Gargoyle Pie

All contributions gratefully received, on any subject, e.g. history, local names, recipes, pictures, videos, songs, poems, traditions (local or family), personal anecdotes, etc.

cabbage

Cabbage is a brassica and is grown for its leaf which forms into a tight ball at the top of single stem. Cabbages can be planted at different times of the year to provide plants almost all year round. It can be planted from September for Spring cabbage, from mid-May for summer cabbage, or in July for winter cabbage. Cabbage can be green, white, or red, savoy, and more recently the Chinese cabbage and the elongated, pointy topped Hispi.
Cabbage is eaten raw (as in coleslaw) or cooked, usually boiled. The leaf is the favourite part of the plant but the peppery white stem ('heart' or stump') can also be eaten raw or cooked. Pickled red cabbage is still a traditional food in the north of England served with pies, mashed potato, rag pudding, etc.
Cabbage was a traditional addition to Sunday lunch but has lost ground against more exotic/trendy vegetables like broccoli, but in communities which live in close proximity (terraced houses or flats) the smell of boiling cabbage still fills the air on Sunday lunchtime. And who can forget school dinner cabbage, boiled to transparency, and heaped on your plate, "because its good for you!".
Cabbage is yet another vegetable that has suffered from the dreaded standardisation and we can no longer buy tiny ones, giant family sized ones, or half a cabbage.
Sayings: "I'm not as green as I'm cabbagy looking" (I'm not as daft as I look).
"He's Gorra Hee-ad, as big as a fifty bob cabbage" (He's full of himself - Sheffield)
See also: 'bubble and squeak' and 'rumbledethumps'.

cabot / estendard de chasteau

A 'cabot', also known as the 'estendard de chasteau', is a traditional unit of volume in Jersey (Channel Islands) and is equal to 10 'pots' or just over 4 gallons (4 gals, 1 quart and 3 gills or about 19.747 litres.) For dry commodities, the cabot is roughly comparable to 1/2 bushel, which again is 4 dry gallons.
It was legalised in 1593 and was used for both liquid and dry commodities. The unit was still in general use at the end of the Victorian period.
See also 'pot'.

cake

Everyone thinks of a large, soft, sweet, fluffy food, or 'sticky buns' when they hear this word but actually the word cake was once applied to things we now call biscuits, or indeed to anything flat and round. So traditional foods bearing the word 'cake' can be more biscuit like than anything else e.g. Goosenargh Cake. The modern definition is that a biscuit, when left, will go soft, and a cake, when left, will go hard.

Nursery rhyme:
Pat a cake, Pat a cake, baker's man
Bake me a cake as fast as you can;
Pat it and prick it and mark is with a 'B',
And put it in the oven for baby and me.

Sayings: Some people believe that you cannot have your cake and eat it. I beg to differ.
If you find a task easy to perform you might describe it as being "a piece of cake".
'Cake hole' is also another way of describing your mouth, and it is also possible to be 'caked' in something, usually something liquid (or semi-liquid) which has dried e.g. mud.

calders

Slices of cold porridge. I bet Delia hasn't done this one.

Camarthen ham

Cured for nine months in salt and then air dried. Only one family still makes this in Wales and has been doing so for 70 years. Let's make sure they reach 80.

camp coffee

A thick black syrup, (and not a drink favoured by gay people). Made for times when coffee was scarce, expensive, or both, and said to have military origins. Though it contains 4% essence of coffee its main flavouring is chicory. Still enthusiastically drunk by older generations and also valued as a baking ingredient in coffee flavoured items. Traditionally drunk with 'condensed' milk.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Very Safe

Culturally exported so globally produced and consumed (i.e. its fate does not rest soley in our hands).

CAMRA

The organisation known as 'Campaign For Real Ale' and initiators of the very successful 'David and Goliath' battle with the major brewing companies (ongoing).

can opener

The first tin cans were so thick they had to be hammered open with a chisel, bayonet or heavy knife. As technology improved the cans became thinner and it became possible to invent dedicated hand operated can openers.
In 1855, Robert Yates, an instrument maker and cutler in Middlesex, London, patented the first can opener (patent number: 1577), which was a short knife and claw like blade attached to a handle. It was banged into the top of the tin and levered around the lid, ripping the tin, often leaving a jagged edge. The 'knife and claw' type of opener is still available today.
Many strange but innovative designs then appeared and there were attempts to create openers with a cutting wheel (U.S.-1870-William Lyman) but generally all following improvements and patents, were variations of the 'claw and blade' opener and can opening technology didn't move forward significantly until the invention of the first rotating toothed wheel openers (U.S.-1925-Star Can Opener Company). The first of this kind of 'toothed' or 'feed' wheel opener was not very successful but it led to a series of improved designs which quickly led to the very successful two wheeled version. After that came the two handled 'pliers' type and then the miniature military type (US- P-38).
Note that some early can openers were designed to be used horizontally, to remove the whole lid of the can rather than just a disk from within the top rim, and this idea was returned to in modern times with electric wall mounted can openers.
Can openers are also known as 'tin openers'.

