Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro cartoon, with yet another pun on the name of a rock band; this time it’s Rage Against the Machine that’s being punned on:
(#1) Wayno’s title: “Tomato Based Ideology”, alluding to the fact that what’s commonly called ragu (or Bolognese sauce) in the US is tomato-based (and sometimes meatless, as in the “traditional” variety of the commercial brand RAGÚ), though classic Italian ragù (aka Bolognese sauce) is a meat-based sauce with only a bit of tomato in it, and though the most common US name for meatless tomato-based pasta sauce is just spaghetti sauce (in fancier settings, AmE marinara sauce) (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)
The text in the speech balloon — with a RATM anti-corporate political message — coming from a thoroughly American source, emphasizes the meaty side of (some) American ragu; this is ragu used to name what is mostly called just spaghetti sauce in the US (a tomato-based sauce with substantial amounts of browned minced meat, usually ground beef, in it), though in fancier settings this everyday pasta sauce might be billed as AmE Bolognese sauce.
Obviously, food naming in this domain is a gigantic rat’s nest, but vocabulary isn’t the point of the cartoon, the band name pun is, so I’ll put off the lexicography for the moment and focus first on the pun and the rock band.
The pun.
model rage /reǰ/ vs. pun ragu /rægú/
Phonologically, these are quite distant. But orthographically, both are RAG + a final vowel-letter. So we have here a fine example of an orthographically based pun, a play on words as they are printed rather than as they are spoken.
The rock band. From Wikipedia:
Rage Against the Machine (often abbreviated as RATM or shortened to Rage) was an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1991, the group consisted of vocalist Zack de la Rocha, bassist and backing vocalist Tim Commerford, guitarist Tom Morello, and drummer Brad Wilk. The band was known for melding heavy metal and rap music with punk rock and funk influences, as well as their left-wing views
(#2) Rage Against the Machine, fists raised, in 2007; left to right: Tim Commerford, Zack de la Rocha, Brad Wilk, and Tom Morello; de la Rocha and Morello are caricatured in #1
(And yes, Commerford is given to performing shirtless, to display his lean and muscular body.)
The Bizarro band name pun run. [model] Rage Against the Machine vs. [pun] Ragu Against the Machine seems to be #5 in the series. Earlier on this blog:
9/9/20: Blue Öyster Cult vs. Red Löbster Cult
2/14/22: Metallico (+ calico cat) vs. Metalico Cat
9/16/23: AC/DC vs. AC/BC
1/24/24: AC/DC vs. Icy/DC
The rat’s nest of vocabulary. With some initial exploration above. Here I’ll pull out some more stuff from the rat’s nest, with attempt at completeness, even for AmE. I’ll start with an Italian-oriented Wikipedia entry:
Bolognese sauce (known in Italian as ragù alla bolognese, ragù bolognese, or simply ragù) is a meat-based sauce in Italian cuisine, typical of the city of Bologna. It is customarily used to dress tagliatelle al ragù and to prepare lasagne alla bolognese.
Italian ragù alla bolognese is a slowly cooked meat-based sauce, and its preparation involves several techniques, including sweating, sautéing and braising. Ingredients include a characteristic soffritto of onion, celery and carrot, different types of minced or finely chopped beef, often alongside small amounts of fatty pork. White wine, milk, and a small amount of tomato paste or tomato sauce are added, and the dish is then gently simmered at length to produce a thick sauce.
Outside Italy, the phrase “Bolognese sauce” is often used to refer to a tomato-based sauce to which minced meat has been added; such sauces typically bear little resemblance to Italian ragù alla bolognese, being more similar in fact to ragù alla napoletana from the tomato-rich south of the country. Although in Italy ragù alla bolognese is not used with spaghetti (but rather with flat pasta, like tagliatelle), “spaghetti bolognese” has become a popular dish in many other parts of the world.
History: The origins of the Bolognese ragù are related to those of the French ragoût, a stew of ingredients reduced to small pieces, which became popular in the 18th century
You probably thought ragù and ragoût were only accidentally similar, and culinarily they don’t have much to do with one another, but they’re etymologically related. So it is with Bolognese sauce and bologna the luncheon meat; there’s no bologna in Bolognese, but etymologically their names are related via the Italian city of Bologna (see my 7/9/22 posting “Ravioli stuffed with Italian sausage”, which has a section on bologna / baloney).
And then there’s the AmE usage of spaghetti sauce for the American tomato-based sauce with browned ground beef, which has some culinary similarity to Italian ragù (bolognese) / Bolognese sauce and is sometimes referred to (in upscale contexts) as Bolognese sauce in AmE, or more aften as AmE marinara sauce (on this lexical item, see my 4/3/10 posting “Semantic change on the menu”, with a section on this item, and my 4/10/10 posting “More on marinara sauce”). Spaghetti sauce so used is a specialization of the N+N compound spaghetti sauce ‘sauce for (use on) spaghetti (or on pasta in general)’, to refer to the prime exemplar of such sauces in American culture. The general term and the specialized term then co-exist in AmE; to distinguish them in practice, you have to know the context.
This is all something of a mess, but then in 1946 a company was founded (by Italian immigrants) in Rochester NY to market a tomato sauce for spaghetti, a sauce they named (with a bow to ragù bolognese, which is, I remind you, not a tomato sauce), oh alas, RAGÚ (note the change in accent mark); eventually the company offered a wide variety of sauces, primarily for pasta and mostly tomato-based. In particular:
(#3) RAGÚ traditional spaghetti sauce
The ingredients list: tomato puree (water, tomato paste), salt, olive oil, sugar, dehydrated onions, dehydrated garlic, spices, garlic powder, onion powder. Note that this “traditional” sauce has no meat at all (though the company does make sauces with meat in them).
This would be a good place to stop. My head hurts.
xx