Breadcrumbs & Scotch Eggs

Scotch Egg / œuf dur enrobé de chair à saucisse et pané

Yesterday I discovered an interesting French word: paner, which means to coat with breadcrumbs or to bread.

So a Scotch Egg, which is a hard boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat, breaded and deep fried, can be described as a œuf dur enrobé de chair à saucisse et pané in French – it sounds better in French, although it’s not something you’d find in France or other French-speaking regions, as far as I know.

Restaurants in the UK often use French names and descriptions for dishes as they sound better and more sophisticated than their English equivalents. Do restaurants in other countries do this?

Would you rather have toad-in-the-hole or saucisses cuites au four dans de la pâte à crêpes?

Or how about pudding aux raisins instead of spotted dick?

3 thoughts on “Breadcrumbs & Scotch Eggs

  1. This practice is pretty common in the US too. The one problem is that Americans most often do not speak French. As an exception to that rule, I often find some pretty amusing nonsense on menus (or boutiques de haute couture), similar to the phenomenon of “Engrish”.

  2. Believe it or not, paner is panír in Hungarian, which has a similar pronounciation. It’s good to know it came from French 😀

  3. It is the same in swedish: “Panerad fisk” is egged and breadcrumbed fish. From the french of course.

    But I just love the UK names for dishes such as “Bangers and Bloaters, Roly-Poly, Figgie Hobbins, Cock-a-Leekie, Bubble and Squeak and Treacles and Trifles” (tribute to Hägar the Horrible cartoon by Dik Browne where these dishes are presented in a restaurant to Hägar and Lucky Eddie).

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