Foul food: Minding peas and cues

It is not surprising that unidimensional bots and algorithms do not understand that very human issue of context: words can mean entirely different things not only depending on intonation and context but also culture and time. So, it was entirely predictable that a group of local British culinary enthusiasts found their discussion on a traditional dish being censored and taken off Facebook last week for inadmissible content.

The dish, admittedly of more nostalgic rather than epicurean value, was faggots and peas — bits and pieces of pork offal encased in bacon and pan-fried. One word clearly triggered the offence alarm, because of its homophobic connotation today, but how were people of England’s equally misleadingly named Black Country to know that one day their favourite leftover creation would transmogrify into a slur?

Next up for the chop may be the classic pasta called fagottini. British food is rife with ribald and bawdy monikers from spotted dick (a pudding) to toad-in-the-hole (sausages baked in a batter) and Scotch woodcock (scrambled eggs on toast with anchovy butter), not to mention fairy cakes and bacon butties. Even our Anglo-Indian ball curry might find itself in a similar soup one day, besides France’s coq au vin and Austria’s Wiener schnitzel if Facebook’s thought police is not given some serious tutoring in local cuisine and patois.