Talking Turkey by Robert Hendrickson

Author:Robert Hendrickson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781628739107
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2013-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

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Häagen-Dazs. A rich U.S. ice-cream brand created in 1961. The brand name was coined by Reuben Mattus to create an aura of old-world traditions. According to the New York Times (December 1, 2006), they “fabricated the foreign-sounding Danish name . . . putting an umlaut over the first ‘a’ in Häagen, even though no umlaut is used in Danish.”

hair in the butter. A very delicate or sensitive situation. This Americanism dating from the early 20th century refers to the difficulty of removing a single hair from a piece of butter. Wrote Molly Ivins in Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She? (1991): “The Great Iranian Arms Caper is not only hair in the butter, I’d say someone’s thrown a skunk in the church house as well.”

halibut. Five hundred years ago every flatfish from the flounder to the skate was called a butt, even the largest of the flounders, Hippoglossus hippoglossus. The most esteemed was Hippoglossus, which was only eaten on Church holy days and became known as the holy butt. This fish is no longer reserved for holy days, of course, but it is still known as the halibut, or “holy flounder.”

hamburger. Most authorities say that the hamburger first appeared in the U.S. in 1884 under the name of Hamburg steak, after the place of its origin, Hamburg, Germany. But the town of Hamburg, New York persistently claims that America’s favorite quick food was invented there in the summer of 1885 and named for the burger’s birthplace. According to this tale, its inventors were Charles and Frank Menches from Ohio, vendors who ran out of pork at their concession at the Erie County Fair. Since the first recorded use of hamburger seems to have been in 1902, according to the O.E.D., Hamburg, New York could be the source. White Castles, McDonalds and Wimpeyburgers (for the Popeye comic-strip character who ate prodigious amounts of them) are synonyms for hamburgers. See FRANKFURTER.

hasty pudding. John Bartlett in his Dictionary of Americanisms (1850) defines this as “Indian meal stirred into boiling water until it becomes a thick batter or pudding . . . eaten with milk, butter, and sugar or molasses.” It is mentioned in a verse of the Revolutionary War song Yankee Doodle:“Father and I went down to camp,/ Along wi’ Captain Goodin,/ And there we see the men and boys,/ As thick as hasty puddin’.” But its most famous mention is in Joel Barlow’s mock-epic The Hasty Pudding (1793), which the poet wrote in a Savoyard inn in France when he was served a dish of boiled Indian meal that reminded him of Connecticut. Part of it goes:

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