Funistrada is a fictitious food item. The term was inserted in a U.S. Army survey of soldiers circa 1974 regarding their food preferences. Funistrada, along with a fake vegetable dish called "buttered ermal" and a fake meat dish called "braised trake", was inserted "to provide an estimate of how much someone will respond to a word which sounds like a food name or will answer without reading."
Funistrada scored higher in popularity than eggplant, lima beans, and cranberry juice. All three fake items, however, had the highest percentage of "never tried" responses.
Appearances
- Bill Bryson cited the food in his 1990 book Mother Tongue as an example of a word that is made up for a specific purpose.
- It appears in CHOW: A Cook's Tour of Military Food by Paul Dickson.
- A restaurant in Northern Michigan has used the name Trattoria Funistrada since 2000.
- A Breeders' Cup horse took the name in 1985.
See also
- Fictitious entry – Deliberately incorrect entry in a reference work
References
- "Armed Forces Food Preferences" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on December 26, 2022.
- Armed Forces Food Preferences Archived 2022-12-26 at the Wayback Machine p. 4
- "» Funistrada, the Army's 'Ghost Food' - Entropic Memes". www.slugsite.com. Archived from the original on 2020-10-01. Retrieved 2009-01-13.
- Davidson, Alan. "Funistrada." The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
- Armed Forces Food Preferences Archived 2022-12-26 at the Wayback Machine p. 54
- Bryson, Bill (1990). The Mother Tongue. London, UK: Hamish Hamilton. p. 77. ISBN 0-380-71543-0.
- "CHOW: A Cook's Tour of Military Food by Paul Dickson - Kirkus Reviews". kirkusreviews.com.
- "Trattoria Funistrada". 16 May 2024.
- Equibase.com. "Equibase - Profiles". equibase.com.
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