this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
41 points (97.7% liked)

Creepy Wikipedia

3946 readers
5 users here now

A fediverse community for curating Wikipedia articles that are oddly fascinating, eerily unsettling, or make you shiver with fear and disgust

image

Guidelines:
  1. Follow the Code of Conduct

  2. Do NOT report posts YOU don't consider creepy

  3. Strictly Wikipedia submissions only

  4. Please follow the post naming convention: Wikipedia Article Title - Short Synopsis

  5. Tick the NSFW box for submissions with inappropriate thumbnails.

  6. Please refrain from any offensive language/profanities in the posts titles, unless necessary (e.g. it's in the original article's title).

Mandatory:

If you didn't find an article "creepy," you must announce it in the thread so everyone will know that you didn't find it creepy

image

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 11 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The traditional way French gourmands eat ortolans is to cover their heads and face with a large napkin or towel while consuming the bird. The purpose of the towel is debated. Some claim it is to retain the maximum aroma with the flavour as they consume the entire bird at once, others have stated "Tradition dictates that this is to shield – from God's eyes – the shame of such a decadent and disgraceful act", and others have suggested the towel simply hides the consumers spitting out bones.

Hide your sins from God with this one weird trick!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

In Swabia, in southern Germany, there is a dish called Maultaschen, meat filled dumplings, which are also called Herrgottsbescheißerle ("Lord God Cheaters"), as the meat is wrapped in dough to be invisible to god.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Was that to get around the no meat on Fridays rule? Could have just eaten an otter (it lives in water, so it must be a fish).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yes, in the past there were a lot of days were it was forbidden to eat meat, not only on Fridays and during the 40 days before Easter.
Also beaver and turtle counted as fish.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Bescheißerle - shitters? That's great.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yes, jemanden bescheißen would literally translate "to shit onto somebody", but it usually means jemanden betrügen i.e. "to cheat/betray somebody", so Bescheißerle literally would translate to "shitters" but mean "cheaters".

Cheating the rules imposed by the church somehow has tradition, e.g. a Pharisäer (Pharisees) is a coffe with rum and whipped cream, similarly to an Irish Coffee.

[–] decadentrebel 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Trivia: This makes an appearance on an episode of Succession, right down to the towel covering practice. That's how I found out about it to begin with.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

I saw it first as a gag Roger did on American Dad and was then surprised to learn it was real when I saw later on Succession.

[–] teft 5 points 2 months ago

Billions has an ortolan scene also.

[–] Protoknuckles 6 points 2 months ago

Where the fuck do chefs come up with this shit!? Between this and foi gras, I'm beginning to think there's bird torture fetishists in the culinary world.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

We had this very famous tv chef in the 90s. We still have weird archive videos of her doing weird shits like trying to kill slippery eels with a rolling pin.

Well, there’s this one where she is eating an ortolan, covering herself with a napkin and pulling weird and now famous comments like « oh it’s hot », « that sound is the bones under my teeth » or « I like to suck the grease out of its butt ».

Even for us French that is something.

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=SEPMuyGe7dg

What a time eh