I WANT TO REMEMBER WHAT BRITISH PEOPLE CALL GOLDEN RAISINS

I regret to report it is not "soppressata."

Well, it’s happened again. I have forgotten a word, a single word out of the millions of words across thousands of languages, and concluded that I am losing it! Forgetting something is the worst kind of itch, a pop-a-Benadryl-and-slather-it-in-Calamine-lotion kind of itch. I try to move through my days without panicking about how much of my life I have forgotten. I never feel worse or more stupid than when someone asks what my first memory is. Hey, punk! You know what your LAST memory is gonna be? THIS FIST!

The most recent slipped memory, the one that has been really stuck in my craw, is the British English word for what Americans would call golden raisins.

On January 3, I tweeted this:

As you can see, it was liked by one person, my mom, who I keep on retainer to like all my tweets, so I knew I was really tapping into a universal experience with this one. As the saying goes, when your tweet absolutely flops, it’s time to double-down and write a 1,000-word newsletter about how, actually, it’s really quite relatable. What are newsletters, if not drawn-out exercises in committing to the bit?

Friend of the Newsletter Mia Torres, former roommate and current object of my eternal respect and admiration, has a preternatural-bordering-on-infuriating ability to recall specific details from her personal history. Without asking her, I can guarantee that Mia has a vibrant and poignant first memory prepared in case of an impromptu round of icebreakers.

Back in 2017, when my brain had more elasticity and also I was a brun*tte, she introduced me to the brain push-up — in which we, Knights of the Noble Order of Resisting Brain Rot, declined to immediately Google the answers to our questions and instead waited to remember them organically. It took a monk-like patience that I occasionally abandoned, tapping the question into Google on my phone, far from Mia’s line of vision. Needless to say, Mia’s brain does CrossFit, and mine has a lapsed membership at Planet Fitness.

I first heard the British Word For Golden Raisins (BWFGR), where else, on Great British Bake Off. It took me several seasons and many narrated descriptions of fruit-heavy recipes to register that when Prue said [BWFGR] she was talking about golden raisins. The recipes suddenly made a whole lot more sense. Those would be right at home in a warmly spiced hot cross bun!

But the word didn’t linger. As soon as I was caught up on the newest season of GBBO, I closed the laptop lid on that particular word. I didn’t think of it again until I was in the dried fruit aisle at Trader Joe’s, as I am wont to do, and looked over to see a bag of golden raisins. Now that I was aware of [BWFGR], “golden raisins” seemed drab and taxonomic. So where in my brain was this delightful alternative I had just learned? I perceived the negative space around the missing word, but when I pushed the button to summon it, the conveyor belt in my head churned on, empty.

It’s tormenting to drop a word, but to fumble a food word? Unforgivable. Food words are, objectively!, some of the most joyful words of any language. There’s a reason you start learning a new language by learning food words — they’re the loss leader dangled in front of you to get you invested, before Duolingo hits you with the administrative vocabulary about how to apply for an apartment or initiate divorce proceedings. I am a newborn babe when I learn “pamplemousse.” I am wizened and disenchanted with multilingualism by the time I get to “vous avez été signifié par le tribunal.”

Differences between British English and American English food words are a dependable well of conversational material to plunder when you’ve met a British person at a bar and need some familiar, easy conversation routes to retrace. I don’t believe that anyone is genuinely clueless about these language differences — they’re just fun to rehash with strangers after you’ve had a few drinks. “Oh, you call it ‘X’?" Well, we call it ‘Y’!” Try finding one piece of Yankee-in-Great-Britain or Brit-in-America content that doesn’t indulge in the easy laugh of “you call fries WHAT?!” I’m not mad about it, though. What I am mad about is not being able to remember [BWFGR]!!!

Has anyone else been watching “Ted Lasso” and have thoughts on whether the M*mford & S*ns theme song will be returning for season two?

Every time I took a jab at [BWFGR], my brain veered off and thought of “soppressata” instead, which is a very fun food word, but not [BWFGR]. I tried approaching [BWFGR] like the word “onigiri,” by sneaking up on it, but that didn’t work either. Neither did my method for remembering the word “avgolemono,” a word that only works if you hurl yourself at it like a frame of candy glass. When I need to remember the word “pasticciotto,” I go to the Italian bakery down the street, and the person working the counter helps me remember (I have been on the opposite side of this relationship and can confirm that customers are allowed to forget things all the time, and service industry workers are not). But I didn’t know of any British bakeries around that incorporated [BWFGR]s into their baking, so that path was also void.

I started to wonder if I could remember any food words at all, resulting in this incomplete list of other food words I can remember, and in fact consider to be absolute bangers: flapjack, kumquat, bilo bilo, rutabaga, ratatouille, pomegranate, edamame, tahini, Swiss meringue, gorgonzola, anchovies, Hen-of-the-wood, boysenberry, hushpuppy, crème Chantilly, jambalaya, tilapia, tteokbokki, chimichanga, broccoli romanesco, marshmallow, steak Diane. IMO, there’s simply no denying that these food names go crazy, go stupid. Whoever named these things clocked into work that day ready to make WAVES in the food-naming community and UPEND expectations of how much joy we can derive from browsing a grocery store aisle. I knew there was a place on this list for [BWFGR]!!

I was in agony over this word for nearly two months, which is a personal record for Most Arduous Brain Push-Up. Occasionally I would bargain with myself, promising to Google the word if I didn’t remember it by the end of the week. Or I would ask someone else to Google it for me…? Or I would even rewatch the entire GBBO series and listen for them to mention [BWFGR] in a gentle voice-over. It was starting to affect my friendships — there is simply no casual way to ask someone if they know [BWFGR] and then explain that the reason we can’t simply Google it is because of a wobbly set of principles largely rooted in self-flagellation.

But as is often the case, the resolution to my quest for truth came in the form of thee olde oracle, TikTok. I was watching drowsily when it flashed across my screen like sign from God: a TikTok recipe for baked oats from stranger and angel Farida Elseragy:

SULTANAS! BRAIN PUSH UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I say BRAIN, you say PUSH-UP,

BRAIN —

BRAIN —

I felt like running around a soccer pitch and slapping my teammates on their back!!! If someone had placed a cooler of Gatorade in front of me in that moment, I would have dumped it on my head!!!!!! Oh, to be alive and to remember the [BWFGR] (SULTANAS!!!!!!!!!).

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Thank you to Space the Cat (foster cat of FOTN Grace Byron… FCOFOTNGB) for guest-editing this week’s TOOTH MISSIVE! She reliably delivers brutal yet tender writing advice in exchange for my ability to open pull-tab cans of wet cat food.

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This week I am craving: a simple yeast dinner roll with a pat of butter on it. Happy belated Easter! He is risen! 🤩 (Jesus, and hopefully the yeast rolls, if you remembered to put them out ahead of time).

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Cavities — what are your favorite food words? Drop a comment!