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

[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.

[steorra]

This is reminiscent of my experience (coming from Canada). Growing up I knew dried currants to be the little mini-raisin-y things that are apparently also called Zante currants (but I didn't know that term). My mom would put them in scones, mostly.

But it was not until much later that I realized that they are so raisin-y because are actually a kind of dried grape, completely unrelated to blackcurrants and other "currant"-labelled things that are Ribes-based.