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

[wildeabandon]

Fair. Although I can't quite figure out how that works for the Yorkshire version, because tea is the evening meal, not the mid afternoon one, and you'd be a lot more likely to eat teacakes for the morning or midday meals.

[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...

[recessional]

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

[ludy]

No, this UK usage of Tea/Tea Time means a late-afternoon (Southern) or evening (Northern) meal and doesn’t imply the consumption of the tea-the-drink in the way that Having Coffee With Someone, the social event, does imply that coffee-the-drink will be involved

[recessional]

I’m aware; and in fact at this point coffee cake does NOT require coffee be drunk at that time and can be had whenever. It’s almost like language often drifts like that!

Again: my point is not a lockstep of Exact Times You Eat the Thing or exact mirroring of meaning, but rather about drift in meaning/origin so that the concepts indicated by the phrase are not related to its dominant taste, which is unexceptional if you’re used to it (as y’all are with tea cakes and we are with coffee cake) but weird when unfamiliar (as vice versa).

[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.