do you bite, soon as out of your bed, take a hair of the tail in the morning.”

For a totally bro beverage, check out Fritinancy’s post on the guy’s version of a girly drink, as well as her write-up on some effen vodka. For even more funny drink names, look at our list of the day and this list of cocktails. That’s the spirit! And remember, liquor is quicker.

Tomorrow, to nurse your hangovers, we’ll give you some words about coffee.

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Karen]