Candlemas

Candlemas is on the 2nd of February (forty days after Christmas) and is mid point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, half way through winter in the old pagan calendar, and a time for all farmers, ancient and modern, to begin thinking about the coming agricultural season.
Traditionally if the weather was fair on Candlemas then the worst of the winter was over, if t was foul then bad weather is yet to come.

Old Scottish rhyme:
If Candlemas day be dry and fair
The half o' winters to come and mair
If Candlemas day be wet and foul
The half o' winter's gane at Yule.

Greenery (holly, ivy, mistletoe, etc.), taken into homes during winter, an old pagan custom, later adopted by Christianity, had to be taken down by Candlemas otherwise bad luck would ensue.

candy floss

Like eating sugary cob webs. Even the biggest bite melts to nothing and it is impossible to eat one without getting it on your face. Brightly coloured, spun sugar on a stick, or in a bag, the most favourite colour being pink (you might want to remember that). Invented in America as 'candy floss' but now known there as 'cotton candy'. Found on sale in fairgrounds and in seaside resorts. One of the fastest ways to make a clean kid sticky.

caprolite

'Coprolite' is fossilised animal dung and occurred in Cambridgeshire, between Soham and Royston.
When ground down and treated with acid, it made an excellent fertiliser.
It was mined out between 1850 and 1890.

caraway

Caraway, in the form of seeds, was believed to aid digestion, and to have a calming affect which may explain why it appears in biscuits and cakes associated with funerals (e.g. Wiggs and Yorkshire funeral biscuits). Caraway used to be used more in cooking than it is now.
See also: 'seed cake'.

carling / carlin

4

Black peas eaten, like mushy peas, in the north east of England, Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. Traditionally eaten on 'carlin Sunday', and bonfire night though also eaten daily with meals and as pub snacks, but now in severe decline, extinct in most regions. These are the same as 'black peas', favoured in Lancashire, but in the north east they like their peas firm, like mashed potato, and will eat them baked or sliced, whereas further south peas tend to be eaten 'mushy' to 'wet'. Informally known as 'sheep droppings'. Eaten since medieval times but discarded by us, to the point of near extinction, since the 1950's.

Lane's Extinction Grading: On the brink.

1. Difficult to find, on the brink of extinction.
2. Revived by an individual or by a few culturally unconnected individuals.

carrot

Originally the carrot was white and from Afghanistan, and the cultivated variety was purple but the Dutch bred an orange variety as a tribute to the House of Orange, making it a sectarian vegetable. The novelty of an orange carrot made it fashionable in Britain but things have gone full circle and these days the novelty of purple and yellow varieties is making them desirable.

carrot pudding / cake

Carrot pudding or cake is a cake made from vegetables. Carrot puddings were eaten in the 17th and 18th centuries but fell from fashion for nearly two hundred years. It was revived in the rationing days of World War Two when traditional ingredients were scarce. The carrot pudding, or cake, has stayed with us and is still a modern favourite, even trendy in coffee shops.

carucate / ploughland

An English unit of land area measurement used in the 'Danelaw' parts of England (Norse) and was similar to the non 'Danelaw' (Saxon) unit the 'hide'. The carucate is defined as the area of land which can be ploughed team of 8 oxen in one season.
The 'carucate' is subdivided into 'bovates' or 'oxgangs', the area a single ox could plough in one season, therefore one eight of a carucate. The size of this unit varies due to the different soils being ploughed.

cask / cask conditioned

A 'cask', like a 'keg', can be a container of any size but, unlike the 'keg', which was a container used by many occupations, the cask is historically and uniquely linked to the brewing of beer.
Cask ale or cask-conditioned beer is unfiltered and unpasteurised beer which is conditioned (including secondary fermentation) in the cask and served from the cask without the aid of modern technology (additional nitrogen or carbon dioxide pressure). Consequently cask ale is also called 'real ale' (though a variety of other beers also fall into this category).
A filler of beer casks was known as an 'ale tunner'.
See also 'keg' and 'barrel'.

