Today's dismay: currants

[kaberett]

From the department of "divided by a common language": earlier today I was Very Upset about the US use of "coffee cake", which is apparently not a cake flavoured with coffee but rather a (style of) cake eaten with coffee.

(The recipe blog intro writes itself, really; things I am already considering include some kind of poppyseed coffee cake and of course rhubarb coffee cake, which is what precipitated this particular discovery.)

This was upsetting enough by itself but Subsequent Digressions lead to the discovery that apparently in North America "currants" with no other specifiers by default means Ribes, probably blackcurrant, and not, you know, the dried grape.

... via going "hey, this EYB recipe specifies 'currants' as an ingredient for teacakes, but I've previously been informed that that means Ribes fruit not dried grapes, surely some mistake?" and getting back, approximately, "what makes you think dried grapes are relevant??? the version of the recipe in the Guardian just says 'currants'??????"

(The linking step was being Extremely Indignant about having it patiently explained to me that "coffee cake" is like "tea cake". Apparently BUT THE FRUIT SHOULD BE SOAKED IN TEA THOUGH is not a robust defence.)

Comments

[ludy]

But Tea Bread is eaten at Tea Time (I think the American for them would be something like fruited quick bread") and the fruit used is soaked in tea...

[sfred]

This! A fruit teacake has to be specified as a fruit teacake, but it's still bread rather than cake.

[sfred]

Huh, I thought dried currants were dried blackcurrants!

I am boggling at the "coffee cake" things, though.

[kaberett]

"Properly" here being shorthand for "in NAm English but, according to wikipedia, nowhere the fuck else" :-p

But yes, Different From Raisins! Smaller! More wrinkly! Chewier!

[kaberett]

THAT IS BECAUSE I HAD BLUESCREENED AND NEEDED TO REBOOT

[kaberett]

(thank!)

[kaberett]

... oh NO

[kaberett]

I will happily have all of yours

(I have seen dried Ribes-currants but I think it was in the context of IDK graze boxes or something? BWFO and SousChef both do them...)

[kaberett]

;_;

[kaberett]

Nope! Not over here they're not!

[sfred]

Wow! They are littler than the ones we call raisins, though..?
ETA - ah, apparently just a specific, little grape. Yay, learning!

[recessional]

And coffee cake is eaten with coffee when you’re Having Coffee With Someone. :)

[recessional]

Again, not strictly what I meant: I was genuinely pointing out to Alex that they were not caught up by the fact that teacakes do not predominantly taste of tea and that they found the construction totally transparent, meaning that the huge Brain Freeze of “coffee cake” not being The Taste of Coffee was one of habituation top the construction (or lack thereof), rather than anything else.

[recessional]

The fact that the bluescreen HAPPENED AT ALL is the relevant part here, Alex.

[kaberett]

This is apparently also when Ribena got really popular!

[recessional]

This was indeed the entire Around the Houses conversation we eventually had: the dried baking “currants” (or Zante currants) that one finds in the store even in NorAm turn out to be a kind of raisin, made from grapes - which none of us, including several bakers, knew because COLLOQUIALLY and in most other favouring (tea etc) “currant” gets parsed as the collection of “black/red/whitecurrant” with black being the result.

With further investigation it turns out that the kind of NorAm person who corrects everyone else with “those are SULTANAS, you can only use RAISINS to mean the DARK ones -!” often does know and sniffs as they sniff at the rest of us for calling sultanas “golden raisins”, but on a colloquial level a lot of people don’t.

So it’s not just the division between NorAm and UK, it’s literally different colloquial NorAm subsets.

[recessional]

“Coffee cake” = “the cake you have with coffee in what used to be a koffeklatch but we don’t use German words anymore since the War”.

It’s the cake (originally) designated for Coffee-as-social-time.

[recessional]

…mmmhm :amused:

[recessional]

the “cake” involved in the name was assigned back when “cake” just meant “amount of something about the right size to be held in the hand”, ie a cake of soap.

Isn’t language fun? let’s do flapjacks next!

[sfred]

Thank you - to clarify: I get the concept; I'm boggling at getting to 46 years old without knowing that "coffee cake" in US English had a different meaning from here (UK English).

[sfred]

:-o

[vass]

I had not paused to wonder before what fruit currants even are, and now that I've paused it seems that I understand less than I do before.

Also, the dried grapes I'm familiar with are called sultanas here. Not to sniff at people who call it different things, just that that's what we call them: the breakfast cereal which in America is called Raisin Bran is in Australia called Sultana Bran.

[kaberett]

WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME

[kaberett]

FOR BONUS POINTS "raisins" and "sultanas" are actually basically The Same Damn Thing, it's just some people like to draw distinctions based on colours! Whereas currants are, as I say, smaller and chewier and more wrinkly and still in the overarching raisin category (which I understand you to be saying is in fact the "sultana" category in your localisation) and NOT RIBES.

[kaberett]

I too am boggling. (At The Situation, not at You Specifically!)