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This is the illusionist in which I, Helen Salzman, post-languages bail. It's food season at the illusionist. The other day, KFC tested out its first plant based chicken products. Well, chicken this chicken really.

They didn't get fancy with terminology, but a lot of brands do when they're coming up with products that aren't made of the thing they sound like they're made with.

Today's episode is about those knock dogs. Palmer Shams, Approximates, Mimetic, Imitations, T-bone Fakes, Venisonton, On with the show.

When is cheese not cheese? Or crab not crab? When it's crab with a K or cheese spelt with a Z?

Yes, that goes back to the 20s.

Welcome back to the show, Nancy Friedman. She's a branding consultant and name developer and she studies trends in product names.

The 1920s were kind of a big era for invented spellings, especially with Z and K.

Kasty Kakes was a K. That was the 1920s cheese it, C-H-E-E-Z hyphen it. 1921, they're cheesy crackers. Let's see, there's cheese with, which is a little newer, 1952.

These names have been around quite a while.

Is the idea with things like cheese, it's and cheese with, that it's a cheese-esque product, but it isn't technically cheese?

It's got some dairy, usually some kind of way product in it, but you're not meant to think that this is, first of all, it's not perishable the way cheese is.

So, yeah, they do have some family relationship to a cow, but it's not the pure product.

We have to remember that there was a time when that was a nifty thing. It was modern and scientific.

Does anyone go for cheese spelt with a triple E as a variant?

I haven't seen any brands that are doing that, but now I will look for them.

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