Funistrada

Funistrada is a fictitious food item. The term was inserted in a U.S. Army survey of soldiers circa 1974^[1] regarding their food preferences. Funistrada, along with a fake vegetable dish called "buttered ermal" and a fake meat dish called "braised trake", was inserted "to provide an estimate of how much someone will respond to a word which sounds like a food name or will answer without reading."^[2]

Funistrada scored higher in popularity than eggplant, lima beans, and cranberry juice.^[3][4] All three fake items, however, had the highest percentage of "never tried" responses.^[5]

Appearances

• Bill Bryson cited the food in his 1990 book Mother Tongue^[6] as an example of a word that is made up for a specific purpose.
• It appears in CHOW: A Cook's Tour of Military Food by Paul Dickson.^[7]
• A restaurant in Northern Michigan has used the name Trattoria Funistrada since 2000.^[8]
• A Breeders' Cup horse took the name in 1985.^[9]

See also

• Fictitious entry – Deliberately incorrect entry in a reference work

References

1. "Armed Forces Food Preferences" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on December 26, 2022.
2. Armed Forces Food Preferences Archived 2022-12-26 at the Wayback Machine p. 4
3. "» Funistrada, the Army's 'Ghost Food' - Entropic Memes". www.slugsite.com. Archived from the original on 2020-10-01. Retrieved 2009-01-13.
4. Davidson, Alan. "Funistrada." The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
5. Armed Forces Food Preferences Archived 2022-12-26 at the Wayback Machine p. 54
6. Bryson, Bill (1990). The Mother Tongue. London, UK: Hamish Hamilton. p. 77. ISBN 0-380-71543-0.
7. "CHOW: A Cook's Tour of Military Food by Paul Dickson - Kirkus Reviews". kirkusreviews.com.
8. "Trattoria Funistrada". 16 May 2024.
9. Equibase.com. "Equibase - Profiles". equibase.com.