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15 British Foods Hated Internationally
I stumbled across this on Yahoo but can not figure how to link it here. It originates on the Ask web site and as an American I take issue with some of the food listed as probably very good. The names are funny and original things like,Bedfordshire Clanger ,Cranachan , Cullen Skink ,Rumbledethumps , Stargazy Pie [ The fish heads sticking out of the crust was a bit much for me.]
There are more but I leave the audience to look this up, The one question I have is how could the word Pudding drift so far away from its original definition, between our respective countries. What is the definition of Pudding among the British zone of habitation?
Huggles
Mishele.
Comments
Pudding
Mmmm. Pudding. I guess this is one subject that is going to have advocates in all directions.
I think of pudding as being an after-main-course dish that is usually served hot and can come with custard or cream or some kind of sweet sauce. I would not consider such a dish to be a pudding if there was any pastry crust on the top, that's a pie.
OF COURSE there are exceptions! The most obvious one being Yorkshire pudding, which is usually served with a main course and is a sort of baked pancake.
There is also Steak and Kidney pudding, which I think gets its name from the fact that it is steamed, which is also what you do to most, but not all, sweet puddings.
As always, I am a UK southerner and they probably have different ideas up t'north. Let battle commence!
Penny
PS Stargazy Pie - the fish heads are for decoration, you're not supposed to eat them!
Since You Mentioned It...
You said British, which would include the Scots, so Haggis and Bridies, both of which I have had, could be added to the mix. I have made Scottish Bridies. They are better than haggis, but that's not hard to achieve.
HW Coyle
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
Mis-understood foods
Here's the link 15 British Foods Americans Will Never Understand
The foods listed are almost all Scottish or Cornish. The weird names come about as Gaelic is the dialect spoken, and used to give names to foodstuffs for centuries.
While we're on the subject - Amercican foods foreigners find gross
Somewhat right
There's probably a good half-dozen items on that list of American foods that I can't stand either, starting with grits. But it's a regional thing, just like our passion for sacrificing burnt offerings every weekend in a ritual called barbecueing. I don't really care what others eat, as long as I can't smell it. I'm just surprised cotton candy wasn't mentioned, it certainly fits all the requirements to be junk food!
One thing puzzles me though, if Americans are such sugar junkies, how come it's the British that have the bad teeth? ;-)
They know they can survive
On American foods...
Bad article:
1) That's not CheezWhiz in the picture. CheezWhiz comes in a jar and is kind of disgusting to eat alone but has it's uses as a preprepared ingredient in something else, like nachos. The can of spray-on cheese glop is something else. People complain about American cheese being processed. Kind of like how mozzarella is processed by being brined, Swiss, Stilton, Roquefort, Limburger and Bleu are processed by being allowed to rot in particular ways. Even cheddar is processed by being allowed to get old. It's okay to dislike something but making up a reason that actually applies to almost all cheese is silly. American cheese is cheese prepared for a particular use, making toasted cheese sandwiches. It's good for that and it is good on hamburgers and bologna sandwiches but so are other cheeses. Real American cheese is actually hard to comeby now that the neighborhood butcher and the Gummint cheese programs are both defunct.
2) Those are some hideous looking grits. LOL. And I like grits; they are not supposed to be thin, lumpy and bright yellow. Grits are just maize porridge, they need salt, pepper and maybe a runny egg mixed in.
3) Velveeta is a processed cheese sauce sold in bricks. It is not a cheese. See 1). Velveeta works quite well for making some sauces, just like CheezWhiz does. Velveeta is the American equivalent of Vegemite or Bovril. :)
4) Hershey's. Every country's chocolate is different. Many Euro chocolates are better than Hersheys but none that compare on price are even half as good. Hershey's is cheap. And that is Halloween candy in the picture, no one expects that stuff to be good. American has good chocolates and Hershey's is better than some hard, waxy tasteless, EXPENSIVE, Swiss chocolates that I have had.
5) Red vines, I agree, disgusting but I guess it is personal taste. People used to eat lumps of alum as a treat. Seriously, they did.
6) Supermarket bread, meaning stuff like Wonder Bread, I suppose. No one is really disputing that this is awful stuff. Lots of supermarkets have bakeries that turn out decent bread, even if not as fabulous as can be had in actual bakeries, boulangeries and panaderias.
