Ah, Terry, you wily old ... (etc...) -- aka the reference thread! :-)

[RathDarkblade]

In TFE, a type of food appears called Noggi. I was reading the entry about this in "The Ultimate Discworld Companion" this morning, where it's defined as "buckwheat dumplings stuffed with stuff."

Now, yes, TFE is mostly set in Uberwald (the equivalent of eastern Europe), which already has similar things like pelmeni and pierogi). But with a name like 'noggi', it's hard not to think about gnocchi, isn't it?

The trouble is that gnocchi (or a gnocchi-like food) should really come from Brindisi, not Uberwald. Then again, one ingredient in gnocchi is wheat flour, whereas pelmeni and pierogi are made from unleavened dough. So maybe Terry only thought about this pune after writing Maskerade? Does anyone know?

If anyone's wondering, here's the quote. Vimes asks ...

'... Is there any supper?'

'There'th fresh walago*, noggi†, thclot‡, thwinefleth and thauthageth,' said Igor, still clearly upset about the trophies. 'I'll thop tomorrow, if her ladythip giveth me inthtructionth.'

'Is swineflesh the same as pork?' said Vimes. People in drought-stricken areas would have paid good money to have Igor pronounce 'sausages'.

'Yes,' said Inigo.

'And what's in the sausages?'

'Er . . . meat?' said Igor, looking as though he was ready to run.

'Good. We'll give them a try.'

_______________________________________
* A kind of pastry made from curtains.
† Buckwheat dumplings stuffed with stuff.
‡ Bread made from parsnips, and widely considered to be much tastier than the dull wheat kind.

 

[Tonyblack]

It could be a reference to gnocchi, or maybe just a type of food that sounds vaguely foreign. I'm more inclined to the latter. Wiki tells me that gnocchi was the name of a food that dates back to Roman times and was introduced by the Legions during their conquest of Europe. So I wonder if it was originally a Germanic food with an Italian spin.

 

[=Tamar]

No clue here, except that "wheat" and "unleavened" are not necessarily opposites.
Also, Noggi may be made like gnocchi but the footnote says it's made with buckwheat, whereas gnocchi is made with wheat. Buckwheat is not even related to wheat.
There may be another subtle element, since Walago is pastry made from curtains, which are usually made of cloth, and one meaning of "stuff" is "cloth" so Noggi may be stuffed with cloth. Swineflesh doesn't necessarily imply that it's cooked, and in Uberwald, that's an important distinction.

Vimes did well to choose sausages; at least there's a good chance that they were cooked.

 

[RathDarkblade]

Hmm ... I looked up dumplings made from buckwheat and found Staerzelen, buckwheat dumplings from Luxembourg, of all places. *shrug* Still, it can't be a coincidence that pTerry chose to call them "noggi". Maybe he was referring to them, but chose a name that sounds like gnocchi, to throw us off the scent?

 

[=Tamar]

He did say several times that he preferred to use things that he could find three separate instances of, so there wouldn't be one definitive source. So, dumplings are fairly cross-cultural, use an ingredient from one place, a name from another but spell it differently, place it somewhere else, and watch people flounder trying to nail it down to one allusion.