A pasta dish – once described by Lawson as an "old fave of mine" – has lost its original name in her books, Slut's Spaghetti, in favour of Slattern's Spaghetti.
The new choice of word for Lawson's pasta alla puttanesca reflects how the meaning of the word "slut" has evolved over time.
Originally slut had a similar meaning to slattern – typically referring to an untidy, slovenly woman – which persisted for centuries.
Chaucer, writing in the 14th century, made the first record use of the term – "sluttish" – to refer to the appearance of an untidy man in The Canterbury Tales.
It was only in the latter decades of the 20th century that the pejorative meaning, a sexually promiscuous woman, grew to become how the word was most widely understood.
Lawson recently explained how she came to devise the new name of her pasta dish in an introduction to the recipe on her website.
Writing that the dish had undergone "a slight name change" she asked readers to "humour" her explanation, after acknowledging the dish was "widely enough known" that it is not "really necessary" to translate the title.
She continued: "Although you will often see its Italian name explained as meaning 'whore's pasta' in English, the general consensus seems to be, however, that this is the sort of dish cooked by slatterns who don't go to market to get their ingredients fresh, but are happy to use stuff out of cans and jars."
Lawson credited a conversation with one of her Twitter followers, Jim Hewitt, at the start of August for helping her think of the new name for the dish.
She quoted one of his messages in the introduction to the recipe, which said: "On those days when my mum couldn't be bothered to brush her hair and cooked dinner using whatever was in the cupboard she would say: 'Hush. I'm slatterning!'. This is perfect for a slatterning day."
Lawson has previously spoken publicly about her feminist outlook and described how she wanted her writing to break the sexist stereotype that women should be the creators, but not the consumers, of food.
She said in 2019: "I don't think cooking is a woman's moral duty, yet, to disparage an activity because it has traditionally been in the female arena is in itself anti-feminist.
"One of the reasons I started writing about food is because women my age were frightened of cooking, of being shackled to the kitchen.
"The ability to cook and keep oneself alive, to me, is a symbol of independence. And this fact is not dependent on one's gender."
Lawson declined to comment further on her renamed recipes.
