I don’t know that it needs to have anything in common with other pies; to go back to the topic, I could theoretically order a three course meal in a pub-restaurant comprising:
Starter: Mini Yorkshire puddings, stuffed with black pudding
Main: Steak and kidney pudding
Pudding: Malvern pudding
-and I would have eaten four things called pudding, which are all completely different things (one of them as the conceptual meal course called ‘pudding’).
This is the thing I was trying to explore - it’s not very important that two different things called ‘pie’ are similar to one another - as long as they are consistent with themselves; if I order shepherd’s pie and get toast with jam, that’s a problem because the item has persistence of identity; I expect shepherd’s pie to be shepherd’s pie, not to subscribe to a platonic pie-ness.
No clue. But I am not usually a splitter. I have been very narrow careful in defining “pudding” in this thread because I thought the point was to understand what American’s typically mean when they say “pudding”. And it’s not bread pudding or a steamed pudding or Angel Delight, even though I have made bread pudding and steamed pudding and called them by those names when I served them. Because yes, the common meaning of the word “pudding” in the US is a fairly small class of foods. But I think that’s just a particular example.
It’s become popular among my friends to celebrate “pie day”, and a meal consisting entirely of disparate foods that all are “pie” would be entirely ordinary. For instance, the pot-luck meal might have mini-quiches and spanakopita for starters, and a pizza, shepherds pie, and pot pie for mains, and then have a selection of desserts including whoopi pies, “regular” fruit and custard pies, and a NY style cheesecake and a Boston cream pie for desserts. Because those can all be called “pie”.
We wouldn’t do that with “pudding” because most of the other things that might be called pudding are pretty obscure in the US, honestly (or have a different name in the US, so no one would look at them and think. “oh yes, that’s a pudding, too”). And there’s isn’t a jokey holiday called “pudding day”.
Thanks - yeah, I sort of hijacked my own thread here. I do still think, based on some of the reasoning in some of the replies here, taken together with other things elsewhere, that UK English is looser or less strict in its consistency of category than US English, but it’s very hard to be sure, because I’m most likely to notice differences between the two, rather than instances where UK English isn’t like that, or where the two dialects are exactly equally loose or strict.
Language is not logical, and any rules that do exist were not handed down by God. There are lots of exceptions to just about any category of human invention, and usage changes over time and from place to place. In Britain and Ireland, a whole chicken breast on a bun is called a “chicken burger,” while in the U.S. we call it a chicken sandwich. On the other hand, in the U.S. we call uncooked ground beef “hamburger,” while in the British Isles they call it “mince.”
We can argue endlessly about whether a hot dog is a sandwich, or Boston cream pie is really pie, or bread pudding is actually custard. Cooking and the English language are not branches of mathematics, and the categories have fuzzy edges and lots of exceptions. It’s fun to talk about, but I don’t think there are any consistent rules. The meaning of the word “pudding” is inconsistent in all English dialects.
I don’t want to threadshit. I’m enjoying the discussion. I just don’t think we’ll be able to come up with a set of laws that distinguish British and American usage, even in this limited case.
I agree; my question was rather: is there any overall difference in the tendency to look for or desire those consistent rules, on either side of the pond. Not so much whose dialect is ‘best’ - that’s silly (it’s mine, of course, thinks everyone), but rather, who desires the greater consistency, the more.
I don’t know about @puzzlegal 's knowledge, but I didn’t know that. What’s a casserole to the rest of the English-speaking world? In the US, it basically means any one-dish meal that’s baked in a shallow pan.
I am not. In America, a casserole is typically a rectangular dish of food, usually with some protein and some wet and some starch, cooked in an oven. And it’s usually 3-5 fingers deep, maybe usually closer to 3 fingers.
What is a casserole in the rest of the English speaking world?
My wife is from Ireland, and my understanding is that outside the US, a casserole is a kind of meat/veg/gravy stew cooked in an oven. What we call casserole is usually called something like a bake.
I mean, if you read “hot dish” literally, that’s extremely generic, but the actual meaning of the phrase is a lot less so. Blueberry pie straight from the oven is a hot dish, but it’s not a ‘hot dish’.
Anyway, “a bake” sounds like a very descriptive term for what i would call a casserole. What kinds of dish would be called “a bake”?
A casserole was originally a type of deep baking dish. The word came to mean something cooked in that type of dish. In the U.S. it now means a one-pot baked meal. An American casserole usually contains a protein (like meat, tuna, or cheese), a starch (like rice, potatoes, or noodles), and sometimes a vegetable.
