I wish I could recall the exact place where I read it but it seems muttons unpopularity in America stems from WWII. During the war, meat like beef or pork was rationed but mutton remained relatively plentiful. Since mutton was the cheapest and most readily available meat on the market, Americans ended up eating it so often that they soon got sick of it. When the war (and meat rationing) ended, red-meat craving Americans–who now also had more money–didn’t hesitate to buy beef and never gave mutton so much as a glance. As a result, sales dropped and mutton generally disappeared from most stores and restaurants.
“Brown Soda bread” is known in Ireland as “wheaten bread”. Soda bread is different, it’s white and comes in farls, which are fried or toasted as part of a fried breakfast.
My mother used to make marrow and ginger jam. It was yummy, sort of like mango and ginger chutney.
Calm Kiwi, Hokie Pokie is known in Northern Ireland as yellow man, and is a traditional food sold at the Lamas fair in Ballycastle.
All “honeycomb” ice-creams here are made with yellow man/hokie pokie.
Oddly enough, during the potato famine oysters were the only meat-like food readily available, for that reason they were seen as low class famine food for many years afterwards. Sadly they’re now back to beng bloody expensive.
Last year I saw a brace of pheasants for sale in my local fishmongers in Dublin for 2 euros each. Unfortunately I had neither the time nor the inclination to pluck and gut them.
Cough, splutter! This question is surely worth a thread of its own. Everton’s info on the subject is good (visualise a Spitting Image sketch in which an evil Mrs T in a white lab coat pours a bottle of antifreeze onto a puzzled schoolboy’s ice-cream cone :D) but leaves me wanting more.
Oh I see … so Hokie Pokie = honeycombe! We have Crunchie bars here in the UK, and also Maltesers (small balls of chocolate-covered honeycombe) which would work just as well. I’m pretty sure we can also get vanilla icecream with honeycombe pieces, although I’ve never eaten it. 
Yes - we can buy frozen Yorkshire Puddings here in the UK (lotsa people don’t have the “knack” of making nice light ones - me included! :rolleyes: ) and they’re quite nice as a substitute for homemade. We can also get frozen mash - never tried it though, but a friend of mine who “cooks” :dubious: using only a microwave swears by it.
Julie
We do indeed have Crunchy Bars in Canada (mmmm) as well as Aerobars and Flaky bars and various Cadbury cookies too.
We have digestive biscuits, Arrowroot biscuits, and Graham crackers.
As well as HP sauce (mmm with chips/fries), sausage rolls, social tea biscuits, ginger beer, weetabix, ribena, chicken kiev (with garlic), allsorts, various jams and preserves (especially if you shop at more than just the big grocery chains but even they are carrying a nice selection).
When I go to pubs with friends, I can order ploughman’s lunches with pate, cheeses, chutneys, etc, or Cornish Pastie (one of my favs) to go along with my lager and lime. I’m not a fan of Steak and Kidney pie (but it’s on the menu).
For Robbie Burns day, you can find shops selling Haggis (although I think the only reason to buy the haggie is to have the traditional toast to the haggis … I’m quite content with drinking the scotch and ignoring the haggis.)
MMM… Sherbert Fountain, I haven’t had one of those since my childhood!
Of course, since we do seem to be a mixture of British and American culture, you can also find Ranch Dressing, processed cheese slices, Cocktail sauce, bread and butter pickles etc…
So for you 'merkins who are close to the border, you can always try some ‘cross border shopping’.
Now if only you could get more restaurants in the states to have Vinegar in the condiments when you order fries … the waitress in North Carolina definitely thought I was strange.
Some references mention her hairstyle being a model for the Mr Whippy cornet, but Spitting Image viewers will recall that the character with the ice cream hair was Douglas Hurd. I’ll let you know if I find any definitive evidence about Thatch and the ice cream invention.
Don’t forget that you can get Crunchie Ice Cream and Maltesers Ice Cream. I haven’t tried either, so I can’t say whether they have bits in.
Oh hoh! Hokey Pokey = Yellow Man = Honeycomb = Cinder Toffee (its name here in the North East)!
Interesting that you should mix it into ice cream, because I seem to remember that Hokey Pokey was the name of a type of flavoured water ice (a sort of sorbet, I imagine) sold by Italians on the streets in Victorian London.
Almost forgot- chutney seems to be non-existant here, too. Kind of a pity - I enjoyed the chutney and cheese sandwich I tried last summer.
I was delighted to see a fairly well-stocked English food section at my former supermarket in San Antonio. (SA Dopers, the HEB on DeZavala and I-10.) I could get Cadbury Flakes, Aero bars, McVitie’s biscuits (to which I developed an addiction), and a host of other yummy things.
In the sandwich-spread aisle, they had Marmite, which I was curious about but never brave enough to try. They may have had Vegemite, too, but I don’t remember.
