Homely Cooking

It amuses linguists, and bedevils poets, that the words for beautiful things don’t necessarily have an attractive sound. J.R.R. Tolkien once observed that “cellar door” is more beautiful than “sky”--and, he held, far more beautiful than “beautiful.”

To illustrate, here’s a selection of European foods that taste a lot better than they sound, I’m pretty sure.

Blabar: Swedish for bilberry, a sort of blueberry.

Blawn fish and bloater: English varieties of dried fish.

Bondepige med slor: a Danish apple brown betty made with rye bread and topped with jam.

Bratklops: a German fried meatball.

Buberts: a Latvian pudding.

Cacalaus: a Provencal dish of snails served on Christmas Eve.

Chlodnik: a Polish cold vegetable soup.

Chudleigh: an English jam bun.

Crap: Romanian for “carp,” I regret to say.

Hel fisk i kapprock: Swedish stuffed fish baked in paper.

Lobscouse: an English casserole of meat and root vegetables.

Muggety pie: a Cornish pie of sheep’s lungs, heart and entrails.

Rort smor: Danish beaten butter.

Scad, scrod, scup: various North Atlantic fish.

Skum saus: a Norwegian custard sauce served with puddings.

Slemp: a sort of mulled milk traditionally served in the Netherlands on St. Nicholas’ Eve.

Stelk: An Irish dish of potatoes and bacon; also known as thump.

Svid: Icelandic boiled lamb’s head.

Wiener krapfen: Austrian doughnuts.