Today’s mailing from bon appétit magazine leads with a hybrid food:
(#1)
(#2) Normally, you’d expect the hybrid food to come with a corresponding cute portmanteau name, but not this time
Background from my 7/24/18 posting “Hybrid referent, portmanteau name”, mostly about flumpets, the musical instruments:
A hybrid referent with a portmanteau name — a nicely iconic bit of nomenclature that’s quite common in the world of hybrid organisms (the coywolf, a hybrid of coyote and wolf; the pluot, a hybrid of plum and apricot) and of hybrid cultural artefacts of all kinds (the cronut, a hybrid of croissant and doughnut; the spork, a hybrid of spoon and fork).
Specifically in the food world, from my 3/8/15 posting “cruffin”, about a muffin-croissant hybrid
A couple of postings (of many) here on foodmanteaus like cruffin: “Foodmanteaus” of 6/10/13 and “Hybrid dishes and foodmanteaus” of 7/15/14
Beyond cronuts and cruffins: wonuts, bisnuts, tofurkey, quesaritos, tomatonaise, crossanwiches, eggocado, jalapiñot, craisins, and more.
So: you’ve created a bagel quiche and you want a clever name for it. There’s the obvious telescoping-type portmanteau, bagel quiche > biche /biš/. Whoops.
The lesser problem is that biche is an existing French word, meaning ‘doe’ (a deer, a female deer). Not an especially common word, though it’s used in the endearment ma biche (roughly) ‘my darling’ and picked up some sexual connotations through its use as the title of a 1968 French film. From Wikipedia:
(#3) Two lesbians, two gay men, and then things get ugly
Les Biches (The Does) is a 1968 French-Italian film starring Stéphane Audran, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Jacqueline Sassard. It was directed by Claude Chabrol, and depicts a tortured lesbian relationship between the Audran and Sassard characters.
The greater problem is that biche is just too close to the (mid-level) taboo item bitch /bɪč/ for comfort. From NOAD:
noun bitch: 1 a female dog, wolf, fox, or otter. 2 [a] informal a spiteful or unpleasant woman. [b] offensive a woman. [c] informal a person who is completely subservient to another: he will always be her bitch. [d] US informal used as a form of address: I’m free, bitches! 3 (a bitch) informal a difficult or unpleasant situation or thing: the stove is a bitch to fix. 4 informal a complaint: my big bitch is that there’s nothing new here. ORIGIN Old English bicce, of Germanic origin.
Who wants a bitch on the brunch menu? (Don’t answer that — de gustibus and all that.)
March 3, 2019 at 11:05 am |
Forget the portmanteau name, this culinary creation is an abomination.
March 3, 2019 at 11:07 am |
Oh, I took that as a given.
March 3, 2019 at 11:19 am |
Heinz sells a ketchup/mayonnaise mix that goes by the portmanteau name mayochup. Worst name ever!
March 4, 2019 at 8:40 am |
I’m looking at the picture of the foodstuff in question, and I see no bagel. Is the quiche crust supposedly made with bagel dough? I’d expect something toroid in anything using “bagel” in its name.,