I remember having a few ex-british army dudes in the Canadian army who called gravy “brown sauce” and ketchup “red sauce”. Is this common? Can you call mustard “yellow sauce”? And isn’t there a special name for HP sauce?
Speaking of HP sauce: is A1 sauce an American version of HP sauce? Do they have A1 in Britain? Personally, HP sauce is the way to go.
I second this. I was actually reading down to make sure no one had mentioned it before I did.
Apple jelly exists completely separately from apple butter. They’re not even good for all the same things. And, personally, I adore apple butter…too bad it can be a little hard to find. It was much more of a staple back home in West Virginia.
That’s not proper at all, I don’t see any Tabasco anywhere!
Thanks to everyone for fighting my ignorance WRT “biscuits”.
To the extent that they don’t have “ranches” either, this would make sense.
Good Lord Almighty, did that recipe have yeast?! Biscuits are leavened with baking soda and buttermilk. I’m sure that’s in the Bible somewhere. Along with the Commandment about Bisquick being an abomination …
Sorry, I’m a little tense. This hotel serves alleged biscuits and gravy in their breakfast buffet. Urf … Three more days, I’ll be back in Texas and they’ll never make me go back to New Jersey again …
I’m British and I’ve never heard “brown sauce” used to describe gravy. It is used as a name for… HP Sauce. HP and A1 are not the same. Mustard is not “yellow sauce”. I’ve never seen A1 in Britain, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
A1 is kinda sorta like HP, but not exactly. I like HP better.
Now. tell me what I should be putting my HP on, would you? It was served at a table of orders which included Full Irish Breakfast, Bangers and Mash, and Bacon-wrapped steak on toast. We first tried it with the steak and it was great. Then with the black and white puddings and it was yummy. Then the bangers, and it was awesome. We came to the conclusion that it was good on pretty much everything. Did we make some gross faux pas?
Ranch dressing: Can apparently be found in Tesco, according to an unlinkable post at this board (you can find it using the advanced search in Google for the exact phrase “ranch dressing” in the .uk domain)
To open another can of worms, you are unlikely to find the same form of a second American salad dressing staple, French dressing, which is tomato-based in the US.
Apple butter: This type of fruit spread is not exclusive to apples. This site, for instance, sells the following “butters”:
Apricot, Blueberry, Cherry, Honey Peach, Peach, Pear, Plum, Pumpkin, Strawberry, Strawberry-Raspberry, Strawberry-Rhubarb, Sweet Tomato.
Apple butter starts as applesauce, but it goes quite a bit further. I make quarts of the stuff every year to give out as gifts. Apples are cooked down to the sauce stage then run through a food mill to remove the seeds and skin. Sugar and spices are added (apples have a lot of pectin on their own) and then the whole mess is slowly cooked down to the proper consistency, turning a lovely dark brown in the process. Just the thing to slather on biscuits. Peaches, pears, and nectarines also make lovely fruit butters.
There’s more 
What the USans call cookies are generally what Aussies and Brits call cookies too - sweet, doughy, fairly large and usually on the soft side; not very common until recently. Similarly with thin crisp salty wafers which both sides call crackers. There is a non-salty subcategory of these called crispbreads which are Scandinavian in origin, or are sold as such anyway. They usually come in larger sheets with perforations to snap off a rectangle.
But what Brits and Aussies call biscuits don’t really seem to exist in the US. Smaller, not soft but not crispy either, sweet but not as sweet as a cookie, usually eaten as a little treat with tea or coffee. The Arnott’s site seems to be down but you can see pictures of them on packets here.
Sure they do. They’re called shortbread cookies here. They’re not terribly popular though. The Great One mentioned Nabisco’s version here.
How about pie?
In America, “pie” is a round pastry dessert filled with fruit or fruit-like substance, occasionally topped with whipped cream or meringue, and served in slices either hot or cold, depending on type of filling and/or eater’s preference. Pies are very popular and a good number of chain restaurants specialize in pie-making.
