Culinary names, menu names, or kitchen names are names of foods used in the preparation or selling of food, as opposed to their names in agriculture or in scientific nomenclature. The menu name may even be different from the kitchen name. For example, from the 19th until the mid-20th century, many restaurant menus were written in French and not in the local language.
Examples include veal (calf), calamari (squid), and sweetbreads (pancreas or thymus gland). Culinary names are especially common for fish and seafood, where multiple species are marketed under a single familiar name.
Foods may come to have distinct culinary names for a variety of reasons:
Euphemism: the idea of eating some foods may disgust or offend some eaters regardless of their actual taste
Testicles: Rocky Mountain oysters, Prairie oysters, lamb fries, or animelles
Fish Milt: soft roe or white roe to disguise that is actually sperm not eggs
Thymus gland and pancreas gland: sweetbreads
Kangaroo meat: "Australus" has been proposed as a euphemism
Attractiveness: the traditional name may be considered dull, undistinctive, or unattractive
Kiwifruit: a rename of the Chinese gooseberry, which references its fuzzy brown skin, and has now become its standard name
Mahi-Mahi: the dolphinfish is often referred to with this name to avoid confusion with dolphin (the mammal) meat
The Patagonian toothfish is marketed as the Chilean sea bass
The African Cichlid found in many aquaria is presented as Tilapia
The spinal marrow of veal and beef is called amourettes
Grouping of a variety of sources under a single name
Tuna includes several different species
Evocation of more prestigious, rarer, and more expensive foods for which they are a substitute
Lumpsucker (or lumpfish) roe is named lumpfish caviar
Cassia bark is called cinnamon
Langostino is sometimes called lobster or "langostino lobster"
In North America, many flounder species are called soles, e.g. Microstomus pacificus is named "Dover sole"
Evocation of a specific culinary tradition
Shrimp in Italian-American contexts is often called scampi
Florentine refers to dishes that include spinach
Squid is often called by its Italian name, calamari, on menus
Social differences
The words beef, veal, pork, mutton, and venison are derived from the words used by the French-speaking lords in post-Conquest England
Other
In French, chestnuts are called châtaignes on the tree, but marrons in the kitchen
Laver is a culinary name for certain edible algae