7) Casseroles. Okay, most casseroles are disgusting things prepared by people who don't cook. And Campbell's soups are not good ingredients.
8) Root beer float. Get used to how it looks and these are really, really good. If made with decent root beer and good ice cream. Compared to duck comfit, a French delicacy, root beer floats are really good.
9) Twizzlers. Never had them, I'm smarter than that.
10) Pop-tarts are too sweet. Way too sweet. They come in foil packages of two for no known reason, since no sensible person would eat more than one --maybe-- with some strong coffee.
11) Sno-cones. Better than fish paste spread on rusks but closer to zero nutritionally.
12) Beef jerky. That's not beef jerky in the picture, that's dried summer sausage packed in plastic. Good jerky is good, bad jerky is bad.
13) Corn dogs. Looks like a good one. May be an acquired taste. I would never put ketchup on one tho, the coating is slightly sweet and does not need more sugar.
14) The waitress was having the guy on as to what gravy is or the restaurant is a bad one. Good white gravy for biscuits is made the same way French white sauce is made and is essentially the same thing. Sausage bits are optional.
15) American bacon is more of a condiment than a meat. British style bacon is called Canadian bacon, back bacon or smoked and cured pork chops here. You can get it but not everywhere. For a real treat, try Mexican style cheek bacon. :)
16) Meat loaf is a pudding in the original meaning; a mixture. It's a sausage, kind of like haggis without the sheep stomach container. Good meat loaf is good, bad meat loaf is a crime against humanity. My mom made mediocre meatloaf but escaped prosecution because it was edible and meaty, if a little singed.
17) Breakfast cereals marketed to kids should be heavily taxed and perhaps sold only on black markets. But my local brand of oat circles is pretty good. They aren't sugared and I put cinnamon and blueberries on them instead of sugar. Good.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Not all casseroles are bad
nor do they define someone who can't cook. My mom makes an amazing potato casserole, and my dad's three bean casserole is incredible as well. Both require cooking, and a decent amount of prep work to get right.
Also, I have to agree on corn dogs being awful. Yeugh. Hot dogs are bad enough, so why NOT make them even worse by covering them in a sickeningly sweet batter and smothering the result in cheap mustard? On a stick.
Melanie E.
Biscuits and gravy...
I grew up eating that, as well as "soup beans and cornbread" (Pinto beans boiled with a bit of pork, preferably a ham hock and assorted seasonings) Typically we made the gravy with a bit of bacon grease left in the skillet from the bacon just fried in it, add a bit of flour and proceed to brown the flour in the grease. add some milk and simmer in the skillet till it's reduced to the proper consistency. pour over fresh made biscuits with eggs on the side and the bacon. good stuff.
It's a southern thing, or more accurately an Appalachian thing.
Ozarks, too
Growing up we ate a lot of beans and cornbread, so much that my brother and I joked that we didn't know we were poor; we thought we just liked beans. :)
I've made gravy for biscuits and... numerous ways, including with olive oil when I had nothing else. :) Best is to make it where you have fried a piece of country ham.
Redeye gravy is a southern thing, too. Same recipe as country gravy but use coffee instead of milk.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Yup
My family is from Arkansas, growing up as a kid, beans(Pinto cooked with bacon strips or a hamhock) and cornbread with a side of fried potato's and a tall glass of iced tea was what was usually on the menu most days.
My grandfather worked at a Rice Dryer, so quite often we also had rice dishes as well... instead of cereal in the mornings like most kids, i had a hot bowl of rice with a tad bit of milk, sugar and cinnamon sprinkled on top. Was really good.
Taters and Cush, not together
Fried potatoes, Arkansas style, are impossible to get in restaurants in California, though Coco's has something that is close. The secret is to cut them up into 1/2"x1/2"x1/4" squares, cook them in oil that does not quite cover them and leave them alone without stirring them until they are brown and crisp. Little salt can be added but if you add onions or peppers, the potatoes will not crisp.
Pinto beans, seasoned with ham or bacon or fatback, with cornbread (not sweet, only enough sugar to make the crust brown and a little flour to make it hold together good), iced tea, home-made pickles, green onions and cottage cheese was on the menu four to six times a week, growing up. Left over, slightly stale cornbread could be warmed slightly and crumbled into milk for breakfast or a late night snack. I still make myself hot rice for breakfast with milk, sugar and cinnamon once in a while.
