Are there any proper conventions for naming recipes? Desultory research turns up a woman who likes to name recipes after the characters in books she’s written, but I haven’t written any books. I have written most of a thesis (it’s why I haven’t been posting here for a few weeks); but my housemates might object to eating Instantiating the Characteristics of Barthes’ Ideal “Writerly” Text Risotto and Convergence of Critical Theory and Computer Science Cookies.
There must be trends in recipe-naming. Mediaeval or Renaissance cookbooks mostly seem pleasantly matter-of-fact, if occasionally opaquely spelt: “a pigge”, “Peacoke Sauce wyne and salt”, “A salet with harde egges”. The seventeenth century is much the same; “To bake Apricocks green”, “To make a Foole”. When there’s a divergence from the rule, it’s a bit embarrassed: “To make red Ginger-bread, commonly called Leach-lumbar”.
The matter-of-factness breaks down more in the nineteenth century; Mrs Beeton has a “Soup a la Cantatrice”, to improve the voice, and a “Useful Soup for Benevolent Purposes”, to, er, use for benevolent purposes. Recipes from the period start being named after people more frequently: “Dr. Dobell’s Flour Pudding” sounds particularly unappetising, though I’m not sure whether it’s the “Dr” or the “flour” that does it. By the 1950s half the recipes in existence seem to be named after people, many of them fictional and with no discernible relation to the food; He-Man’s Tuna Noodle Casserole, John Beresford Tipton Bars. By the fifties, recipe writers have also firmly established the policy of mentioning, in the recipe’s title, any unexpected ingredients — if you’re going to feed someone Pepsi-Cola Cake With Broiled Peanut Butter Frosting then they probably deserve to know what they’re in for.
These days the standard practice seems to be to specify the type of food, and also some distinguishing details or ingredients — more detail than a mediaeval-style “an cayke”, but stopping short of “chocolate-coffee cake with vanilla, salt, baking powder, butter, sugar and those little silver balls on the icing maybe, if there are any left in the cupboard, or hey, how about a broken-up flake”. My problem is that today’s cake has four distinguishing details (lemon, poppyseed, upside-down, pear), which is too many for a name.
Fortunately, professional chefs grapple with the same problem, as a forum discussion of “Roasted duck and goat cheese filled crepes with watermelon and cucumber syrup” demonstrates. The resolution they favour appears to involve the extensive use of nonwords; suggestions for the duck include “Quackenbaa Crepes” (ducks quack and goats baa, y’see) , “Cheese & Quackers”, and my personal favourite, “Roasduck in Crepes”. And who am I to go against the dictates of professional chefs?
