After hearing the show that featured the call about jelly doughnuts sometimes called Bismarcks, I started thinking about the fried cinnamon rolls my older brother used to buy when I was a kid. He called them "pershings" and I'm pretty sure it was spelled that way (not "persians") because I vaguely remember seeing it on a package of the tasty treats in a supermarket bakery. I grew up in San Diego and always connected the name of the cinnamon roll to what used to be a familiar street my family would take to get to Balboa Park. The street, Pershing Drive, I'm sure was named after the army general, but what about the cinnamon roll?
Someone at the American Dialect Society (or a contributor to their mailing list) appears to agree with you on Pershings vs. Persians.
Yeah, that ADS-L poster is Barry Popik, a well-known researcher of word histories. He specializes in food words. I keep trying to get him to do a book...
How interesting, rett! I wrote a book on food words a few years ago, and never ran across this. (Although I've certainly run across Pershing Drive a few times in my day.) Thanks for this contribution to the discussion, rett.
And yeah, it'd be great to see Barry do a food book. He digs a lot deeper than most.