Cush is sliced hot cornbread with butter, sorghum or molasses or honey, onions and pickles inside like a sandwich. So good you cannot believe it!
Fried mush is another Arkansas delicacy. :) Take cold corn mush (coarse pudding), slice it and fry it and serve with honey or maple syrup.
Fried mash is something else: mashed potatoes fried in oil with bacon or ham chunks inside.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
I am really surprised 'soul' food did not make it to the list
Soul food is the rough equivalent of haggis and I had it once, sort of, and it was .... words fails me.
Scrapple
Having just returned from New Jersey and the Philadelphia area, I saw scrapple on a lot of menus. This is another member of the sausage/pudding family. Usually pork organ meats, scraps, and head meat, chopped, fried then mixed with some sort of flour or meal binder to make a loaf. After it sets, the loaf is stored then slices are cut off and fried for breakfast. A strong flavor and an American adaptation of a German dish. The Arkansas equivalent is head cheese which leaves out the binder and uses grease to hold things together. There's a Mexican version of this, too.
Soul food though is just anything that poor people eat, especially blacks whose roots go back to the rural South. Fried chicken is soul food, stuffed pork chops, sweet potato pie. Yes, and head cheese, too. :)
Breaded and fried chicken hearts, livers and gizzards is a soul food dish I have not had in way too long.
Hugs,
Erin
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Scrapple
My uncle had a small farm in southest Missouri, some wheat fields, milk cows, some hogs and chickens. Being a pennypincher he mixed in all the table scraps and kitchen waste with the regular hog feed and fed it to the hogs. He (and everybody else in the large family) called that scrapple. This all reminds me of a quote, something like "Those who love the law, like those that love sausage/hot dogs, should never watch it being made". Anybody ready for a corndog?
I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.
I must respectfully disagree a bit
When I had first transitioned to full time, an engineer in my company I was working for (won Black Engineer of the Year of all things but that is way back) took us to an authentic soul food place that he knew and no, a lot of the dishes were not fried or breaded, period. I live below the Mason Dixon line so it is considered southern soul food guess. Fried chicken I guess was a later addition but the original is the organ meat dishes and again are NOT fried so the texturing and flavoring was pretty basic actually. I have always had a problem with liver in an unfried manner as it literally makes me want to throw up. Between that and the very chewy texture of organ meats and odd flavors it was a less than palatable experience.
Pudding
It may be class-based or regional in usage, but to my knowledge, Brits use "pudding" as a synonym for the dessert course of a meal. When used like that, it's not any specific dessert, just "dessert" in general.
Used in a sentence: "What do you want for your pudding?"
Course names in menus
When we were over there last month one thing that really confused me was the use of "Entree" to mean "Main Course".
Over here in the UK an Entree would be a starter.
Penny
Pudding is not just for Dessert
There are meat pudding made with Suet Pastry or Hot Water Crust Pastry.
Steak & Kidney Pudding is a Dessert? someone is pulling you leg.
I make Stargazy Pie. I use Langostine heads instead of Fish heads. They are for decoration only.
When I lived in N.H., I made this for a dinner party. After the chorus of 'Gross' the heads were put aside and everyone enjoyed the pie.
US Bacon is [redacted]. It should not be allowed to be called bacon IMHO.
As for Cheese made in the US? Rubber and Plastic more like. Cornish Yarg is wonderful.
I gave a Visitor from Wisconsin some real local 'Tomme de Savoir' when he came to visit me in Annecy. After a while he just said 'Wow' and then 'Why can't we make cheese like that back home'. If you have ever had the proper (not to be sold outside the Haute Savoir Department) version you will know what I mean. A little goes a very long way.
As for food Britich Food Americans don't get?
Try Tripe and Cow-heel I took some American Visitors to Bolton Market. The smell of the Tripe stall was enough to send them running for the 'Wash room'.
But, as with everything if you are exposed to it enough then you get used to it.
Yeah, I love cooking. Doing a Slow cooked casserole of Beef Shin today. Takes 4-6 hours to cook. The meat just falls apart when done. Using 28 day air aged Shin I got from the Farmers Market. It is not red in Colour, it is more like dark brown. Perfect.
