Take a deep-fried tour through the culinary hellscape of America

There are gross things with pretty names, like Rocky Mountain oysters, which are not oysters at all (they’re fried testicles), or Ambrosia salad, which is just an overwhelmingly sweet fruit salad. But some are secretly scrumptious things with nasty names, like Delaware’s slippery dumplings, which are much tastier than their name and appearance suggest.

Plenty of fried shit makes the list, of course. This is America, after all. Fried brain sandwiches, lamb testicles, rattlesnake, intestines, butter, squirrel—you name it, someone somewhere has probably tried frying it. It’s a tradition as American as apple pie… or New Haven clam pie, which isn’t pie so much as a pizza, but it isn’t really pizza either. It’s clams layered on top of a white-sauced pizza, and it looks like a hot mess. But we can confirm that it’s a very delicious take on pizza. Food, like people and low-budget sci-fi movies, must not be judged on its looks.