While we're at it let's remove the jargon from other trades, too.
"P-trap" is a confusing word that plumbers use, we should instead have them say "gas barrier". And the word "fuse" makes very little sense in an electrical context—try explaining to someone who's never seen a stick of dynamite why the "overcurrent stopper" is named after a long gunpowder-infused cord! Traffic engineers shouldn't refer to "groups of cars" as "platoons" (they're not in the military!), and software developers should stop talking about "DDOS" and just say "lots of computers hitting my server at once"!
In all seriousness: jargon exists because it's useful to be able to refer to something that you use a lot conscisely and precisely. Your proposed replacements are not concise or precise, and they only solve the non-problem of people not understanding the etymology of the jargon. Part of learning a trade is learning the jargon associated with it, and that's true for every trade.
I get your reasoning but still why use food terms for jargon in UX instead of something else.
Your example of a "P-trap" is good but its not like plumbers are going around saying, get me the "slinky hotdog" to bend a copper pipe, or you need a "banoffee pie" to seal this joint.
Why does it matter to you where the jargon came from? Why are vaguely shape-related jargon and military-derived jargon and acronyms okay but you draw the line at toast?
I would argue that FUBAR, P-trap, Dequeue, HALO are going to have a less likelihood of a context collision than borrowing an existing word that is ubiquitous in society.
For example in Google
"toast"
"toast menu"
"toast ux"
All yield different results
However "p-trap" gets you a narrowed list of results
"Platoon" turns up military answers until I specify traffic. And I'm actually not at all sure what meaning of "HALO" you're referring to—it must be jargon not in my vocabulary, but for me it refers to a thing angels have and to a video game.
Again, it seems like you're inconsistent in applying your frustration with jargon. You're frustrated with jargon in an adjacent profession to yours, but don't seem to apply the same logic to professions that are entirely unrelated or to your own jargon.
Hold on, how is "hero" a food metaphor? I mean, I understand that there are some regional dialects that use that name for a "submarine" sandwich (and there are many other names for it), but I can't fathom how a full-screen image at the top of a website has any metaphorical connection to that. To me, that makes even less sense than the idea that such an image somehow is supposed to do a heroic job of advocating for whatever is the main point of the page (unironically my prior mental model!).
It's not a food metaphor, nor is it about displaying something heroic, although that's much closer. "Hero image" comes from "hero props" which "are the more detailed pieces intended for close inspection by the camera or audience. ... The name refers to their typical use by main characters in a production." [0]
Since the name arises from use by a hero, then to extend the metaphor by direct analogy, the actual hero is the overall article/content in which a hero image is contained.
That said, a "hero sandwich" is that which "one needed to be a hero to finish" [1] so does all tie back to the idea of heroism regardless.
Rather than trying to solve that communication problem, why not just label the menu with an actually descriptive icon? I assume that this icon is supposed to convey "there is a menu under here", via the horizontal bars abstractly representing menu items. But to me that's a vastly less clear visual language than even MacOS 6 offered me in the 80s, even limited to 16x16 black-and-white icons.
Menus are supposed to have titles so that you know what's in them, not just that there is something in them. It's especially obnoxious to see a hamburger menu next to other icons that happen to be for other menus. First off, this fails to convey that they even are menus, and not, say, buttons. But it's especially obnoxious trying to guess what menu items the hamburger menu might contain. Even if you decipher the other icons, you're left with speculating about all conceivable menu items, and then applying process of elimination.
I’ve been a developer (primarily back end) and I never heard the term toast until now. Perhaps I’m just simple, or maybe I stopped paying attention after “hamburger menu.” I’m probably too old to hang out with the cool kids anymore.
As a developer who started with jQuery and then Backbone.js it seems like frontend dev has become very rich but at the same time has developed some weird esoteric rituals and practices which don't seem to go with conventional software engineering.
I'm curious as to how you're defining 'conventional software engineering' here; can you give some examples of things that are not conventional software engineering in the front end?
Front end is more specific than conventional – it has a graphical output, and is thus closer to 2D game development than to the “conventional” data structures and algorithms way of programming.
As a backend developer this stuff is mind-boggling, just call it "notification widget", or a "confirmation widget" etc.
Try explaining what toast is to an Indian subcontractor who has never eaten toasted bread in their life and then apply that to the UX usecase.
Removing these terms will also improve accessibility and understanding for junior developers entering the frontend world.