Wackipedia: A comprehensive list of the world's fried dough foods schools readers on Chiburekki, Nonnevotte, and hush puppies
With over 4 million articles, Wikipedia is an invaluable resource, whether you're throwing a term paper together at the last minute, or trying to keep track of all of the characters on Game Of Thrones. But strange and wonderful things lurk on the periphery. We explore some of Wikipedia's oddities in our 4,253,243-week series, Wackipedia.
This Week's Entry: Fried Dough Foods
What It's About: Simply a list of over 100 foods made from frying dough, from cultures all over the world, complete with appetizing photos. Entries range from Central Asian Chiburekki (basically a Crimean empanada), to Chinese ox-tongue pastry (so called for it's shape; it contains no actual ox parts), to good old American hushpuppies. The foodstuffs mostly fall into three-categories: donut-like, bread-like, and dough wrapped around something. You get a remarkable sense of both how many diverse things people do around the world with fried dough, and how many similarities there are across cultures.
Strangest Fact: Dutch/Belgian pastry Nonnevotte translates to "Nuns' bottoms." Eat up!
Controversy: None, although your cholesterol goes up 35 points just from reading the article.
Thing We Were Happiest To Learn: You can fill a zeppole with cannoli cream. We're totally doing that, and having a heart attack five years ahead of schedule as a result. Definitely worth it.
Thing We Were Unhappiest To Learn: People in Texas will deep-fry literally anything, as evidenced by fried Coke, invented in 2006. Coca-Cola syrup—not the drink, just the thick corn syrup slurry it's made from—is mixed into the batter before frying, and the result is topped with yet more Coke syrup. You may never have drank an ice-cold refreshing Coke and said to yourself, "I wish this were neither ice-cold or refreshing, but instead came in the form of fried dough," but if you haven't, that just means you're not from Texas.
Also noteworthy: On the list is the Berliner, the German donut-like pastry that John F. Kennedy famously declared himself to be in a 1963 speech in West Berlin.
Best link to elsewhere on Wikipedia: The funnel cake entry mentions the powdered-sugar-covered delight can be found at carnivals, fairs, and seaside towns. Lo and behold, seaside towns have their own Wikipedia page, with an exhaustive list of such places all across the world.