Snail Salad, Pepper Biscuits, Rabe...

[Laurence Horn]

Barry on rabe:

>    "Rabe" is in Merriam-Webster, with a first date of only 1976.  "Rabe" is
>not in the OED.  Well, "rabe" is _sort of_ in the OED.  It says that "rabe"
>is "rabbi."  Correct this at once.  MY RABBI IS NOT MADE OF BROCCOLI!
>

Another spelling of this (superb) vegetable is "raab".  Note the AHD4 entry:
============
broccoli raab

                    PRONUNCIATION:
                                     räb
                    VARIANT FORMS:
                                   or broccoli rabe
                             NOUN:
A vegetable plant (Brassica rapa) related to the turnip and grown for
its pungent leafy shoots. Also
  called rapini.
                       ETYMOLOGY:
  Italian broccoli di rapa : broccoli, pl. diminutive of brocco,
sprout, shoot; see broccoli + di, of (from
Latin d; see de-) + rapa, turnip; see rape2.
===============
And no, "raab" isn't in the OED either.  A search conducted recently
for a different purpose (I was trying to convince a friend that
broccoli rabe/raab is in fact identical to rapini, rather than a
different and more (or less) bitter vegetable) happened to turn up
(heh heh) many examples of both "raab" and "rabe" spellings.  I had
previously encountered only the latter, but the former has the virtue
of yielding the right pronunciation.  There's also the spelling
"rape", although it seems to have undergone taboo avoidance.

larry

P.S.  Is "pungent" the right adjective?  For me, broccoli rabe is
bitter (which isn't a pejorative) but not pungent.
Coriander/cilantro is pungent (which isn't a pejorative either).