Ossobuco

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:05 AM +0200 10/6/01, axtk wrote:
>  > Yes. Ossobuco means marrowbone. The dish is properly called Ossobuco
>Milanese
>
>
>They have lots of different recipes for ossobuchi.The Milanese-style is just
>one of them.
>
>Luca

Luca's plural above brings up something I'd meant to suggest, in
connection with the earlier discussion about the listings for "osso
bucho" (in some of Barry's early U. S. cites) and those for "osso
buco".  While the latter is the form I've always seen, perhaps
someone not totally familiar with Italian came across the plural at
one point, which I assume would be either "ossi buchi" (not "buci",
with an affricate, but with a -ch- to designate the 'hard' or velar
[k]) or perhaps "ossobuchi" (as above), and applied a sort of back
formation to end up with "osso [sing.] bucho [sing. back-formed from
plural]".  Anyone have other ideas?

(Purists will be glad to know that google.com has "about 8880" cites
for "osso buco" and none for "osso bucho".)

larry