I’ve been led to believe, however, that American pie is practically unheard of in the UK, where “pie” refers solely to a meat dish served in a bowl with a doughy crust (shepherd’s pie, steak-and-kidney pie, etc. – meat pies do exist in America, but they seem to exist only in the frozen food section and bear absolutely no resemblence to classic British pie dishes.) When I spent a semester in London, the local deli served pre-packaged pies that they imported special for us; they were quite nasty but hey, pie is pie, especially when you’re 3,000 miles away from the nearest Marie Callendar’s.
“Pie” can also refer to pizza, which I believe is a different thing in the UK as well.
Brits and Aussies don’t really talk about “pie” as such, but “a pie” or “pies”. Yes the vast majority eaten are savoury meat pies, but fruit-based sweet pies for dessert are by no means unknown.
We get sweet ( fruit ) pies in the UK. They are mainly apple but other fruit is also used . They can be home-made but also there are many shop bought types. The most famous brand is Mr Kipling’s.
I noticed someone earlier mentioned Apple Jack , which is distilled apple juice. We don’t seem to have an equivalent in the UK , but over in Normandy they produce Calvados apple brandy.
Another thing I don’t think has been mentioned (and kick me if it has), but you won’t hear people talking about “candy” in the UK or Australia and if you did they wouldn’t be referring to chocolate which you’d call, er, “chocolate”. I mean, a “candy bar” in the US is a “chocolate bar” in the UK/Australia, but what is the US word for what you’d call “lollies” in the UK/Australia (all of your non-chocolate sweets)? Um, is that “candy” also?
Your term “lollies” brings to mind lollipop which is generally a hard crystalized sugar candy on a stick. “Sucker” is the most common American term for hard candy on a stick.
We use “candy bar” where you use “chocolate bar” but otherwise, my guess is that the term “candy” is synonomous as a catch-all for sugary sweets not of some other type like pastries or cakes. We use it to refer to things as diverse as peanut brittle and divinity on one end to breath mints on the other.
Oreos are what we would call biscuits (despite being sandwiched with a creamy filling), but my searches do seem to support your comment - most American cookies seem to be the crumbly or chewy kind, made from a squashed ball or dollop of dough.
As with jam/jelly, maybe this is another case where the perception of differing terminology is over-emphasises and what actually exists is more a case of differing popularity.
In the U.S., “candy” is the generic term for most sweets that are dense and sugary. Chocolates, caramels, nougat, toffee, lemon drops, peppermints, etc. are all candy. Fruits and fruit peels that are infused with sugar are said to be “candied” - e.g. candied cherries. A candy apple is a raw apple that is coated with some sort of candy (sometimes caramel but more often hard glossy sugar that has been dyed bright red, thus the term “candy apple red” to describe a type of custom automobile paint).
To UnitedStatesians, a chocolate bar is a bar of solid chocolate. “Candy bar” is a broad term covering chocolate bars and also various types of sweets (such as nougat or caramel) in bar form, and often coated with chocolate (or a chocolatey substance). Candy bars often contain nuts.
To us Staters, a “lollypop” is a hard candy on a stick. It sounds like your word “lolly” is related to this. Do you mean that “lolly” is a generic term for many types of sweets, the way “candy” is in the U.S.?
I think so. Yeah, for me, dumplings means suet dumplings which is nothing like either a scone or a biscuit. I’ve had a look through a selection of biscuit recipes, and while there’s a huge variety, at their most basic they’re quite clearly simply plain scones – the same ingredients, in the same proportions, cooked in the same way. Obviously there’s going to be a difference between one specific biscuit and one specific scone, but no more than between two different recipes of biscuit.
No, that’s cool.
To my mind, biscuits and scones are pretty much the same thing by recipe (flour, a pinch of salt, little sugar, some baking powder, milk vs. table cream, stir, shape into little dabs on the cookie tray and bake). Biscuits, however, are normally round-shaped and a little more fluffy, and are to be used as a conveyance for chicken-and-gravy or roast beef with gravy. Scones are usually triangularly or wedge-shaped and more dense, are used to convey jam and Devon cream, and are accompanied by tea.