As for Christmas Day? Venison Loin. I'm off to pick it up this morning. Wild Venison from the New Forest. Only takes 20mins to cook.
Taste is on the tongue of the beholder
Black pudding over Grits any day please!
Persephone
Non sum qualis eram
Yuk!
Could you rephrase that, please?
:)
Penny
Penny - I would be delighted to :)
Coagulated pigs blood and oatmeal (aka black pudding) over maize and water (aka grits) any day.
Just be grateful I didn't enjoy ethnic Serbo-Croat, Albanian or Pashtun cooking. It makes black pudding look tame.
However… bees in honey in Central America wasn't too bad
:)
Persephone
Non sum qualis eram
But Not As We Know It, Jim
Canadian bacon is nothing like British bacon, more like a cross between a processed ham and luncheon meat, but British bacon can be almost anything as long as it's made from pig. Mostly it depends on how it's cooked and how much fat it has in it. My taste runs to lean and slightly crisp but each to her own.
Corn dogs are known as Dagwood Dogs in Australia and are usually eaten only at Ekka (county fairs). Our batter is not always sweet and ketchup is obligatory.
There's nothing wrong with haggis that a good dollop of whisky poured on top won't fix and it should be eaten with neeps (turnips).
I'm very surprised that Spotted Dick and Toad-In-The-Hole did not make the list. :-)
And just for fun you should try sea urchins or sea worms Cantonese style.
Re:Dagwood Dogs
It's not ketchup, it's tomato sauce (which is like ketchup minus a lot of the sugar.)
Joanna
Canadian bacon
I put up some Canuck cyclists for a while, and they actually photographed the breakfast bacon* to show their friends what it looked like, so I assume it must be different.
*Back bacon, not streaky. A...gentleman who used to run a well-known youth hostel would serve up a version of a 'full English' in which the bacon consisted of half a rasher of streaky.
At another hostel ...
... in deepest Derbyshire (now, sadly sold by the YHA) the warden served grey scrambled eggs for breakfast because it was laced with a fair quantity of aluminium from the cooking pan. On the whole, however, we've had very good food in hostels but we usually self catered for breakfast.
We're vegetarian so most of those odd dishes aren't part of our diet but it seems most of them are Scottish anyway. As for cheese, you can't go far wrong with a good Stilton IMO.
I was brought up during rationing and I've never really acquired a real taste for sugary things and avoid them as far as is possible. Apparently the limited quantities we were allocated in the 1940s and 50s represented a very healthy diet. I know very few of my class-mates were over weight and most were very physically active as few people had cars and fewer the petrol to run them. One unusual food item was chips (French fries if you speak $) with gravy rather then salt and vinegar. Actually I now prefer my chips Dutch/Flemish style with mayonnaise - a shame to my nationality :)
Robi
No Steak and Kidney Pie
Someone I know said that when I go there I must try it and they said it with enough emphasis that I will have to resist being held down and having the mixture spoon fed me.
Horrible!
I'm English and I've never even heard of 14 of those (the exception being Cranachan). I think I'd be ill if the Stargazy Pie was ever served to me but then I've never liked my food to be able to look me in the eye!
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
UK versus USA
Two of the biggest cultural differences between the UK and the USA are related, and they boil down to geography. The vast majority of USAnians do not travel abroad and if and when they do, it is usually to either of their neighbours. The UK is right next to a seething mass of variegated Forners occupying Forn Parts and speaking Forn, which allows the typical Brit, almost all of whom travel abroad even if only to Spain, to encounter Oddities of the Kitchen.
Erin, there is a difference between industrial processing of cheez-flavoured substances and the aging of cheese. As a child, I hated cheese, but one's palate changes with the years and I had the good fortune to be exposed to Continental cheeses of many nationalities as I grew. I still prefer bleu d'Auvergne to Roquefort, though.
I also lived in Bedfordshire for years, and the clanger is a real treat when made well. Chicken parma, or parmo, or [various mutilations] parmiggiana, is something I saw a lot of in Australia and which is an institution on Teesside in the North, where you can get a smaller version called a 'lady parmo'. It is crap.