cattle shoes

Before the advent of the railways cattle were driven long distances to market from remote rural areas to big cities along traditional drovers routes. Cattle were sometimes shod in metal shoes for the journey, just like a horse. Unlike a horse cattle have cloven hooves so eight shoes per animal were required.
See also: 'droving / drover'.

caul cig moch *

Welsh bacon soup, or stew (moch = pig). Though pork is widely used in Britain it is rarely used in stews, which is how I first encountered this dish, as Welsh pig stew, with great lumps of pork in it. It now appears to have become bacon soup. I thought I had this 'cawl cig moch' thing pinned down when I was a student (temporary affliction) in south Wales, but now I

caul fat

The lowest grade of lard which can be obtained from a pig, and taken from the soft 'caul' fat surrounding the digestive organs. Traditional faggots are wrapped in the net like 'caul' fat before baking.

cauliflower / cauli / collie

3

Cauliflower is just one of our many popular brassicas and, as the name suggests, is the enlarged flower head of the plant, known by farmers as the 'curd' or 'white curd'. The individual sections of the head are known as 'florets'. Cauliflowers are commonly known as "collies" though the spelling used on many market labels is 'caulis'. Cauliflower is grown all year round, and outdoors, so never has to be imported, which makes it an ideal candidate for any attempt at local or national self sufficiency.
Kids never seem to have a strong opinion on collies, as they do with other vegetables, so it is one vegetable that you can sneak in under radar, camouflaged with a cheese sauce. Collies were, until fairly recently, a favourite vegetable with cooked dinners, especially with Sunday dinner, but in the last 10 years sales have fallen by 35 percent, and by 5 percent in 2010 alone. It has been abandoned in favour of trendy newcomers and because some people mistakenly associate the white colour with being less nutritious. Cauliflower cheese was the other famous British cauliflower dish but it is a versatile vegetable which bakes and grills wonderfully.
As well as the traditional white 'snowball' variety you can also get a weird looking, green, spikey, 'romanesco' or Roman type. In addition there are orange, purple cheese coloured and green varieties of cauliflower but your kids might not eat the green one because it looks like too much like broccoli. These colours were developed to compete with coloured varieties of other vegetables and to help reverse the downward trend in cauliflower consumption.
Though the distinctive white heads are the favourite part of the plant, the green leaves and white branching tree like stalks, (the 'heart', or 'stump'), are also edible and are great in soups and stews. The hard stump was given to me raw, as a kid, to keep me at bay until the Sunday dinner was ready, but also because it was good for me, and because it tasted fantastic. It has a wonderful peppery crunch and small pieces of it, included in salad will surprise many, and have them guessing. Unbelievably most people throw this part away.
100 million cauliflowers a year are currently been grown (2011) on 12,000 acres of land, and 60 percent of these are grown in Lincolnshire.
A Cornish variety of cauliflower, which was resistant to fungus, and is now extinct (displaced by a French variety in the 1940's), was introduced into India where it replaced local vegetables in piccalilli, and Indian pickle. Many Indian and Chinese varieties were derived from the Cornish one. Cauliflower is still the main ingredient in piccalilli today.
Cauliflower used to come in different sizes, tiny ones for the smaller appetite and huge football sized ones for families, but now they are all the same size, with a standard price, even on many markets, and the rejected unpicked sizes are ploughed back into the field, a terrible waste.
See also: 'brassica' and 'Piccalilli'.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Unsafe/Decline

1. Still enjoyed by the older generation in one area.
2. Enjoyed by dwindling numbers (shunned by pretentious people and kids).
3. Sucessfully revived in small pockets for a few families.

cawl

Pronounced 'cowl'. A Welsh word for soup or stew, but modern recipes tend to specify lamb and vegetables. Often eaten with bread and cheese.

cent

5a

The cent, now thought of as a unit of former British colonies (meaning a hundredth of a dollar,) was once commonly used in Britain to mean a hundredth of anything, of any unit.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Extinct

Extinct but a useable recipe, knowledge or appropriate experience exists.

