I bought bones for soup and found them labelled as sugar bones.
My search as to the origin of the name netted no online explanation beyond an inkling of a Yiddish connection:
Tziker is Yiddish for sugar. You bought sugar bones, which in Yiddish refer to the softer edible parts of the bone.
http://www.city-data.com/forum/judaism/1459189-ask-jew-thread-323.html#ixzz5rhx5v7pk
So I took myself to the library. Nothing about sugar bones in Zushe Yosef Blech, Kosher Food Production. Nothing in Jews and their foodways edited by Anat Helman. Nothing in the Encyclopedia Judaica. Nor in a number of English-Yiddish dictionaries.
In passing I learnt that fish remains degrade so completely as not to be readable in the archeological record (Lior Weissbrod, Guy Bar-Oz “The butchering patterns of Gamla and Yodefat : beginning the search for kosher practices” in Behaviour behind bones : the zooarchaeology of ritual, religion, status and identity edited by Sharyn Jones O’Day, Wim Van Neer and Anton Ervynck).
Did find another related description: “spongy beef bones” referenced in the recipe collected by Edda Servi Machlin for Brodo della Feste in The Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews.
Still hungry for that story …
And so for day 2454
01.09.2013