Funistrada
fictional food item
Funistrada is a fictitious food item. The term was inserted in a U.S. Army survey of soldiers circa 1974 regarding their food preferences. Funistrada, along with a fake vegetable dish called "buttered ermal" and a fake meat dish called "braised trake", was inserted "to provide an estimate of how much someone will respond to a word which sounds like a food name or will answer without reading."
Funistrada scored higher in popularity than eggplant, lima beans, and cranberry juice. All three fake items, however, had the highest percentage of "never tried" responses.
Appearances
Bill Bryson cited the food in his 1990 book Mother Tongue as an example of a word that is made up for a specific purpose.
It appears in CHOW: A Cook's Tour of Military Food by Paul Dickson.
A restaurant in Northern Michigan has used the name Trattoria Funistrada since 2000.
A Breeders' Cup horse took the name in 1985.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Funistrada” as fictional food item. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as fictional food item. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5509197. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1974, 1990, 2000 and 1985.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Funistrada”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Funistrada primary sources, Funistrada archive and Funistrada research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Funistrada”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Funistrada” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.