I miss that HEB. 
BTW, I LOVE your nick, ooga booga. (See this thread to find out why. FTR, Aaron’s Aunt Kristi calls him “Ooga Booga”. To the rest of us, he’s just “Booga.”)
Robin
HP Sauce/Hob Nobs- commonly available in 3 stores that I know of within 15 miles. One I can walk to.
Digestive biscuits- in every large grocery store.
Cheeses- gotta go to a store with a cheese deli- then they’ll have more that you can want.
“baked beans in tomato sauce”- we have something close, or you can find them in places with a specialty Brit food section or store- there is one in Campbell CA.
You can get lean bacon here. Juts not usually pre-packaged.
Spotted Dick/Pork pies/sausage rolls/Ribena/Mint Sauce- available in Brit spec place- see above. Same with Haggis.
Weetabix is in my local Safeway, not to mention many other places.
Ginger beer- commonly available in every up-scale grocery.
Marmite- same.
Indian selection- here you usually go to a specialty Indian food store, and there are hundreds within driving distance of San Jose.
For a few things you have to go to a speciality Brit store or section in an upscale chain store. Everything else is available, if you look, or even if you don’t.
I’m surprised no one’s mentioned “brown sauce”. At least by that name. In London this spring I was rather amused by the tons of little packets full of things like “Salad Cream” and “Brown Sauce.” Brown sauce tastes like brown. </Ralph Wiggum>
I also headed north to visit my cousins in Stirling, Scotland. She’s a fantastic cook, and I got my fill of such delicacies as steak pie (she dislikes kidney, alas) and black pudding. My cousin was rather scandalized by me calling it blood sausage for some reason.
She didn’t offer us haggis, but I had some at a pub in Edinburgh, with neeps and tates. It’s the ultimate comfort food, and I rather liked it. My partner, a Latina who every Sunday morning happily tucks into a big bowl of menudo was put off by it. Go figure.
I’m not too sure - because I have looked. I don’t really count british specialty stores because three bucks for a can of specially imported beans doesn’t really count. I know that you can get similer baked beans, but the bean is usually different, the sauce and coloring are different, and there’s usually a blob of fat floating in there too.
Same thing for HP sauce - you can buy it but it’s a lot thinner in consistency and not so tangy - it’s closer to A1, which is good, if you want A1.
Digestive biscuits and hobnobs in every large grocery store!!! Please tell me where! I’ve lived in Phoenix, San Antonio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey and I always look - I’ve never seen 'em. Are you sure we’re talking about the same thing?
The cheese is also a puzzling one - a good grocery store will sometimes carry a few british cheeses, but trust me, you really cannot get the same range of UK cheeses over here, at least not without going to great lengths.
I’m really talking about finding the original items - close is good, but it’s the little differences you notice, as I’m sure most Americans in the UK will agree.
Ooh, look what I found - a website where people from different countries can trade foos in the mail. Don’t know how legal it is though. The requests give you a good idea of the foods you can’t get in certain countries:
http://www.swapfood.com/start.asp
Keith: The packages I got explicitly said McVitie’s Digestive Biscuits. Chocolate and regular. This is at the HEB supermarket in northwest San Antonio, as I mentioned. Any largish city will also have at least one specialty grocer that carries British foods. You may have to look around a bit, but they’re out there.
Another problem is that even when the food in question comes from the UK (or wherever else), it’s going to taste different because it’s aged somewhat in transit.
Robin
Posted by DarrenS:
OK, so what’s Branston Pickle? And how does British corned beef differ from American?
Just got home from Kroger’s. The “international foods” aisle has HP Sauce and HP Fruit Sauce, McV’s Digestive Biscuits, Blackcurrant Jelly, Aero, Flake and various other candy bars, Marmite, and lots of other British foodstuffs. But no Twinings Iced Teas or chutney.
Digestive Biscuits in most large San Jose CA grocery stores (Safeway, etc)- dark or milk chocolate (I prefer the Dark, meself). "Hob Nobs’ only in stores with a British “speciality section” which includes Zannottos.
At “Whole Foods” (larger stores only) they have at least a hundred cheeses, including maybe 20 Brit cheeses.
I like a bit of Wensleydale with a fine port for a “nitecap”, and they will have that cheese, although not always.
Zannotos has several Brit cheeses.
Damn you all.
I am now about to leave my house to go and buy aniseed balls, a crunchie bar, a Cadbury’s Flake, some marmite, yorkshire pudding, and I may call in the pub for a pint of bitter to wash them down with.
This thread is having an effect on me, too. Have eaten THREE Cornish Pasties in the last two days, and now considering a fourth … :eek:
Julie
That’s not really true… My mother loves pork pies so we had them often… I can’t stand the damn things and heating them up was the only way I could stomach it…