What’s Slang Jang? (minicast)

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Welcome to another minicast from A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

My co-host Grant Barrett is at home. He’s cooking up a big mess of slang jang.

Now what you may ask is slang jang?

Well, it’s not a condition of a dictionary editor’s nerves after a long day researching strange terms.

Slangjang is a tongue-tickling sauce that’s popular in East Texas.

Well, here, better to have one of our callers tell you about it.

This is Mark, and he’s from Dallas.

Mark, tell us what’s in this recipe.

Okay, it’s chopped tomatoes, green peppers, onions, vinegar, water, salt and pepper, sugar, and you put it in the refrigerator overnight.

Then you strain this salsa out and you put it on your black-eyed peas, and it makes black-eyed peas taste so much better.

It does, so it’s spicy.

Well, it’s not spicy.

It’s tart because of the vinegar with a hint of sugar.

And it’s something that my mother has grown up eating in East Texas, and it’s in all the family cookbooks from my family from East Texas.

And so this is a cold sauce that you put on the black-eyed peas?

It’s a cold sauce, and my wife says it’s not a chutney because you don’t cook it.

It’s very colorful, and we have it especially at New Year’s Eve because the black-eyed peas, it’s good luck to eat black-eyed peas at New Year’s Eve.

Oh, yeah, definitely.

Right, and so they taste so much better with the slang jang on them.

Yes, and, you know, I brought black-eyed peas to an office party, and I didn’t know that a lot of people don’t like black-eyed peas.

Well, they’ve never had them with slang jang.

Aha!

Aha!

I’ve read about slang jang, and one description I’ve seen of it is that it’s one of those homemade regional dishes that you’ll never find in a restaurant, but that everybody makes at home.

Well, that sounds correct.

You know, I was wondering if it’s something that the black cooks dreamed up over in East Texas because the black apes are so plentiful.

I rarely find anybody who’s heard of it.

-huh.

How close is your family to Honeygrove, Texas?

Well, we’ve had family land in Honeygrove.

Oh, you have?

That’s significant.

Well, let me ask you another question.

Do you ever put oysters in your slang jang?

Oh, that sounds great.

But, yes, we do like oysters.

Is that something from California?

No, no, sir, no, sir.

As a matter of fact, it’s from a recipe for slang jang from 1894.

We put oysters in our turkey dressing.

Yeah, I’ve heard that one, too.

It tastes pretty good.

But there’s a recipe from Honeygrove, Texas, dated 1894.

Wow.

One can of oysters, one can of tomatoes, one bottle of pickles, one bottle of pepper sauce, three onions sliced, salt, and pepper to taste.

That sounds, except for the oysters, that’s pretty close, right?

Mm—

One of my colleagues, Barry Poppick, who lives in Austin, has done some research on this term, done some digging, found that it pops up again and again and again, often near or around Honeygrove, almost always in Texas.

And in the upcoming fifth volume for the Dictionary of American Regional English, they’ll have an entry on it that will have at least one use of it from Arkansas.

So it’s a pretty small geographical area where slang jang comes from.

That’s S-L-A-N-G-J-A-N-G, right?

Right, right.

I asked some of the elderly family cooks in our family, and that’s what they said, but nobody knew where it came from.

Well, and you asked about the name Slangjang, which is two words, right, Slang and Jang?

Mm—

I don’t think anybody really knows the origin of it.

I know that there’s a story about a bunch of hunters going out and being out in the woods for several days and just at the last minute kind of throwing together every single canned good that they had and put it in this big mixture.

And it became slang-dang just because they couldn’t think of anything else to call it.

But I don’t know.

That sounds like a goulash to me.

It could be a goulash.

Well, Mark, thank you for giving us a ring today.

I hope we’ve been some help.

And if we find out any more, we’ll be sure to let you and everyone else know, all right?

Okay.

I’ll look forward to it.

All right.

I’ll take care.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Goodbye.

Martha, every time we take a call about food, I have to go home and eat.

I have to eat right now.

I’m drooling.

Well, Mark, you’ve inspired me.

I think I’m going to have to go home and try that recipe myself.

And you can, too.

We’ll put it on our website.

You’ll find that at waywordradio.org.

And if, like Mark, you’re wondering about an odd family food term, why not send it along?

Maybe we can help.

Our email address is words@waywordradio.org.

Or call us anytime, 1-877-929-9673.

Anyway, my stomach’s rumbling, so I’m going to get out of here.

Thanks for listening.

For A Way with Words, I’m Martha Barnette.

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