Ceres bakery

Craig Sams (born 1944) founded Britain’s first organic bakery, in 1972, called Ceres.
Part of the motivation was apparently to create the opposite of 'Wonderloaf'.

chain

A 'chain' is a linear unit of measurement equal to 22 yards (66 feet).
There are 10 chains to a 'furlong', and a standard agricultural 'acre' used to be a furlong in length and a chain in width. A chain is also equal to 4 'rods'.
A cricket pitch is a 'chain' long.

chalder

A 'chalder' was both an English and a Scottish traditional unit of volume for dry goods.
In England it was used to measure bulk items such as coal or lime and was equal to one eighth of a 'keel', or 53 hundredweight, or 5,936 pounds. It was also equal to 36 bushels (288 gallons or 1,296 litres).
In Scotland it was equal to 16 'bolls' of 4 'firlots' each. For wheat, peas, beans, rye, grass seed and salt this was about 2324.9 litres; for barley, oats and malt, about 3362.5 litres.
The origins of the word are apparently French.

champ

A mashed potato dish from Northern Ireland consisting of mashed potato, chopped green or spring onions, butter and milk. In Northern Ireland it is possible for you to 'be as thick as champ' which means that you are stupid. See also 'colcannon'.

chaps

The lower half of pigs cheeks. The cheeks may be roasted to become 'pork chaps' or made into ham to become 'bacon chaps'. They can still be obtained in a few places and they have recently seen a revival in the Bristol and Bath area as the local specialty 'Bath chaps'. At first sight a roasted 'chap' or cheek looks like any other roasted piece of meat but closer investigation will reveal a row of nice white teeth on the underside, confirming that it is indeed a pig cheek. There's not a lot of meat on a 'chap' but what there is has uniquely pleasant characteristics. Remove the oval shaped piece of meat and serve separately and nobody need know, (until after they've eaten it obviously). In parts of Lincolnshire they are known as 'chep'. The name may have come from 'chops', an old word for cheeks, which is still in use in some regions, and also features in adult generated baby talk (e.g. 'cheeky chops').
Alt: Chap is also an old fashioned term for a man and would also be used as an affectionate greeting in the same way that 'mate' would be used now.

Charles Butler - 1560-1647

Charles Butler (1560–1647), sometimes called the 'Father of English Beekeeping' was the vicar of Wooton St. Lawrence, near Basingstoke.
He observed that bees produce wax combs from scales of wax produced in their own bodies (previously it was believed that wax was collected from plants), and he was among the first to assert that drones are male, and that the queen was female (it was previously thought to be a male, a king), though he incorrectly believed that worker bees lay eggs.
He was the author of 'The Feminine Monarchie', 1609, which was the first full-length English-language book about beekeeping. The first edition was revolutionary and the book (in various editions) remained a valid and practical guide for beekeepers for two hundred and fifty years.

Charter pie

Charter pie is a Cornish dish of chicken, leeks, parsley, butter and cream baked in a rich short crust pastry shell.

Cheddar

I do not propose to use this glossary to list every single cheese made in Britain but I will make an exception for Cheddar which is the most popular and the most abused cheese in the world.
We love cheddar, more than half the cheese we eat is Cheddar, partly because a taste for it was developed during the second world war when local and regional cheeses were replaced by the governments standard recipe 'National Cheese' which was very Cheddar like. Normal cheese production restarted in the 1950's.
Sadly half the cheese we eat is imported and about a third of our Cheddar is imported, much of it pretending to be English Cheddar. Fifty three percent of our Cheddar comes in pre-packed, own label packaging, much of it with no indication of origin on the label. Huge quantities are transported to us from around the globe from places such as New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
Cheddar isn't just popular here, it's also the most popular cheese in the world. It's also the most badly imitated cheese in the world. Some Cheddars I’ve had in the Middle East were scarcely recognisable as cheese, let alone cheddar, but there are some pretty awful examples in Britain too, most of it in supermarkets.
Many people forget that Cheddar is a place in England, in Somerset, and that it comes from the people and the traditions of that region, where it is still made in the correct way, setting a standard which most other producers cannot match. I cannot help smiling when I see Cheddar written on packaging accompanied by a foreign national flag and apparently Cheddar is traditionally Scottish, Irish and Welsh. But the original producers are fighting back and West Country Farmhouse Cheddar, the real stuff, now has a PDO (Protected Designation of Origin), covering farmers in Somerset, Devon, Dorset and Cornwall who make Cheddar in the traditional way, on the farm, and from their own milk.

