When Peter Quennell was sent down from Oxford for consorting with a woman called Cara (by Evelyn Waugh’s account), he joined Sacheverell Sitwell on honeymoon in Amalfi. I don’t know what Mrs Sitwell thought of it.
I learnt this odd fact because I was seeing what connection his name had with quenelles, the fashionable dish like rissoles or gefilte fish traditionally made with pike in Nantua in France. Their quenelles are big — no fiddling around with spoons — and covered in crayfish sauce. They may be better eaten on location than tried at home.
Anyway, there is no connection. The surname Quennell comes from the Old English cwen, meaning ‘woman’, and hild, ‘battle’.
As for quenelles, there was a row in France in 2013 when a comedian popularised a gesture that he said meant ‘glisser une petite quenelle dans le fond’.
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