Dictionary term for tiny orange slices?

January 10, 2009 11:03 AM

WordFilter: Is there a word/term for the tiny slices of oranges that are found between the regular sized slices? Grandma Hollis calls them "Santa Clauses." Does an actual dictionary term exist?
posted by Etta Hollis to Food & Drink (7 answers total)

I don't know if there's an actual term, but I think it was M.F.K. Fisher who referred to them as "kisses".

This strikes me as just the kind of thing for which there are countless nicknames and no real term at all.
posted by padraigin at 11:10 AM on January 10, 2009

I just took a knife skills class this morning. Chef called them "leftovers".
posted by classa at 11:13 AM on January 10, 2009

In the case of navel oranges, the small slices that develop at the navel end are the remains of an underdeveloped conjoined twin that results from the same mutation that makes navel oranges seedless. "Underdeveloped conjoined twin slices" is kind of an ungainly term, though it would be accurate.
posted by jedicus at 11:21 AM on January 10, 2009 [3 favorites]

We always called them baby oranges. This leads to all sorts of jokes about eating babies. I love it when you get a freak orange that's like half baby oranges. Love those things.
posted by peep at 12:55 PM on January 10, 2009

Also, what about the little tiny pepper-like things growing INSIDE bell peppers?? I call them "pepper babies" and people look at me like I'm a freakin' weirdo. I'm glad other people make eating babies jokes.
posted by KateHasQuestions at 10:43 PM on January 10, 2009

Vestigial segments?
posted by pseudostrabismus at 10:58 PM on January 10, 2009

It's funny that jedicus mentions this, because I was just telling my husband that my father calls those orange segments at the bottom of a navel orange "the abortion", which he claims was what all the kids called it at his Catholic K-12 school. I never knew about the conjoined twin thing until just now, and now that morbid joke makes a lot more sense.
posted by crinklebat at 8:20 PM on January 11, 2009