The sound of Coulibiac of salmon has a far different sound and connotation than that of Salmon Pot Pie, but the basis for the name is the same, kulibyaka, Russian for a small pastry or deep dish pie filled with various items. Many times the name of the implement, region or how the dish is prepared becomes the culinary name or the name it is sold under.
In Spain, the olla had its place on peasant hearths, into this olla, or pot, went the catch of the day and the herbs and spices that were fetched home from the field on a daily basis. The pot, traditionally filled with something or other and rarely washed, was called olla porida, an exotic term which meant rotten pot. (This seldom appears on the menu...what wine could accompany a rotten pot of leftover stew?) The French with their iron pots called chadiere (Latin for hot) came up with the word chowder for a soup thickened with bread or rice. The English called it sop. One can see the term sop would not sit well with maitre'ds the world over as they offered the sop du jour. The French, known for classifying cooking terms, took the English sop, added some seasonings and the letters u and e and called it soupe. Meal could, at last, begin with some class. Other dishes named after vessels include the terrine, a forcemeat item that by definition must be prepared in an earthenware receptacle, casserole using anything leftover; and the petite marmite, a broth served from the dish it is prepared in.
Some foods take names of things they resemble such as the tuile, French for tile (obviously not a flooring tile); noisette potatoes, so- called for their size and shape so similar to a hazelnut or noisette (and in French, buerre noisette is a burnt butter rendered the color of hazelnuts); langue du chat named after its resemblance to a cats tongue, and the classic, for those with good imaginations, the British toad in the Hole which is a mixture of sausage baked in a pancake batter said to look like a toad in hiding. I should add Bombay Duck out of a pineapple filled it with various things except duck.
Two of the more colorful items to close with would include bock beer and iceberg lettuce. Brewed in the spring, bock beer was named after a bock (goat) whose behavior was imitated by the German landsers who drank the beer. Iceberg lettuce was named in the early 1900's when it was first shipped by railroad from farms in California. For the long trip across the desert, the farmers loaded the freight cars with the hardy lettuce and then piled on crushed ice until the freight car resembled an iceberg on its journey.
Fun Food Origins
