on bovril and the nature of things

it occurred to me the other day whilst reading james herriot (who, i'll have you know, is actually named something like alfie wight, or "elf counsel undead living being"), i happened to notice the conspicuous use of the word "bovril". well, i said to myself, what exactly can be a 'bovril'? is it a bit like a weevil or other pestilential beastie? or perhaps it is some obscure part of a sailing vessel (as in "avast ye, hoist the bovril!"). but no, i found out that bovril is in fact (or at least in theory) a food. according to unilever, it arrived at its unusual appellation by the following means:

"the name Bovril comes from an unusual word Johnston [the product's inventor] found in a book. 'vril' was 'an electric fluid' and he combined it with the first two letters of the latin word for beef 'bos'. "

what the hell kind of book was this?!? and why is a thing theoretically related to beef being named after "an electric fluid"? never mind. i'd rather just have a few laughs looking at some other absurdly-named foods i turned up after this little incident. the hypothetical goal? to find out which nation has the stupidest set of names for food. the data, and then the results:

the UNITED KINGDOM
as well as all the classic british haute cuisine (e.g. spotted dick, crumpets, "mushy" peas, and toad in the hole to name but a few), there were a few packaged favorites.

1. bovril (above), a.k.a. the amazing johnston's fluid beef (1870)
2. marmite (some kind of deranged vegetable spread created in 1902)
3. twiglets ("a snack food shaped like small twigs and flavoured with a substance similar marmite, created c. 1940-1950)
4. cheese flavoured moments
5. daddies favourite (i'm just going to stop at saying that this product resembles ketchup. first spotted 1904)
6. nik naks (colorfully classified as "an extruded corn snack" , first appearance c. 1985)
7. pot mash (sold by "pot noodle" 1998 - 2000 RIP)
8. twisted juice (again, so many ripe, inappropriate allusions 2002)
9. weetos (as if weetabix weren't idiotic enough...1930s?), and of course...
   
10. the infamous pork faggot (british "offal-based" meatball product, first seen 1851, but, incredibly still eaten by real human beings).

AUSTRALIA

1. cheezels (the use of "z" [or zed] with the word cheese is unforgivable. burn! c. 1971)
2. parwill / vegemite (created c. 1923, the infamous spread has some great backstory. supposedly, the original name [parwill] was taken from an ad which ran: "marmite, but parwill!" ma might what? eat cheezels?)
3. lolllygobble bliss bombs (i could not make this shit up. a popcorn snack of the 1970s)
4. promite (ah, promite. definitely goes under the heading of "food names which could easilly be mistaken for the title of an industrial manufacturing company or vermin extermination product. made in the 1950s)

the US of A

1. bonox (the us equivalent of bovril. "i ate bonox and now my face is frozen in a grimace of pain! c. 1918)
2. ro*tel (created by some guy in texas in the 1940s for queso accompaniment. a noble goal, but alas, no one could buy it due to an inability to ask for it at the store. )
3. eat-more (well. that's subtle. get a load of the advertising slogan, though: "it's unique, but are you unique enough to eat it?" what the hell does that even mean? thanks hershey. on the bright side, this abortion of a food product is technically canada's fault.)
   
4. u-no-bar (me no eat-more? see below)
5. screaming yellow zonkers (another hideously named popcorn product. continuing the legacy in the 1960s. cool box, though.)
6. poppycock / fiddle-faddle (just rounding out the stupid names for popcorn covered in some foreign substance. i'll just dip my in bovril, thanks. you can still buy this stuff now, unfortunately.)
7. avoderm (technically this is a dog food, but i just had to give it temporary honorary status as food because it was so medically-themed. i wonder if you need to inject your dog with this stuff sub-cutaneously?)
8. funyuns (a classic, the name of which was coined by a texas professor. these are not fun, incidentally, if you have ever made the mistake of eating them [as i have].)
9. product 19 (what is it? TOP-SECRET!)
   

ELSEWHERE (MOSTLY JAPAN)

1. a38 (another government-weapons-sounding food product. with this one, the secret's out: it's "fermented milk product". hailing from denmark)
2. junket (apparently, both my mother and my grandmother have some strange affinity for this bizarre material. mystifying. more denmark.)
3. tender vittles (that sounds like something a drunk scotsman would yell after someone kicked him in the balls: "AUGH me tender vittles!" apparently it's a pet food though. meh.)
4. sporade (it's like gatorade. except. instead of gators, we're using MUSHROOM MEN EGGS. shhh don't tell anyone it's a secret. in peru.)
5. bakauke (japanese rice crackers. not to be confused with bukake under any circumstances ever. ev-ar. don't google it either.)
6. let's party roasted crab! (japan. where else? these are whole crabs, including shell, guts, and small packets of soy sauce. in a bag. at least they're enthusiastic.)
7. science noodles (a taiwanese innovation. they stimulate your brain!)
8. i'm dripper (apparently this is a japanese coffee brand. no articles prepositions you!)
9. homo sausage beef jerky (wow. japan.)
10. fart (poland apparently. a possibly apocryphal internet story about this: "in poland, for a brief time they sold a drink called fart. roughly translated to english, it means "luck". when I was back there this summer i looked for it, but no such fart.")
    

can you pick a winner? i'm hard-pressed! it's pretty tough to be really enthused about picking "elsewhere". not only does it lack the satisfaction of being able to jeer at a particular country, but many of the idiocies were perpetrated by poor translations. the british (and theoretically americans and australians) ought to know better! australia has real quality--after all, who could refuse a heaping handful of lollygobble bliss bombs? however, i'm afraid they fall out of the running through sheer lack of numbers. breed faster australians! we need more stupidly named food products out of you if you want to stay in the running next year!

so that leaves just the americans and their arch-rivals, the britishers. it is a cheese-flavoured moment.

This entry was posted by metafold, on 29 April 2008. You can leave your response.