The North East has a number of speciality dishes, like carlins (hard peas), singing hinnies, stotty, pernackity/pan hagglety and Craster harrin. Not to mention a small, round boiled mint sweet called, depending on need for double entendre, either black bullets or miners' balls.
I have already described two dishes in particular in Cider Without Roses, one being Summer Pudding, in which a dish is lined with sliced white bread to make a pudding case, which is then filled with berry fruit, particularly tart types such as redcurrants, and then chilled. The other one is French: souris d'agneau, lamb mice. A lamb shank is cooked slowly so that the meat contracts and pulls back from the bone, leaving a round and juicy lump with a long 'tail'.
Casseroles are or should be an art form. The word just means a cooking pot in French, but a decent casserole can be wonderful. Liver and bacon mmmmmmmmm.
Many years ago, in 1994 to be precise, I was honoured to be spoken to by some Omaha Beach veterans in Arromanches. They wanted to know if I could translate the restaurant menu for them, particularly something which seemed to be called poison soup. They also wanted to know what I was eating. It was (pardon lack of grave accent) tripes a la mode de Caen. I just said "You really don't want to know"
Speaking of which, and pace Penny, black pudding is a delight and an art form. Indeed, the word 'pudding', boudin in French, relates entirely to blood pudding, their equivalent. It tends to be squidgier, without the solid content of a decent black pud.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_sausage
Now, back home we have bara lawr
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laver_(seaweed)#Laverbread
...and I should mention the Scottish chip shop habit of battering and deep-frying EVERYTHING, from pizzas through pies and haggis to chocolate bars. It was only in southern England, however, that I encountered the sheppie. Cottage pie and shepherd's pie are traditional English foods, both effectively being cooked mince and vegetables baked in the oven under a 'top crust' of mashed potato, one being minced beef and the other (obviously) lamb. A sheppie is a deep-fried item consisting of a core of minced meat surrounded by a ball of mashed potato, battered and, as said, cooked in chip fat.
Point on cheese
My point on the cheeses is people who dislike American cheese ad claim that it is bad because it is processed. All cheese is processed, it starts out as milk. American cheese processing is a bit more industrial than most but nowadays, you have to say "artisanal" to specify non-industrial processing.
If one dislikes American cheese, that's fine; taste is a matter of taste, by definition. But I dislike people giving bogus reasons for dislike. Real American cheese is quite good for its purpose and is as unlike the veggie-oil-and-whey-solids stuff sold as "cheese food product" in American dairy cases as cheddar is different from a cowpie. Okay, maybe not quite that different. :)
The real authentic American cheese is processed, yes; it's processed by melting cheddar, Colby, jack and muenster cheeses together. That's it. There is no other ingredient than cheese, except perhaps annatto food coloring. It's pre-melted and homogenized so it won't separate when re-melted. Originally, these cheeses were the trimmings, leftovers and over production after the other cheeses were packaged for sale. Later Gummint cheese was created as price support for the cheese industry, buying up excess cheese production and making American cheese which had a longer shelf life and could be distributed to students, the poor and the elderly.
Oh, the name American cheese goes back to Colonial days and was originally used to distinguish yellow or orange cheddar made in the colonies (colored with annatto) from the white cheddar imported from England. American cheese was exported back to the home country back then and some people prefer the slightly sweeter taste of the colored cheddars. Most cheddar produced outside the US and Canada is not colored.
I love cheese and eat a wide variety of too much cheese. My favorites tend toward the highly "processed", aged cheddar, double Stilton, gorgonzola, provolone, even if, or especially if, they are processed by tradition rather than industrial necessity.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Artisan Cheeses and food in general
I was at a Farmers Market today. I bought some locally made Cheese. Two different types.
Cheddar flavored with Nettle and Garlic and a Gouda style with Fenugreek.
All made by hand and less than 20 miles from where I live.
Made from unpasturised milk as well.
The Gouda is delightful.
The market had lots of different stuff for sale.
Wild boar Sausages, Fresh shot Pheasant and some subperb locally made Wines. The North and South downs are remarkable similar geologically to the Champagne area of France. English wines made in the same way as Champagne are just brilliant.
This availability of local produce is one of the best developments of the last 10 years or so.
Most producers will sell to you right from their premises.
My local brewery (1 mile away) has even won 'Best Beer in Britian'.
