If you’ve never dined on funistrada, braised trake, or buttered ermal, you’re not missing out, nor are you alone. All of those are made-up food names that were part of a 1972 survey given to thousands of members of the U.S. military to determine their food preferences. These three names were part of a list of 378 real food names; the fake were just in there to test whether the servicemembers were paying attention. Most responded that they’d never heard of those three, but a few said they had, and in fact ranked funistrada preferable to lima beans. The names sound somewhat plausible, though, which recalls studies of the bouba-kiki effect, which refers to the way people tend to associate certain sounds with certain ideas. In the case of the bouba-kiki effect, they associated the nonsense word bouba with round, curvy shapes and the nonsense word kiki with more pointed, spiky shapes. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Funistrada, Braised Trake, and Buttered Ermal”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. And Grant, I’m getting hungry and I’m craving a big helping of buttered Ermol.
Excuse me? What? Ermol? What is that? You know, ermol, a big bowl of buttered ermol and maybe a side of braised trach with that. Doesn’t that sound good?
I don’t know what those are. Ermel and Trach. Trach sounds like a fish maybe because he’s braising it. And maybe Ermel is Garfield the cat’s young nemesis, Nermal. Like his nickname online. I don’t know what that is. What are we talking about here, Mytha?
Well, what if I whip up a big helping of Funistrata? Yeah, that sounds Italian. Is that a pasta? What is that?
That’s what it sounds like. Okay, let me explain what I’m talking about.
Yes, please.
Back in 1972, there were some researchers who administered a survey to thousands of members of the armed forces to find out about their food preferences. So they gave service members a list of 378 foods, and they asked for answers about those foods in three categories.
They asked how much they liked or disliked a particular food, how many days per month they wanted to eat that particular food, and if they’d ever tried that food before.
And of the 378 food names on that survey, three of them were complete nonsense, including the ones I just mentioned, like buttered Ermal, E-R-M-A-L. And Trake, braised Trake, T-R-A-K-E. And then Funistrada, F-U-N-I-S-T-R-A-D-A. That’s it.
It sounds like Fun Street.
Fun Street.
I think it sounds like mom’s cooking, you know?
Oh, yeah.
Just comfort food, right?
Yeah, right.
After a bad day, you come home for a big bowl of food strata. So what were they up to? What was the point of this?
Well, they wanted to see how the service members would answer, like if they were just going through it so fast and not really paying attention, or how they would respond to a word that sounds like a food name but really wasn’t.
And it turned out that about 80% of the service members answered that they’d never tried the fake foods. But then there were the ones who said, yeah, they’d tried Funistrata. And it turned out that they ranked Funistrata higher than lima beans or eggplant in their list of preferences.
Well, you know what this reminds me of? Above all, there’s a famous linguistic study about booba and kiki, which are also made-up words. And the respondents were asked to compare these words to some diagrams.
And people tend to match the word booba with a curvy cloud-like figure. And they match the word kiki with a pointy spiky figure. Because in our minds, there’s this phonemic correspondences where we think of certain sounds as having certain characteristics, even though they don’t really.
So it reminds me very much of that. But the other thing it reminds me of is really good surveys always have some kind of counterfactual in there to see how serious you are when you’re taking it. And if you fail their kind of check questions, their check-some questions, they might just throw your whole thing out.
Oh, really interesting.
Yeah, when I think of buttered ermol, I think of something that’s high fiber but, you know, cooked down. And the funestrata does sound more, you know, it’s definitely not kiki.
Yeah, yeah. It’s just something with a little cheese and cream, right?
Yeah.
Maybe some mushrooms in there. Those might be fake words, but this is a real show. We are real hosts, not AI, and we give you real answers, not from AI.
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