Some Rotten Recipes--Just for the Fun of It : Words and Phrases That Should Raise a Red Flag in Readers’ Consciousness

Into every cook’s life a few rotten recipes must fall. The best you can hope for is that guests aren’t present when you receive a fall.

Because life may be looking rotten anyway (with income taxes due soon), why not enjoy a few of the world’s most rotten recipe--for laughs, not for dinner.

Normally, decidedly rotten recipes that surface in newspaper food departments see the round file--like the recipe for sardines over ice cream that once came from some sardine company.

Yes, we can hear you rebutting, “But, I once tried such and such from the paper, and even our precious poodle Phydeau wouldn’t eat it. It was rotten.” OK, we’ll take our lumps. Not every dish soothes the savage little beast.

But we’re talking recipes that never had a prayer to be pronounced delicious by people with taste buds, yet have seen print somewhere. Who gave birth to these things, anyway?

Sending Up Signal Flags

When reading recipes, certain key words should send up flags that signal, “Only when veal birds fly will this be wonderful.”

Here are some clues.

--Mock. Never make mock anything. Food masquerading as other food makes diners wonder why you didn’t make the real thing. Would you really want mock apple pie made from crackers when you could have real apple pie?

--En casserole. Big deal. This means the food’s in a dish; that is no hearty endorsement. After all, canned peas, tuna and noodles with potato chip crust is best not served heaped on the table, but en casserole. It makes it so much easier to haul the leftovers away to be put en garbage or en floor for le pussy cat.

--Royale. As in that favorite, fruit cocktail in a red gelatin ring royale. Despite its sovereign connotation, rarely does royale apply to dishes fit for a queen. The noble thing to do is skip it.

--Deluxe. By definition, deluxe means “extra-fine quality, luxurious, sumptuous, elegant.” (Which is why burgers deluxe come with extra-fine quality lettuce and sumptuous mayonnaise, right?) So, imagine Spam and instant rice deluxe. Now imagine other oxymorons like imitation lunch meat, unexpected guests, and military intelligence.

--Jubilee. Jubilees rarely are cause for celebration. Other than Bing cherries, most anything jubilee will not light your fire. Case in point: canned figs jubilee. Remember that fire marshal’s adage, “Food that has been on fire is not necessarily better than food that has not.”

--Encore. Think twice about recipes with encore in the title. It means the cook is surreptitiously disguising leftovers. It also means she’ll be stuck trying to sell them again and again.

--Emergency. As in emergency gravy. A good cook friend swears she has survived emergencies of epic proportion and not once has she needed gravy for them. There are certain things you plan for. To get gravy, it’s best to roast something juicy first. Standing rib would be better than tofu.

--Never-fail. If the recipe fails (and it could, despite the caveat), the cook feels like the failure. Don’t set yourself up for this pain.

--Gourmet. Any recipe billed as gourmet probably isn’t. Generally it demands far too much fooling around with the food, is much ado about nothing, or is about 25 years behind the times. Salisbury steak gourmet, for example, has a quarter-teaspoon thyme added to ordinary boring Salisbury steak.

--Epicurean or supreme. The same could be said about these two modifiers. Contender for multiple no-purpose use is supreme of turkey epicurean leftover or son of supreme of turkey epicurean. The third time around meet supreme of turkey epicurean encore encore.

--Surprise. Beware of surprises lurking in food. Unfortunately, most would best remain cloaked in parchment, foil, bird, rouladen, large vegetable or casserole with lid. Like this one, tomato surprise. Hidden inside the wax paper picnic bundle is--surprise--chopped canned corned beef with hard-cooked egg. Truth-in-recipe labeling should dictate it be called wax paper gotcha. Chocolate chip cookies in a picnic basket are a surprise. Corned beef inside a tomato inside wax paper is not.

--Tropical, tropicale or tropicana. All three mean the recipes were developed by someone peddling pineapple, or coconut, or both. They also indicate the person’s brain has been eaten away by all that bromelin enzyme, arresting development of more novel recipe names.

--Fiesta. Any title including fiesta or festive means taco sauce and ground cumin are coming up. Just 20 years ago it meant avocados and ripe olives, 30 years ago it was kidney beans and Cheddar cheese. If the dish is called ole !, it has all of the above.

--Compote. Compote is fancy for fruit thrown in a bowl. No one will eat it.

--Medley. Medley means odds and ends thrown in a skillet. No one will eat it.

-- Etti . Never trust anything labeled etti . The dish will be long on overcooked spaghetti, short on inspiration and found at every church potluck.

--Topsy-turvy. This means upside down, only it’s never something great like pineapple upside-down cake. Naturally, the children will flop it right side up to see what nutritious thing Mom was trying to hide.