Snail Salad vs. May breakfast etc.

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:18 PM -0800 1/28/03, Towse wrote:
>RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>>
>  >
>>  The fact that somebody in 1987 said that people in Rhode Island eat snail
>>  salad doesn't make the eating of snails regional, nor does it make SNAIL
>>  SALAD regional. Anywhere that people eat snails and meat salad
>>they doubtless
>>  eat snail salad. This includes Hollywood, which is a right far piece from
>  > Rhode Island.
>>
>According to the second reference I cited earlier ([ref:
><http://www.manandmollusc.net/molluscan_food_files/molluscan_food_conchl.html>]),
>the "snail" in the RI "snail salad" is actually whelk or conch,
>not those tasty little gastropods that leave slime trails in the
>garden.
>
>FWIW, I find both RI and other eastern seaport areas offering
>"scungilli salad", "scungilli" being the Italian name for the
>whelk or conch.
>
>Would calling the salad "snail salad" when it's really
>whelk/conch/scungilli qualify as a regionalism?
>
>And, oh yum. Popping /scungilli recipe/ into my search engine of
>choice brings up conch fritter recipes as well as scungilli alla
>Sorrentina, scungilli marinara, ...
>
I agree with Ron's theoretical point, and now that Sal has provided
us with the relevant datum, I agree with Barry's contention that
"snail salad" (meaning 'scungilli salad') should be listed because of
its opacity.  I also agree with Sal's "yum".  I knew I liked
scungilli salad, I just didn't know I'd ever eaten snail salad, since
we don't call it that in Connecticut.  In fact the use of "snail
salad" in place of "scungilli salad" in R.I. is sort of the reverse
of the almost ubiquitous reference to squid as calamari (well, in
European-style restaurants as opposed to Chinese- or Thai-style
ones).  Dysphemism rather than euphemism.  The parallel to the
"calamari" case was the fact that when I was much younger, snails
were always referred to in restaurants as "escargots".  And the
seasoning was called "escargot butter", not "snail butter".

Larry, wondering if "conch salad" isn't used because nobody outside
of Key West is sure of how to pronounce "conch"