Elephant Ears

[Lynne Murphy]

> From:         Bapopik at AOL.COM
>
> ELEPHANT EARS
>
>    I'll probably go back to the Library of Congress on Monday.  I'll try to check
> "elephant ears" at the Indiana State Fair in the late 1960s early 1970s.  According to
> the INDIANAPOLIS STAR, 16 Aug. 1995 (Nexis), Art Carroll of Original Elephant Ears had
> been selling them at the fair "for more than 25 years."
>    The pastry is variously known as: elephant ears/ elephant tracks/ knee patches/ Swiss
> nothings/ hocus-pocus crispies/ cinnamon crispies/ angel wings/ beaver tail/ langos
> (pronounced langosh)/ chrusciki (Polish pastry).
>    If anyone has citations besides the DARE entry, please let me know.

When i was a kid, the things we called 'elephant ears' were often just large palmiers.  I'm
not sure if this is just because I lived in too backward a place to use a French name for
a pastry (west-central NY state) or whether the extension of the term is that broad.  They
never had cinnamon on them.

M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320