Today on Monday Mysteries we find the real meaning of a food idea that turns out to be another Bad Idee in German.

This being the lead-up period before Lent, the bakeries were stuffed full with all kinds of Berliners (jelly doughnuts) over the weekend. There were ones topped with gummi-bear style Christmas trees – and no, I don’t know why; others filled with “pudding” — again, not sure why; and of course the regular ones filled with a red jelly.

As I stood at the counter waiting to buy some bread, though, I did a double-take when I looked down at the display.   Could I be reading a name right for the name of a type of Berliner?

As it turns out, the answer was yes.  It was a Berliner made with a yeast-dough filled with plum jelly and topped with powdered sugar mixed with poppy seeds. It was an homage to a type of dessert popular in Austria, apparently, where yeast-dough dumplings are called Knödel for short, and there’s a popular dessert with that plum jelly and poppy-seed filling.

Well, actually … the full-name for this dish in German really contains the word for “yeast” as well. “Yeast” in German is Germ, so the dish is called Germknödel.

Yup, these doughnuts I saw were called Germknödel Berliners.

Germknödel Berliner, Tübingen

We tried one, despite the name. I must say, though, I had a hard time getting past the meaning of sound-alike English word when I saw the unfortunate sprinkle of little black dots on top. Definitely the Germ of a bad idea — as it were — for the name of a food in German when looked at from a native English speaker’s perspective.