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

[rugessnome]

I'm wondering if the US "coffee cake" might be a calque of Kaffeekuchen, but I don't know the German culinary history there and whether some of the presence of similar cakes under "Kaffeekuchen" is back-importation of the USian variety...

I learned about your side of the pond's coffee-flavored coffee cake about a decade ago thanks to an Irish cookbook by someone with I think an American spouse.

And, what "currants" means here in the States is... difficult to pin down; since currant (and gooseberry! and particularly jostaberry! we don't do Ribes a lot) products are altogether rather scarce here, I am inclined to assume that naked "currant", particularly in baking, is in fact the (OG (see other comment)) dried grape, but currant jam/jelly(in the US, again, this is a jam like spread made of set juice), for instance, is ...probably meant to be redcurrant jam, even though blackcurrant jam does exist here. I have found freeze dried black currants for sale online here, and contemplating buying them due to a discontinued black currant cereal, but haven't done so yet.

However! One of my Kaffeekuchen search results pointed out that "streusel" would, of course, have a German pronunciation originally, and I am similarly a little verklempt about that, so. (I. did the same years ago about Euler. what can I say?)

[kaberett]

My cursory skim of the internet did indeed indicate that that was the etymology!

FWIW jostaberries are also basically unheard of here -- they don't transport particularly well and you basically only seem to find out about them (even if you're a family that's been growing Ribes more generally for generations!) if you... get an alloment? They appear to be specifically part of the allotment subculture.

And "jelly" is actually a term we use to refer to jams-but-juice-only as well as to the gelatine thing!

............... yeah okay streusel is one of the ones where I'm sufficiently German-first-language that I just don't have any idea where to even start working out what the anglo pronunciation would be.

[ewt]

I offered jostaberry cuttings to some allotment neighbours and they had never heard of them; incidentally. These are fairly good growers who do have a lot of interesting plants, so I think even among allotmenteers it might not be all that common.

[pseudomonas]

rhyming with "bamboozle" I think.

[kaberett]

... I would indeed never have guessed that. What.

[pseudomonas]

¯⧵_(ツ)_/¯

[kaberett]

(double backslash -- it's treated as an escape character the first time it shows up!)

[pseudomonas]

in this instance, I just switched from markdown to HTML.

[fyreharper]

“stroo-sel” (same s sound both times; same vowel sounds as in noodle), at least for California!English

[rugessnome]

Yes, my ~southern Midwest AmEnglish says it that way. Much like "Strudel", actually, but with a rather Anglo "s" swapped for the "d" and probably a bit careless with the last vowel compared to the German pronunciation.

(I know enough German that the original pronunciation oughtn't actually be surprising, but I'd just never thought to re-examine the word with a thought to German phonology.)