Our conversation about dressed eggs serving as a euphemism for deviled eggs prompts Kim from Spooner, Wisconsin, to share that her mother and grandmother called them pretty eggs for the same reason. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Pretty Eggs”
Remember a conversation about deviled eggs versus dressed eggs. Grant, I do. I do. I was not able to persuade my wife to make some, though, so I’m gonna make them myself. I just want the little sprinkle of paprika on top, and I have this lovely smoked paprika that I’m going to use.
Oh, man. Smoked paprika sounds great.
Oh, it’s good. I put it on everything.
Well, our conversation about people calling deviled eggs dressed eggs because they didn’t want to mention the devil prompted an email from Kim Bulgren, who lives in Spooner, Wisconsin, and she writes, I grew up with them being called pretty eggs. It wasn’t until I was adult that I heard deviled eggs. My mom said her mom called them pretty eggs because it wasn’t proper to say devil.
There we go. So that kind of confirms the theory that was making the rounds that you avoided saying deviled. So you come up with all these other words instead of deviled.
Yeah. And the idea behind deviled was that there was a little bit of bite or spice to it.
A little spice. Like the heat of the devil.
Yeah. Or smoke.
Smoke, yeah. If you put smoked paprika on there.
Smoked paprika works good in burritos, works good on deviled eggs, works good on tacos. You’re going to love it.
I’m going to have to dig some of that up.