I have to say that the mass produced food you get in the majority of US Supermarkets is IMHO very poor by comparison.
Ok, I like my food and I was at one time going to be a Chef.
Exactly
What I was writing about was partly the difference between 'artisanal' cheese and what the French call 'industriel', but mainly the fact that many substances that contain the words cheez or cheese in their description are something entirely different. There is a world of difference between blending cheese as Erin describes and spraying goop from an aerosol.
Pease Pudding
There's also pease pudding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pease_pudding
Best enjoyed with proper saveloys - not those revolting pink ones - or in a stottie with roast ham.
Pease pudding cold...
In stotty cake with ham. Mmmmmm!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stottie_cake
From A 1960s Reader's Digest Book Of The Road
Blackburn Fig Pie - short pastry tart filled with stewed figs, spices, currants and treacle
Buckingham Rabbit - eggs poached in meat extract broth and served on toast
Chester Flummery - thick acid jelly of oatmeal and water or milk, served cold with honey and strong ale
Clifton Puffs - triangles of puff pastry containing chopped almonds and apples, currants, raisins, nutmeg and brandy
Devizes Pie - layers of sliced calf's head and brains, with hard-boiled eggs, cooked in jelly under flour paste, served with pickled eggs
Exeter Pudding - jam and egg mixture beaten with rum, sugar, breadcrumbs, suet and lemon with raisins outside, baked and served with sauce of blackcurrant jelly and sherry
Gotham Pudding - steamed pudding made from milk, eggs, flour and candied peel, served with cowslip wine
Ifield Hog's Puddings - sausage skins filled with pork, flour, spices, currants, and boiled
Ipswich Almond Pudding - baked pudding of breadcrumbs, cream, ground almonds, beaten eggs and sugar, flavoured with orange-water
Manchester Pudding - layers of apricot jam and thick egg custard, topped with vanilla-flavoured meringue mixture
Tadcaster Pudding - baked suet pudding containing dried chopped fruit and golden syrup, served upside down with hot, spiced treacle
Wigan Hindle Wakes - chicken stuffed with breadcrumbs and prunes, boiled in water, vinegar and brown sugar, served cold with lemon sauce
You forgot ...
... or the book omitted, our local Bakewell Pudding :)
Robi
which
of course is nothing like those things Mr Kipling sells! A bit of an acquired taste and pretty much only available in tourist shops these days
Madeline Anafrid Bell
How to...
http://www.answers.com/article/1232412/15-british-foods-americans-will-never-understand#slide=1
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
When I was growing I was told
When I was growing I was told always try something at least once before I say if I like it or not. A lot of the items on the UK have not tried so cannot comment on them. I have not had grits but other then that I like all on the list other then red vines and beef jerky I personally prefer deer jerky. I would have to say that what people like is what they like. I get that to some the things would be two sweet to them to me they are not. Just like I cannot stand anything with even a little bit of a spicy kick to it. I think it is to spicy when others cannot even taste the spicy part of it.
Grits are great when prepared right,
especially with some real butter on 'em.
Glad to see another deer jerky fan too! It's one of my favorite snack foods; we usually marinate the meat overnight in Moore's before chucking it in the dehydrator. Mmmmm.
Melanie E.
15 British Foods Hated
Marmite.
Minted mutton fat peas.
Personally, I don't consider either Velveeta or Cheese Wiz to be real cheese. To my knowledge, I've never tasted either. I have had American cheese, but much prefer cheddar cheese, even though it doesn't melt as evenly.
USDA (US Department of Agriculture) regulations require cheese made from unpasteurized milk to be at least 60 days old, to prevent the many possible health risks from consuming unpasteurized milk. This means the harder cheeses, such as cheddar, Emmentaler, etc. can be imported, but many of the softer cheeses cannot (unless special versions are made for the American market, as is common with brie).
Cheese Food Product
Both CheezWhiz and Velvetta originally contained cheese. Velveeta was a similar mixture of cheeses as American cheese, plus milk, whey and salts. CheezWhiz was formulated as Emmental cheese with mustard, Worcestershire sauce, whey, spices, salts and food coloring.
