Funistrada
Funistrada is a fictitious food item. The term was inserted in a U.S. Army survey of soldiers circa 1974[1] regarding their food preferences. Funistrada, along with a fake vegetable dish called "buttered ermal" and a fake meat dish called "braised trake", was inserted "to provide an estimate of how much someone will respond to a word which sounds like a food name or will answer without reading."[2]
Funistrada scored higher in popularity than eggplant, lima beans, and cranberry juice.[3][4] All three fake items, however, had the highest percentage of "never tried" responses.[5]
Appearances
[edit]- Bill Bryson cited the food in his 1990 book Mother Tongue[6] as an example of a word that is made up for a specific purpose.
- It appears in CHOW: A Cook's Tour of Military Food by Paul Dickson.[7]
- A restaurant in Northern Michigan has used the name Trattoria Funistrada since 2000.[8]
- A Breeders' Cup horse took the name in 1985.[9]
See also
[edit]- Fictitious entry – Deliberately incorrect entry in a reference work
References
[edit]- ^ "Armed Forces Food Preferences" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on December 26, 2022.
- ^ Armed Forces Food Preferences Archived 2022-12-26 at the Wayback Machine p. 4
- ^ "» Funistrada, the Army's 'Ghost Food' - Entropic Memes". www.slugsite.com. Archived from the original on 2020-10-01. Retrieved 2009-01-13.
- ^ Davidson, Alan. "Funistrada." The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
- ^ Armed Forces Food Preferences Archived 2022-12-26 at the Wayback Machine p. 54
- ^ Bryson, Bill (1990). The Mother Tongue. London, UK: Hamish Hamilton. p. 77. ISBN 0-380-71543-0.
- ^ "CHOW: A Cook's Tour of Military Food by Paul Dickson - Kirkus Reviews". kirkusreviews.com.
- ^ "Trattoria Funistrada". 16 May 2024.
- ^ Equibase.com. "Equibase - Profiles". equibase.com.
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