Majorcan Pluck

I've just got back from Majorca, where, as I don't speak Spanish, I spent much time attempting to read menus by guessing the etymological roots. This is a dangerous way to order your meal, although scorpion fish turns out to be delicious.

Some restaurants, of course, had menus in English for linguistically incapable people like me. But these can be just as mysterious. The Es Turo restaurant had a starter which was called, in English, Marjorcan Pluck.

This puzzled me for a while. Was it Majorcan bravery that I would get? Or left over chicken feathers? So I ordered it on the basis that daring is the better part of gastronomy. When it arrived I suddenly realised that English etymology would have told me what it was. I really had got a plate of Marjorcan bravery, or, more precisely, Marjorcan guts.

Pluck is an old term for the innards, which are plucked out of an animal when it's butchered. Some brave people have heart, some have balls, but most have guts, or to use a synonym pluck. Thus people who are brave are gutsy, or plucky.

So next time you read of a plucky hero, remember he's delicious.

It was offally good.

The Inky Fool knows how to deal with waiters