Why did my coworker think I didn’t know what a swiss roll is?

[Anonymous]

Dont you know what one is aha? She was explaining something we can do for the kids & it involved a swiss roll & she asked me if i knew lol. i feel that its equivalent to asking about a what a donut is.

[abc3643]

A lot of people DON'T know what a Swiss roll is. I didn't until I was in my 40s or later, I think.

I grew up in the New York City metropolitan area. I had no idea of the phrase "Swiss roll". However, what I later learned was a Swiss roll were, to me, "Yodels" because I grew up eating Drake's Yodels. I didn't make the connection between "Yodel" and "Switzerland" and had no idea of a Swiss roll.

Drakes was a dominant baker of cakes and such in the northeast USA and especially NYC area.

Hostess, a more national firm, made an equivalent of a Yodel: It is called a "Ho-Ho". So, again, I didn't know even the term "Swiss Roll".

There were other bakery's products on store shelves but not as dominant as Drakes and Hostess:

Dolly Madison, whose commercials involved characters from "Peanuts" (aka Charlie Brown), became owned by Hostess, but they didn't make Swiss rolls. They were famous for Zingers.

Another baker primarily in the northeast was Tastykake bassed out of Philadelphia. They DID make "Swiss rolls", but their products were very rare where I lived.

Again, Drake's was the bakery in the northeastern part of the USA so we usually ate Drake's over Hostess.

It wasn't until I moved to upstate NY for college that I discovered Little Debbie's. Their Swiss roll was actually called "Swiss rolls". But, to me, I didn't think anything of it because, for all I knew, that was a made-up name like "Yodel" or "Ho-Ho".

But, I was 45 when I learned about "Bûche de Noël" as my wife and I bought one for Christmas in 2008. I told my wife "It looks like a giant Yodel." but she grew-up in Saint Louis and didn't know about Yodels; she had Ho-Hos from Hostess, so I had to explain to her about Drake's and Yodels. So, I was intrigued by the Bûche de Noël and looked it up on the web. It was described as a "Swiss roll" and so I began to surf...

... and THAT's when I realized what a Swiss roll was. So, there. I was 45 when I finally connected all the dots realizing that a "Swiss roll" was a baked good like bagels and doughnuts.

Bûche de Noël = Swiss roll = Ho-Ho = Yodel.