Earrings for Elephants

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Sarah Forsley. I’m calling from Madison, Wisconsin.

Hey, Sarah. Welcome. What’s up?

I was looking at some cake recipes in Joy of Cooking, and one of the recipes described something as being like earrings for elephants. And, well, I guess I have like a positive association with cake and icing, so I thought it was a good thing. But when I asked my mom, who would have been alive when that edition of Joy of Cooking was published, she said she thought that sounded like maybe it wasn’t good because why would elephants need earrings? So anyway, after a quick Google search, we didn’t find the answer. But it was a Sunday, so I was listening to your show and thought I would call it out.

Okay. Yeah, we can do this. Do you remember the recipe that it was in?

No, I don’t. And I’ve poked back through my book, and I think I just, there’s too many pages about cakes and icing.

Right. You find yourself, you’re like, how did I get all these cookies? Where did these come from?

Baking in your sleep. Elephants isn’t in the index.

I will say that fortunately at the Internet Archive, where they have a wonderful library that Martha and I both use for our research, they have a lot of past editions of The Joy of Cooking. And if I look up earrings for an elephant, I find that it’s the recipe for the orange-filled cake.

That does, yes.

That absolutely sticks out to me now that you say that. And here’s what it says, and I love the tone of this. It says, most recipes for orange cake prove to be disappointing. For upon reading them, you find that they are merely sponge or butter cake with an orange filling. This one calls for orange juice in the batter plus orange filling and icing. Earrings for an elephant with no apologies. And so I think they’re talking about it’s not quite a bad thing. I think what the authors mean here, because I think at this point Rombauer wasn’t the only one writing it, I think they’re just talking about an elephant is already a magnificent, beautiful creature and doesn’t need jewelry. But we’re going to put some on it anyway. So orange on top of orange on top of orange to make the best orange field cake possible.

That totally makes sense.

Yeah.

So I was right. And my mother was right, too.

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah.

It’s not a common idiom, but I do find it here and there. And almost always it’s there’s a notion of absurdity because an elephant is an absurd character, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, yeah. And I’m thinking about elephant earrings now. I mean, are they proportional to the elephant? Are they these gigantic earrings? Or earrings that I would wear, you know, like these little bitty, you know, posts.

I’d say they’re enormous.

Yeah.

And orange. So I haven’t done the full dig on this, but it looks like this particular line first showed up in the editions of Joy of Cooking in the 1960s. And for more than 30 years, that line continued to be in there. But I think if the recipe itself is even in there, that line is no longer in the more recent editions of Joy of Cooking because, you know, they make substantial updates every time. But that’s such a great phrase.

Isn’t it?

Yeah, it’s colorful.

Yeah, that’s kind of a thing. Well, I’m glad I have a really old one then. But look up that recipe for orange-filled cake. You’ll find that line about earrings for elephants and send us a picture when you make it.

Yes.

Send us a cake.

Yes, express mail is sliced to you.

Perfect.

Wonderful. We’ll be right over. I’ll help do the dishes.

Sarah, thank you for your time. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you so much. Have a good one.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.