It has become trendy to use the names of foods wrong. Calling a casserole a cobbler, for example, or a meat pie an empanada.

We use food names to identify the form of the dish, and using them correctly helps people know what you are talking about.

Using them wrong is just plain dumb. It shows a lack of intellect, and fails entirely to convey a sense of fashion.

We love food. We love GOOD food. When you call it by a name that is incorrect, we think you are stupid, and we don't want to try your recipe. We are pretty certain if we do, you'll do something else stupid also, like telling us to use low salt, or try a vegan version, or to throw away the bacon fat.

Be smart instead.

• Cobbler - Fruit or custard dessert. NOT a meat dish or pot pie or casserole. May have crust on top, or may have the caky part put down first so it rises through the fruit as it bakes.
• Buckle - Shortcake or sweet biscuit dough, with jam or jelly stirred lightly through in steaks, and baked golden. In Great Britain it may be classed as a type of Pud (Pudding).
• Torte - Layered dessert with cake layer, classically with cake cubes. May also be a layered cake with very thin cake and filling layers. If small they are Petit Fours, typically dipped in chocolate.
• Parfait - Layered sweet dessert (think pudding, jello, whipped cream) without cake, though may be topped with cookie crumbs or nuts. Usually served in individual cups that show the layers, but may be assembled in a torte bowl and served by spooning out.
• Empanada - Fruit or custard dessert with SUGARED surface. NOT a meat pie.
• Flauta - Dessert with fruit or custard. NOT meat, and NOT a Taquito.
• Taquito - Rolled and fried tortilla with taco meat inside.
• Crepe - Very thin pancake, leavened or not, rolled up with sweet or savory fillings, usually topped with syrup, sauce, orwhipped cream.
• Dumpling - Light floating biscuit boiled in soup. NOT a thick chewy noodle. Lumplings are never dumplings.
• Potsticker - Meat and vegetables wrapped in thin Pasta, NOT properly a dumpling.
• Wonton - Small squares of Pasta, filled with meat.
• Enrobe - Often mistakenly called dumplings, a fruit desert with fruit wrapped in pastry, and baked plain or in syrup. Example, Apple Dumplings.
• Slice - This is a fruit dessert (and ONLY dessert) with THIN SLICED fruit. It is NOT a bar cookie, a cobbler, or a casserole. The word "slice" refers to the fruit on it, NOT to the shape or style of the cut serving.
• Danish Pastry - Fruit or sweet cheese filled flaky layered sweet pastry, sometimes just the pastry layered with sugar and spice, or sprinkled with sugar or dribbled with icing. NOT a savory, and NOT a croissant.
• Strudel - Sweet dessert with fruit or sweet cheese filled puff pastry. NOT a savory, and NEVER with Kraut.
• Croissant - Properly a bread dough that is layered with butter, and baked crispy. Modern renditions are usually not crispy but soft and airy. While Croissant is French for Crescent, it does not follow that every roll that is shaped as a Crescent is a Croissant - it requires the layers of butter to be truly a Croissant.
• Pie - May have one or two crusts, top or bottom. Classic crusts are pie pastry. Pot pies may have biscuit or batter crusts, but NOT a battered bottom crust (biscuit on the bottom and sweet filling poured on top, then baked so the crust rises through the filling - that is a cobbler, if it is savory, it is a casserole). Pies may be sweet, or savory.
• Hand Pies, Turnovers, Pockets - May be made of many kinds of crust - bread, biscuit, pasta, or pastry. May be sweet or savory, meat or vegetable, fruit, cheese, or pudding. Anything goes in it.
• Pasty - Meat and vegetables wrapped in pastry, NOT with gravy. Never a dessert.
• Clanger - Meat and veggies on one end, sweet pie on the other end.
• Stromboli - Layered savory meat and cheese, may have pastry or bread wrapped around it, or rolled up with some inside. NEVER dessert, and NEVER vegan.
• Wellington - Meat wrapped in puff pastry, sometimes just pie pastry, but NOT other crusts. NEVER a dessert, and NEVER vegan.
• Tart - Mini pie with bottom crust, usually thin, OR a wrapped tart that encloses the filling (baked apple dumpling). May be sweet or savory.
• Casserole or Cassoulet - Any baked dish with mixed ingredients, USUALLY with more than one layer.
• Pizza - Savory, not fruit. Baked, not assembled and eaten cold. (Layered fruit is a tart, not a pizza.)
• Lasagna - Savory, not sweet, served hot. Lasagna is never dessert.
• Bread Pudding - Sweet, NEVER savory. This is a dessert. Cubed bread with uncooked custard poured over it, then baked until set. Often has raisins or other dried fruit in it, vanilla or cinnamon sweet.
• Strata - Savory, layers of eggy bread with savory meat layer, usually topped with cheese, or cheese in layers. May use whole bread slices, or bread cubes.
• Dressing - Various forms including cubed bread, even with eggs, this is still called Dressing. May be rice, nuts, boiled grain, various breads, or other savory ingredients. If baked in the bird, or with the meat, it is Stuffing, not Dressing.
• Pudding - A wide variety of boiled, baked, or stirred dishes, both savory and sweet, depending on which side of the Pond you are on.
• Brownies - Chocolate. ONLY CHOCOLATE. Not blondies, not caramelies, not cheesecakies, not spinach bars, not ANYTHING BUT CHOCOLATE!!! We do Marble Brownies sometimes. But Brownies are ALWAYS BROWN, and NEVER HAVE VEGETABLES!
• Cake, Kuchen - Sweet dessert or pan cooked breakfast quickbread. NOT A PIZZA!!! NOT BREAD!
• Bon-Bons - Desserts. Candies. Ice Cream or sweet filling inside chocolate. NEVER SAVORY. We do NOT make Haggis Bon-Bons, those are croquettes, or bombs, or meatballs.