Name a baby and what do you get? The prospect of having your good name linked to someone who turns out to be a deejay on MTV, an author of a self-help book or, worse, a candidate for president of the United States.
But attach your name to a food product, a special dish or some other edible treat, and watch your name achieve a certain kind of immortality.
People gussied up for a memorable night out will mention your name in the finest restaurants. “Why, of course, the Caesar salad,” responds a guy in a tuxedo, “an excellent choice.”
Or suppose you’re feeling as if it just doesn’t matter who you are. To bolster your mood, you could march over to the local grocery and head to the dairy case to peek at those neat little stacks of cheese bricks bearing your name, or perhaps the nickname and home locale of a famous forebear–like Monterey Jack (who was David Jacks of the Gold Rush era).
Or, if you are feeling in a not-so-selfish mood, you could name the food of your choice for someone the whole nation admires and then bask (modestly) in the resulting gratitude certain to come your way. Take your inspiration from Ruth, the adorable little daughter of President Grover Cleveland, who continued to be honored–long after she had outgrown her infanthood–with a candy bar called Baby Ruth.
Except, of course, there was a bit of a problem here, as sometimes happens in the weird and wacky world of food naming. Along comes this mammoth galoot of a guy who happens to be the best baseball player in history and his nickname is “Babe” and his last name is Ruth and everyone henceforth assumes that the candy bar must have been named for him, even though it was not.
There are no guarantees in food-naming, which becomes readily apparent when perusing the pages of John Mariani’s excellent compendium, “The Dictionary of American Food and Drink.”
It’s not just that mistaken assumptions may cloud any seemingly safe attempt at food-name immortality, such as happened with Baby Ruth. Or may sometimes happen with eggs Benedict when people think it was named for the infamous American traitor–as in eggs Benedict Arnold–because of the way that the dish does in one’s cholesterol level.
Eggs Benedict were actually named, as Mariani recounts, for Mr. and Mrs. LeGrand Benedict, loyal customers at Delmonico’s restaurant in New York City, who came in for Saturday lunch one day and were so bored with the usual offerings that they implored the staff to concoct something new, something different.
Such mistaken assumptions about food names may even occur with Caesar salad, when people think it was named for the Roman statesman and general (as in Julius Caesar salad). Caesar salad was actually named for Tijuana restaurateur Caesar Cardini, who first concocted it (without anchovies, by the way) at his very own Caesar’s Palace south of the border July 4, 1924.
It is a salad that, as Mariani notes, “was once voted by the International Society of Epicures in Paris as the `greatest recipe to originate from the Americas in 50 years.’ “
There is also the problem that once your name is permanently attached to a food, it may turn out to be a food that goes out of fashion and is ultimately forgotten, except by out-of-date cookbooks. All that culinary creativity for naught.
Such a fate seems to have befallen Jim Hill mustard, which, as Mariani recounts, was “a Northwestern term for a wild mustard discovered in the 1890s, when James Jerome Hill (1838-1916) built the Great Northern Railway to Seattle.”
That sad fate is shared by another Northwest edible, the McGinty, which is not the name of the once-famous line of school readers (McGuffy). Rather, the McGinty is, according to Mariani: “A pie made in Oregon from dried apples … (that) dates back to the 1870s. The name probably derives from a common name for Irish loggers and miners in the Northwest territory of those days.”
What follows is a selection of names of various famous foods or eats, and their derivations, according to Mariani.
As this selection shows, no food item is too obscure or too creative to have somebody’s name or somebody’s favorite something attached.
Oysters Rockefeller. Not the favorite dish of Nelson or Jay, it turns out. Named in honor of industrialist John D. Rockefeller (the Bill Gates of his day, for the history-deficient) because the oysters and green vegetable concoction was said to possess a “richness” worthy of the world’s wealthiest man. Created in 1899 at Antoine’s Restaurant in New Orleans when a shortage of snails from Europe prompted chef Jules Alciatore to turn instead to local oysters, which were usually shunned at the time.
Cobb salad. Not named in honor of the nastiest man ever to play professional baseball, Ty Cobb (but then it’s hard to imagine him eating a salad even if it were made from marinated nails). Rather, the chopped salad gets its name from Bob Cobb, owner of the Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles. He came up with the dish in 1926, as Mariani relates, “to utilize leftovers in the refrigerator.”
Junior Mints. Did not get their name from being the smaller version of Senior Mints. They were created in 1949 by the James O. Welch Co. and named by the company president himself after watching a Broadway performance of the play “Junior Miss.”
Bananas Foster. Not apparently named after the weirdest member of the Foster clan. This dessert concoction of bananas, brown sugar, rum and vanilla ice cream was named for Richard Foster, owner of the Foster Awning Co. of New Orleans. He happened to be a regular customer at Brennan’s Restaurant, where the dish was created in the early 1950s.
Hangtown fry. This name is not a reflection of the dish’s popularity as last meal for unfortunates facing the gallows. Rather, it takes its name from Hangtown, Calif. (now Placerville), where a lucky miner in Gold Rush days was said to have come into the Cary House Restaurant and ordered the “most expensive meal in the place.” The chef offered eggs and oysters, the miner suggested the addition of bacon, and Hangtown fry was born.
