An alternate title for today’s Food on Friday post could also be “when a Bismarck is not a Berliner by any other name.”

The Wikipedia entry for the Berliner food item notes that in some places in North America, the term “Bismarck” is used to refer to this type of jelly or custard-filled confection. I know that I’ve heard the term Bismarck used to mean some kind of doughnut, but I can’t place where I heard it. It certainly wasn’t commonly used anywhere that I recall living. However, Wikipedia claims that’s the term for a jelly-doughnut in the Midwestern states in the U.S., such as Iowa, where I lived for many years. So maybe that’s where I heard it — after all, Wikipedia can’t be wrong, right?

Until today, that was the only use of Bismarck as a food item that I was familiar. But then this morning I was back at that Friday outdoor market, and back at the same fish stand where I got the “fish roll” last week.  I had made up my mind to try one of the herring offerings this week, just to see what they were like since I know they are quite popular around here.

Now, I know I often joke about the “sacrifices” I make for the blog when tasting food items, but since in the past I haven’t really liked herring, having a herring fish roll to report on for the blog actually threatened to be true sacrifice on my part. I’m just saying.

Anyway,  I perused the signs that detailed the different offerings for herring rolls. one type listed was a Bismarckherring Brötchen. Hmm, Bismarckherring; I wondered  what kind of herring that was. The little old lady a few places ahead of me in line ordered one, but I couldn’t quite see what went on the roll.  But hey, I’m game to try anything once.  So, I stepped right up and ordered my Bismarckherring Brötchen.  The clerk slit open a somewhat flat kaiser-style roll, took a huge slab of herring filet from a container, added some raw onions on top, and wrapped it up.

This, as it turns out after looking on the internet just now, is one of the traditional ways to serve Bismarckherring, a name that turns out to be nothing more than the German term for “pickled herring”. Ah – exactly the type of herring I never liked in the past. I find it’s just all pickle flavor and not much else.

For the Brötchen version I got today, there was nothing else on the roll this time as a spread: no horseradish-flavored sauce or anything else. After tasting it “as is”, as it were, I added some mayonnaise at home to make it a little more palatable. Ultimately, though, I barely made it through half of the Bismarckherring. Ah well. Not all of these taste testings are a huge success.  But at least now I know what it is. You can thank me later, either for finding out where to get it if you like that sort of thing, or for being able to steer you past it if you don’t.

Now, as a reward for testing out the Bismarckherring, I had gone to a bakery and purchased a new-to-me type of Berliner, which for all you folks in the Midwest would be your kind of Bismarck. I.e., I bought a jelly doughnut, except this one didn’t have jelly inside, it had custard, and was covered in vanilla icing. Now, I like a lot of the Berliners here, but this one was rather disappointing – the icing wasn’t sweet, and the custard had no real flavor. I only ate a bit of that. Not my most successful food trials today.

So today’s “Bismarck”-themed foods turned out to be a bit of bust.

But then again … maybe the “Bismarck diet” could be my next diet best-selling book. All you have to do each day is order one savory Bismarck thing and one sweet Bismarck thing, and then eat no more than half of each of them for lunch. You’d probably lose weight that way. Well, as long as you didn’t then eat another pastry you bought as backup, the way I did today. 😉

I guess the Bismarck diet needs more work; so I will vow to press on with my research. Well, at least the research that involves tasting more jelly doughnuts. You’re on your own with the herring.

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Speaking of jelly doughnuts, did you hear that they found a jelly doughnut on Mars?

Well, at least the guy in this video says that what they found a rock on Mars that is white with a deep red color in the middle, which looks like a jelly doughnut. That’s his description, not mine.

I wonder what the Martian word is for jelly doughnut.