I understand.
There was a post I saw in my email, but not on the board involving a recipe of chopped pork wrapped in bacon. I understand that bacon means different parts in the USA than in Britain. I wonder how that came about, since we were eating bacon when we were British, before the revolutionary war. I think bacon in Britain is what we call Canadian bacon, which is more like ham than our fatty US bacon.
“Bacon” in the UK, as an unmodified, unqualified term, means a pork-chop shaped slice of cured, unsmoked pork (though cut much thinner, obviously). A round-ish piece of lean meat at one end, with fat-streaked strip at the other. It’s widely available smoked too, but that would be declared rather than assumed. It’s otherwise known as “back bacon”, when distinguishing it from “streaky bacon” - which is the cut that Americans would be familiar with as bacon. Streaky is also widely available smoked, but again, this would always be labelled as such.
“Middle bacon” is rarer nowadays - essentially it’s both of the above, left unseparated. Back with streaky attached.
While unsmoked (sometimes called “green”) back bacon is what you would assume British bacon to be unless specified, context can vary this very occasionally. Pigs in Blankets (sometimes “Kilted Sausages” in older recipe books) are small sausages (chipolatas) wrapped in bacon…but nobody would be likely to describe them as “sausages wrapped in smoked streaky bacon”, even though that’s what they tend to be.
Aw, Yorkshire Pudding, sending healing vibes your way.
I have a question that came up while reading upthread about bread pudding. Most people were describing what I, an American, consider bread pudding, but in the UK they have something called bread and butter pudding. What is that? Because American bread pudding does not normally contain butter. ???
There are many, many dishes described as “pigs in a blanket”. In the US, the “blanket” is most likely to be cabbage or another leaf, but can also be a bread-like substance. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a “blanket” made of more pig, but with all of the regions of this country, I wouldn’t rule out seeing it on this side of the Pond.
The only “pigs in blankets” I’ve ever seen have been hot dogs, li’l smokies, or some other sausage wrapped in bread/biscuit dough. And that’s the clear majority of what comes up when I google the phrase.
Even so, that’s fifteen times longer than it takes to make instant potatoes (though I agree nobody who cares much about the taste uses instant potatoes).
That is what I think of as pig in a blanket.
Hm, maybe the region of cabbage-blankets is smaller than I thought.
But while bacon-wrapped meat is hardly unknown in the US, I’ve never seen it called “in a blanket”. Usually, we just unimaginatively call it “bacon-wrapped” whatever.
“Bacon” originates in a word meaning “back,” so from one point of view, “back bacon” should be redundant. The fact that the default American definition is smoked pork belly is more of a drift. Similarly, “ham” comes from a word meaning the leg behind the knee. I don’t know how much ham is really made from that cut.
Can’t fault that, really! I might be able to get a pan of mash together pretty damn quick, but I’m no match for the speed of instant. But, to paraphrase… Now, my shit, I’ll take the Pepsi challenge with that instant shit, any day of the fuckin’ week.
Thanks man.
So, pudding…
It’s essentially the same: slices of bread in a dish with a sweetened, spiced egg & milk mixture poured over it, often with dried fruit added, and baked. It’s bread and butter pudding as it uses buttered slices of bread. I presume that’s because it was to use up leftover bread & butter - historically served routinely alongside a meal - but I have nothing to base this on beyond supposition.
I think I thought our bacon-wrapped sausages being termed pigs in blankets was maybe an American import, possibly because - as I say - I’ve seen them by other names in older cookbooks. That might still be the case, of course, and be based on a mistaken interpretation of the name by Brits who heard the American term, or on an adaptation of the recipe.
Or maybe the leaf/bread/pastry wrapped versions resulted from a poverty-stricken workaround during a period of austerity? Or the bacon wrapped version from a special-occasion treat?
Oh shit, I’m really sorry to hear that. I hope things improve.
Ditto – it’s always been a hot dog or something sausage-y wrapped in something bready. A friend makes them with beef franks and calls them cows in comforters.
I imagined that ‘ham’ was related to ‘jamón’, as the pronunciation anglicises so easily to ‘hammon’. Obviously there’s the French ‘jambon’ (clearly the same idea), and much English food terminology comes from French. The still-in-use ‘Gammon’ is the obvious link there, but it’s not a stretch to see ‘ham’ too.
I’m not disputing the ‘leg behind the knee’ origin though - it just always seemed like a ‘jamón’/‘jambon’ origin was pretty likely.
Ham, jamón, jambon, and gammon are essentially all the same word. They go back to a root word meaning “bend,” referring to the bend in the leg that is the knee. “Jambon,” for example, is derived from “jambe,” that is, “leg.” So all these words refer to the leg joint.
It was knowledge of French that suggested it to me: “jambe” meaning “leg” implied that “jambon” is leg meat. Which it is, of course; I just hadn’t realised there was a specific part of the leg implied by it.
Gammon is uncured ham, is it not?
Gammon’s like bacon but made from leg: cured but requires cooking.
Thanks.