A Different Julep

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Stephanie Halver from Frisco, Texas.

Hi, Stephanie. Welcome to the show.

Hello, Stephanie.

Well, I’ve had a question since I was a little kid about a, I guess, a family recipe. I’m originally from eastern North Carolina, and growing up, the story goes, my grandfather came up with this sort of sauce concoction that he called julep. And I never knew what it meant.

I only ever heard the word julep on my mother’s side of the family. And what did it mean there?

Well, julep didn’t have a recipe. Basically, what they would do is take an old ketchup bottle. Well, not old, but when the ketchup got down to a certain level, then they would pour in apple cider vinegar because, you know, North Carolinians like to add vinegar to everything. And they’d shake up the bottle, put the cap back on, take off the label, and that was julep.

Oh, and what would you put it on?

Fried chicken, mainly. And sometimes that North Carolina-style barbecue, the finely chopped pork.

Stephanie, did anybody in your family use julep to refer to a sweet, sugary drink? The classic mint julep like you might drink in horse races?

No. It was just sort of ingrained as a kid that julep was this sauce. And it was a family thing. I never heard it outside of my family. If I’d gone to a restaurant and asked for julep, they would have thought I was crazy.

Well, they probably would have brought you a drink with a whole lot of bourbon and a whole lot of sugar and a whole lot of ice.

Yeah, it’s a little sprig of mint on top, right? Very, very powerful.

Wow. I’ve never heard of julep used in this way. I wonder if there’s some kind of just, they’re just taking the idea of julep as a concoction, as a mix of things.

Yeah, yeah. There is a word juleper in the Ozarks that refers to the juice that comes off of a cooked fowl.

That’s different.

Yeah. That’s different. I’ve never heard of it used that way. I wonder if it’s just a family word.

Yeah, I thought it was, growing up, it was like a nonsense word to me because none of my family drinks, so we didn’t have any experience with that.

Oh, really? But that’s interesting because the interesting thing is if your family is not a drinking family, that leaves a lexical use for these drinking-related words, and it would be easy for you to justify, not consciously maybe, one, to justify borrowing julep from the drinking terminology and applying it to something else.

That reminds me of when I was young. We had a car that we bought that was the color for it was champagne mist. But my parents insisted on calling it Baptist beige.

You know, I had always wondered about it because I asked my father or asked my mother if my grandfather drank. And she said, no, he passed away before I was born. So I never got to ask him about that. And he never lived outside of eastern North Carolina. He was a tobacco farmer. That’s where they stayed except for his service in World War II. So I didn’t know if it had been used anywhere else in the U.S. If he had lived there. But, you know, he stayed in that one area.

Well, I’ve never heard of that concoction. Did anybody else in that area make it and call it something else?

I don’t know. You know, like I said, North Carolinians add vinegar to just about everything. And the North Carolina style of barbecue is a vinegar-based sauce. It’s very runny. So there may be some people who mix ketchup with vinegar, among other things, to use for the barbecue. But I never heard julep used in any other family.

Well, let’s put the word out. We’re lighting up the searchlights and starting the sirens, I guess, on this one, Martha, aren’t we?

Yes. So do you know, A, you, the listener, know of the concoction ketchup plus vinegar called julep? And B, if you know it, where do you know it from?

Let us know, 877-929-9673 or send your details and email to words@waywordradio.org.

Stephanie, we’re going to find out.

Thank you. Take care now.

Thanks, Stephanie.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.