Is Nigella right to ditch ‘slut’ from her recipe name?

It’s the latest salvo in the culture war over the English language, but...

‘ What a shame to censor such sublime food ’

NO

WhAT food doesn’t taste better a tiny bit sluttier? To me, it means decadence and indulgence. A dish that’s a slut is the opposite to a calorie-counting diet number. You can’t be slutty and full of replacements and gluten-free alternatives. Slutty food is proud of every ingredient. how can that be bad?

A few angry people online claim nigella’s removal of the word ‘slut’ from her raspberry jelly recipe is somehow an attack on free speech.

I find this hilariously absurd. nigella is a culinary goddess and a trailblazer when it comes to language (let’s not forget her rebranding of the Mi-crowavé). So she’s free to name her food what she likes.

If she renamed her moreish brownies Piers Morgan’s Dingleberries, I’d eat just as many (although I wouldn’t recommend that as a marketing decision). But if nigella asked my opinion, I’d implore her to stick with ‘slut’.

Slutty food isn’t just a gimmick. It has history. Besides the neapolitan puttanesca, there are plenty of other celebrated dishes with ‘unsavoury’ names — French Canadians have cinnamon-roll pastries called Pet de Soeurs, or nun farts. In Germany, you have a blood sausage dish called Tote Oma, meaning dead grandma. Italians enjoy a salami called Palle del Nonno, meaning grandpa’s balls, and a whole host of pastries named after nipples (virgin’s, venus’s — they’re frankly obsessed).

Our own dear Spotted Dick pud continues to raise eyebrows. But wouldn’t it be a shame to censor these fabulous foods for fear they might give offence?

nigella told a follower on Twitter she had decided to cut the word as the meaning had changed since she first used it for her jelly and it had now ‘taken on a coarser, more cruel connotation’.

But whether she’s referring to the old use of the word to mean ‘lazy’ or the modern sexual sense, I don’t see it as an insult.

These days, a woman should be able to sleep around just as much as a man and not be judged differently.

Being slutty isn’t a bad thing and can even be used affectionately by friends. So, I think it’s time we reclaim the word, one delicious dessert at a time.

Rather than remove the term from our puddings, we should double down and use nigella’s sublime recipes to rebrand words that were once insults to women. I want to see a b**chy cheesecake, a diva creme brulee, a floozy chocolate gateau. Maybe nigella should set up a website dedicated to X-rated puddings. I can picture it now — Only Flans.