Dressed Eggs

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Scott calling from Seattle.

Hi, Scott. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. I’m calling with a question about an alternate name that I’ve heard for deviled eggs.

Both sides of my family are from southern Kentucky, and I have an in-law who every year at Thanksgiving refers to the deviled eggs as dressed eggs. I don’t know if it’s a regional thing. She is from a different part of the state than my parents, and she’s also a member of a fairly conservative church. I was curious to find out if dressed eggs is just kind of a regional term, or maybe, you know, maybe that comes from her religion.

Well, how interesting. You know, it could be both because the term dressed egg for deviled egg is regional for sure, and definitely in Kentucky. You mentioned southern Kentucky, and is that the west or the eastern part of the state?

Very central. Maybe two and a half hours in a straight line south of Lexington? The reason I ask is because there’s a delightful little newspaper article from the Park City Daily News from 1952. Now, Park City is down there near Mammoth Cave, southern Kentucky. It’s a little report on the meeting of the Greenwood Homemakers Club No. 1. This new member of the club had moved to Park City from New Mexico. She was invited to the club and invited to bring dressed eggs.

And she had no idea what they were talking about. And so she called one of the members and said, what are dressed eggs? And one of the members explained that it’s pretty much like deviled eggs. And so what this new member did was reported in the newspaper. It was that big a deal, the difference, because the newspaper report says, after preparing the stuffing and putting the eggs, which had been cut across the middle back together, she put a little rabbit’s head on the top of each egg. These heads were sewn to toothpicks and stuck into the eggs. Then she cut a small hole in yellow paper doilies and slipped these over the eggs, giving each one a frilly yellow skirt. And everybody agreed that they were too cute to eat.

So clearly this woman from New Mexico did not understand the term dressed eggs. She literally dressed the eggs. She had a little fun with that.

Grant, I could see people wanting to euphemize that term, devil days.

Yeah, we have a lot of euphemisms for the devil throughout the history of the English language. Lots of other names where people just avoid saying his name because if you said the devil, you said that word or his name, that called him and could make him come according to the superstitions. And so you would call him anything else. And sometimes people just wanted to avoid, even avoiding the word of hell, for example.

So, yeah, I could definitely see people calling them dress eggs to avoid saying deviled. But also because they heard other people say it eventually. Eventually they would just say because that’s the word for it. And definitely it’s more common in the American South, not exclusive to Kentucky. I can find it in newspapers and cookbooks going back to the mid-1800s, but I’m quite sure it’s much older than that.

But, you know, Martha, the idea of dressing food, now that’s centuries old, to use that verb to dress.

Sure.

Far back is what, the 1300s?

Mm—

Meaning to prepare or to cook or add seasoning or sauce.

Yeah, and same for deviling something, right? You can devil all different kinds of foods to sort of spice it up.

Okay.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

All right.

Take care of yourself.

All right.

Thanks for calling.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.