Thursday 4 April 2024

British Bake Off For Americans

As we know, we handed the American's a structured English language and the first thing they did was mangle it by taking out the letter U and making up silly words for things which already had perfectly good names so you get all the confusion over Crisps, Chips, Gas, Pants and don't even get me started on Fanny but i didn't know that America now gets The Great British Bake Off and nobody on that side of the Atlantic Ocean really knows what any of the desserts are.
The differences between what British people and Americans mean by pudding and biscuit i was vaguely aware of but a British pudding can also be black, steak and kidney, rice, a crumble, Pease, Figgy, Treacle, sticky toffee or even a Roly Poly so not that straight forward.
A biscuit is even more complicated with it being a Wagon Wheel, Malted Milk, Jammie Dodger, Party Ring, Bourbons, Ginger Nuts, Rich Tea, Digestive, Chocolate Chip, Custard Cream or even a Hobnob and some of which may be half covered in chocolate.
Apparently Americans eat biscuits with gravy so heaven knows what the hell that is unless gravy is another word for custard but even that is weird but it seems that everything is called something different so our cookery books refer to aubergines, mangetouts, courgettes, coriander and sultana's while the
Americans will call them eggplants, snow peas, zucchini, cilantro and golden raisins.
So if you hear Paul Hollywood or Pru Leith refer to toffee then think caramel, a traybake is a bar cookie, granola bar is a flapjack, pancake is a crepe but apparently Americans don't even have trifle, Eton mess or banoffee pie so if you are not accustomed to the UK palate then then you should stay well away from bubble and squeak, clotted cream, squashed fly cake, Lardy Cake, Wet Nelly and Dumplings and a Spotted Dick should be avoided at all times.

2 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...

some things stand out in this simple but sort of uneducated post by the persona that is lucyp

1. in the US, a biscuit is not sweet, what you call a biscuit is called a cookie here

2. gravy... you really don't know what gravy is? gravy is the outcome of adding flour to the drippings from a cooked meat, turkey gravy, chicken gravy, pork gravy, beef gravy, etc. and cooking it into a roux to add to the meal...

3. the US is extremely multi-cultural compared to the uk, so our language reflects several things: > US (superpower) reminding uk it is a has-been superpower - a micro aggression if you will;
> the inculcation of words, cooking, art, etc from other cultures as people migrate to the US;
> the US culture isn't as anchored to the past as the uk culture (glory days).

4. nobody from the uk should ever criticize the cuisine of any other culture. i know many people that have traveled the world and one of the things that they can all come to a consensus on is that the worst food in the world is in the uk...

ps - regarding language, i can hardly think of a stupider name for the top of a car than "bonnet"...

Anonymous said...

First, I never mentioned sweet and secondly gravy goes on meat here and for the rest you went the full David G so I just rolled my eyes and skipped it to write this.