SC - Fascinating etymological study / too much free time???

[Seton1355@aol.com]

Hullo, the list!

I found myself sitting in a library yesterday with a reprint of Kelham's
18th-century "Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language", as well
as various other old French dictionaries _and_ dictionaries of Old
French, some reading into modern French, one in English, and one in German.

So there I am, musing on the fact that I've seen the dish named,
variously, faulx grenon, faux grenon, faus guernon, etc., and while I've
seen several such recipes translated into English, I've never seen
anybody try to translate the dish's _name_. The dish is a thick pottage
of minced, fried chicken gizzards and livers and milk, thickened with
egg yolks, sometimes with toasted bread, and sometimes with chestnuts
either instead of, or in addition to, the toast.

So I begin messing with the dictionaries (not that I wasn't already
doing so), fairly certain on some intuitive level that the faus part is
a reference to faux, or false. False what? I tried looking up the
various permutations, and what I came up with (and I could kick myself
for not being conveniently prepared to copy down the entire reference,
but I was about to pack up and leave) was that, as odd as it sounds, a
word very similar to grenon or guernon, possibly gueron, translates as
"moustache", possibly in the same extended-logic way Taillemaslee
becomes La Barbe Robert, or Robert's Beard Sauce... .

"Preposterous," says I to myself, "Why would anybody name the dish
'false moustache'?"

And then I began thinking of the mechanics of drinking a bowl of thick
pottage made from finely minced chicken livers and gizzards; a thick,
somewhat grainy brown pottage.

Now, I may have been influenced by all the "Got Milk?" ads I saw on the
way to the library, but it began to assume a peculiar sense of logic...

Talk me out of it, somebody!

Adamantius   
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com