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
• Lizardman's constant