The increasing industrialization of food production means that now the ingredients of cheese are mixed with the other ingredients and, in effect, cheese is made at the same time as the processing goes on. The taste has suffered. Neither of these products taste like they did when I was a kid. Velveeta was always bland but now tastes like those plastic seat covers in old fifties style diners; like it has been rubbed with sweaty butts for decades. CheezWhiz, which originally tasted like cheap cheese fondue, now tastes like armpit-flavored axle grease.
These are called cheese food products, legally, not cheeses. And a curious thing has happened. People have parsed the name as cheese-food::product when originally it was meant to be cheese::food-product. Which after all would make more sense.
Because what indeed would be food for cheese?
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
what are mutton fat peas?
our other local delicacy (other than Bakewell pudding) is of course mushy peas with a good slug of Hendo's (Hendersons Relish made here in Sheffield) usually with a good serving of meat and tatty pie. Hendo's is nothing like Worcester sauce or the various relishes that some woosie suverners claim are the same thing. It is so popular hereabouts even the big chain supermarkets stock it but have to buy it direct from the factory! The shelves will often be empty surrounded by towering piles of that horrid Border country stuff.
At a guess my local provider of provisions stock @ 50 varieties of cheese around half of which are British, the bulk of the rest are European but if you look you might get some Canadian cheddar style cheese (it can't be Cheddar if its not made there!) and perhaps a few slabs of Monterey Jack - not keen myself but hey ho. Let me at some Gorgonzola or Dolcelata, perhaps some Dan Blue, a crumbly Wensleydale is nice on crackers of course....
Madeline Anafrid Bell
Wensleydale
The trick these days, in the decadent south, is finding Wensleydale which doesn't have cranberries in it!
Much though I like the taste cheese is better without fruit in it. Some philistines even put chopped apricots in cheese! Urgh!
Penny
PS I come from sufficiently far south that we believed that civilisation ended at Guildford. Watford Gap? Barbarians!
Ah....
Customer: You...do *have* some cheese, don't you?
Owner: (brightly) Of course, sir. It's a cheese shop, sir. We've got--
Customer: No no... don't tell me. I'm keen to guess.
Owner: Fair enough.
Customer: Uuuuuh, Wensleydale.
Owner: Yes?
Customer: Ah, well, I'll have some of that!
Owner: Oh! I thought you were talking to me, sir. Mister Wensleydale, that's my name.
"The Cheese Shop" by Monty Python's Flying Circus
http://www.minderella.com/words/cheeseshop.htm
Love, Andrea Lena
The South
Going south the custard stops at Watford.
Regards,
Eolwaen
Eolwaen
Is that Watford or Watford Gap?
Besides Creme Anglais in on the menu here down sarf!
I have even been known to make my own including proper vanilla.
I'll admit that I have yet to find a decent Black Pudding south of Brum.
Samantha
Unfortunately for the mother
Unfortunately for the mother tongue,the inhabitants of the colonies only think that they can speak english.Sorry.
Consider the changes in
Consider the changes in American English over the past century. For example, the northern cities shift.
Consider the changes in British English over the past few centuries. For example, the non-rhoticity.
Languages tend to change fastest at the core of an empire. Languages sometimes change more slowly, except for borrowing, on the periphery and in colonies. American Englishes tend to be more archaic than high-status British Englishes, though we share many of the same innovations. I understand that Quebecois French and the various Colonial Spanishes also tend to be more archaic, and to preserve sounds lost in Parisian French and Castillian Spanish, respectively.
British dishes and their names..
Having travelled to most parts of the world (Save for some land-locked coutries in Central Asia) and having the capacity to try almost anything - born of a brief interlude of chilhood stealing food from garbage skips. I've tasted some pretty remarkable dished with some even stranger names
It's pointles naming them here for the list is truly endless. Dishes with names based on origin or appearence or taste or content obviously run to many, many thousands. After all, since man first 'tamed fire' weve been dreaming up fancy names for fancy dishes. and that means millions years of cooking, by thousands of millions of people.
Taste can only be in the tongue of the consumer. Opinions about food are the prerogatives of all!
foods...yum!
My all-time favorite, just for the name, is Spotted Dick. It has so many juicy connotations, this side of the pond.
Sort Of Apposite
I was once being treated for a severe case of Prickly Heat and found out later that the doctor who was treating me was the local specialist in sexually transmitted diseases and he had a boat which he named Spotted Dicks!
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