‘Shake’ and ‘quake’ foods

Early this morning a mild earthquake startled NYC-area residents. While this level of quake wouldn’t cause a Californian to bat an eyelash, it is much less common to occur on the East Coast so it caught people’s attention. Where I live has about the lowest possibility of earthquakes in the continental U.S., so if one were to strike here everyone would be very surprised. All this talk of quaking and shaking got me thinking about foods that revolve around the words shake or quake, and while there are many, the numbers are fewer than I expected.

For starters there are the famous Shake-n-Bake breading kits you can buy in the store, and I thought there would be a bevy of online copycat recipes in the EYB Library. However, I was mistaken. I could only find one: Homemade shake and bake chicken. But really, what is Shake-n-Bake other than some breadcrumbs and seasoning plus a bag? There are plenty of breaded chicken recipes available online in the Library, 3,882 to be exact. Likewise I was disappointed in the number of “shake” beverage recipes available online, a mere 263. The final class of recipes that relate to shake is that of shaking beef, with 31 online recipes.

Turning to quake, there are but three online recipes that involve a form of that word, all of them quaking pudding. If you turn away from the titles and went with foods that possess the characteristic of shaking, you can find more than 1,600 recipes for puddings (as in the wobbly gelatin type, not the British catch-all term for dessert). Of course we can’t forget our good friend Jell-o, and the 91 online “jello” recipes.