The Oxford English Dictionary on currants
(1) The dried fruit of a small grape
(2) a small round red, white or black berry
I have always known currants ( the sort you put into cakes ) as dried grapes and I have just looked on a pack of mixed dried fruit and it contains sultanas and currents as well as lemon and orange peel.
Here is a recipe for spotted dick
"285g (10oz) Self-Raising Flour
150g (5oz) Shredded Suet
150ml (¼ pint) Milk
110-160g (4-6oz) Currants or Raisins
85g (3oz) Castor Sugar
1 Lemon, zest only, finely grated
Pinch Salt
Mix all of the dry ingredients, including the grated lemon zest, together thoroughly
Add enough milk to produce a soft dough.
Turn out onto a floured surface.
Roll out the mixture to produce a roll approximately 15cm (6 in) long and 5cm (2 in) in diameter.
Prepare either a tea towel lightly dusted with flour, or sheet of kitchen foil or a double thickness of greaseproof paper, brushed with melted butter.
Wrap loosely but securely, leaving enough space for it to rise.
Tie or seal the ends.
Place in the steamer and cover tightly.
Steam for 1½ to 2 hours.
Serve cut into thick slices with hot custard. "
As you see, the currants that are specified are dried grapes , not dried berries.
Nah-- it just means ‘dessert’
What about steak and kidney pudding , or Yorkshire pudding ? They are not desserts.
I always just smear it on whatever I am eating…cheese slice, salami chunk, whatever. I do the same with Major Grey’s chutney. (Side note for the adventurous: Major Gray’s is wonderful on Cool Ranch Doritos! :eek: )
A pudding is anything that is made out of batter or liquid and boiled (in a bag or not) to a (semi)solid state, like black pudding (blood), yorkshire pud (savoury batter boiled in oil) , christmas pud (sorta fruitcake), and spotted dick. Pease Pudding is a legit. medieval dish, f’rinstance.
But, confusingly, it can also be = “dessert” e.g. “If you don’t eat yer meat, yer can’t have any pudding! How can you have yer pudding if you won’t eat yer meat?”* This probably arose because some puddings are eaten as dessert.
There is also some confusion about currants - whether they are a dried grape or a berry. This is doubly confusing because, actually, grapes are themselves berries!
But anyway, there are berry varieties called redcurrant, whitecurrant and blackcurrant (c.f. “Ribena” or “Snakebite and Black” depending on age). I’ve only ever seen these as fresh berries, BTW, never dried.
Then there are raisins. These are dried varieties of the berry known as the grape. Small raisins are also called currants. These are used for baking e.g. “currant buns”.
A Sultana is the wife of a sultan. No, really, look it up. They can be found in Deserts. But not Desserts, except when the Sultan is frisky, I suppose.
But a sultana is also a raisin made from yellow grapes, with a golden colour.**
Really?
So, when I eat Beef Wellington with Yorkshire pudding, the Yorkshire pudding is supposed to be my dessert? Well, I like Cool Whip[sup]TM[/sup] on my dessert, as a general rule. When I scrape the gooseliver pate and minced mushroom amalgam off the inside of the Y. P.*, does British etiquette demand that I dispose of it in any particular way? I suppose I could eat it, but then which fork should I use?
*Because I’m damned if I’ll put Cool-Whip[sup]TM[/sup] and gooseliver pate into my mouth at the same time.
I’m a bit surprised to find out that currants can refer to grapes as well. By my usage, currants come in black and red varieties, and are quite distinct from raisins. Currants are much smaller, more tart, with hints of blackberry in their flavor, and dried currants are, of course, dehydrated versions of these berries.
Black and red currant juice was a staple of my childhood, and very different from any grape juice I’ve ever had.
Three cheers for Ribena™! Love the stuff. Can buy it here only in Asian markets. Strange though, I never see it showing up in Asian cooking. Red currants are great, and make a most toothsome cheesecake.
There’s an interesting article on currants at Wikipedia that touches on why currants aren’t as well known in North America and the liquers associated with them.
When I read George Orwell’s essay “In Defence of English Cooking,” I was a bit taken aback when he mentioned something called “marrow jam.” But a GQ inquiry revealed that a “marrow” is Britspeak for a mature zucchini. (To me, the thought of jam made from zucchinis is only slightly less disgusting than the thought of jam made from bone marrow, but let that pass.) So marrow=courgette=zucchini? Or is there a shade of difference I’m missing here?
(The same GQ thread also informed me that “bramble jelly” means blackberry jelly.)
Agreed, and I should have thought of that. Just to make the distinction a little clearer, grapes grow on vines (sort of), while currants grow on actual shrub-like bushes. For the botanists among us, they’re in different genera too.
And from the links in your next post, it seems that Delia is Australian, so is probably speaking yet another variety of English.
BrainGlutton, When I was growing up in Saskatchewan in the 1950s, my father grew what he called ‘vegetable marrows’ a few times. They were shaped like a large zucchini, but beige or tan instead of green. Do zucchini lose their green colour as they ripen, or were the ones I remember something different?
Delia Smith is British although reasonably well-known here.
Black, white and red currants have nothing to do with the small dried fruit, currants which are a dried grape.
A marrow is a vastly overgrown zucchini. Marrow jam is every bit as nasty as it sounds.
Some people do eat Yorkshire pudding with golden syrup but that is just wrong.
When I have Yorkshire Pud, I eat half at the beginning with brown sugar, and half with my meat and gravy. Mmmmmm!
I’ve tried Yorkshire pudding and liked it just fine. I even made my own (although they came out a bit heavy - my British friend tells me I used too much flour and not a hot enough oven. They were still yummy though.) So now my question is, what’s the difference between Yorkshire pudding and popovers? I was directed to make my puddings in muffin tins, but also told it was more correct to make them in pie pans. Are popovers just individual Yorkshire puddings?
In Australia, you won’t find Raisin Bran in the cereal aisle…it’s Sultana Bran.
Yes, that completely confused me when I was in New York last year, buying breakfast cereal in the supermarket. All I could see was this odd stuff called Raisin Bran.
Lemon squash.