cheese - 1 - dairy food

Though most of us know of only one definition of 'cheese' but in times gone past the term was applied to other types of food, usually any which had been poured or pressed into a mould and the other 'cheese' definitions elsewhere in this glossary reflect this e.g. 'fruit cheese', 'head cheese', etc. However this entry will deal with the food made from milk curds which are pressed into a mould.
Apparently 98% of British households enjoy cheese (presumably the rest just endure it). Sheep and goats cheese could be considered to be the most traditional but in recent centuries cows' cheese has dominated resulting in sheep's cheese, becoming very rare in Britain, though they are still common throughout Europe and the middle east. Many of the cow cheeses we eat now were once sheep cheeses, but sheep and goat cheeses are returning in some style.
Cheese has a much longer shelf life than the milk from which it is made, historically making it suitable for storage and travel (each sailor in the Nelson's Navy was issued 12 ounces per week). Each region of Britain, particularly in England, has its own distinct cheese and the most popular cheese in Britain, is Cheddar, which is also one of the most popular cheeses in the world. Prior to the industrial revolution, and the consequent industrialisation of our food making processes, English cheeses were once the most famous in Europe (and therefore the world). There is a move to regain this position.
The British eat 700,000 tons of cheese per year (2010) and half of that is imported, some of it in ambiguous 'own label' packaging, pretending to be British, but the situation is improving with gradual changes now being made to supermarket own label Cheddars which are now more clearly labelled.
Huge quantities are imported, mainly from Ireland (90,000 tonnes in 2010) and from New Zealand, Australia and Canada (combined 12,000 tonnes in 2010) and with no clear indication of origin on the packaging. Our own cheese makers and dairy farmers are the victims of this deception.
During the war traditional cheese production stopped and everyone had to eat the 'National Cheese', which was very Cheddar like, and which largely explains why we love Cheddar so much today. Normal cheese production restarted in the 1950's and today there are over 700 named cheeses in Britain, and increasing, with England being the strongest and most varied producer, with new cheeses appearing all the time and with old traditional recipes being revived.
Alternative uses: Julius Cheeser was a Roman mouse cartoon character who appeared in the comic Topper (1954-1966).
Sayings: 'Hard cheese!' is an expression used by unsympathetic people upon discovery of your troubles, and a very important person may be referred to as the 'big cheese'. If you've had enough of something you might consider yourself to be "cheesed off".
Many people believe that eating cheese before bedtime will give you bad dreams.
Quote: "Cheese is milk's leap toward immortality." ~ Clifton Fadiman
Origin: Cheese comes from the Saxon 'cese'.
[US-NZ-Aus-Canada] (In New Zealand a 'dairy' is also a corner shop).
See also: 'cheddar cheese', 'vinegar cheese', 'Red Tractor Scheme' and 'British Cheese Board'.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Very Safe

Culturally exported so globally produced and consumed (i.e. its fate does not rest soley in our hands).

cheese - 2 - fruit cheese

Fruit cheeses were once common and were especially popular with the Victorians. See also 'fruit cheese'.

cheese - 3 - head cheese

'Brawn', which is bits of meat (obtained from a boiled pigs head) and jelly placed into a mould, used to be called 'head cheese', and still is in some places. See also 'brawn'.

cheese - 4 - apple pulp

The wad of wrapped, milled/pounded apple pulp (the 'cheese') which goes into the 'cheese press' in order to produce apple juice, the raw material for cider making.

cheese and onion pie

Still common.

cheese and potato pie

A once common pie which appears to have fallen from favour, which is surprising considering the variety of cheeses we have in this country. Often contained onions as well.

cheese mite

A mite which has chosen to live on, and in cheese. Considered the enemy of cheese makers but some foreign cheese makers deliberately introduce mites to improve the flavour (or so they say). Stilton cheese mites, which were essentially cheese with legs, were once eaten with spoons (the original moveable feast) and there is a theory that the tradition of pouring port over Stilton was originally a way of killing the mites before you ate the cheese. Port is still associated with Stilton today, and I wait with anticipation of the re-introduction of the Stilton mite by traditional cheese makers. I bet the EU has legislation and specifications on mites, and I expect the French only use ones that can prove they were born in France.

cheese monger

A person who sells or deals in cheese.
Until recently cheese mongers were becoming rare, in danger of being made extinct by supermarkets, but recent growing interest in local and regional foods has resulted in cheese shops returning to our lives.
Other occupation names are: cheeseman, cheese factor.

cheese mould / form

There are two types of cheese mould.
The first is a living organism which grows on some cheeses.
The second is a container which holds the cheese in shape during processing. An alternative name for this type of cheese mould is a 'form', and some people use this word to distinguish between the containers and the living moulds. Moulds are available in different shapes and sizes for soft and pressed cheeses, in stainless steel or high density food-grade plastic. Circular moulds are sometimes known as 'hoops'.

Chefs Adopt A School

The 'Chefs Adopt A School' project, which began in 1990 by the Academy of Culinary Arts, teaches primary school children all about food, food provenance and cookery through taste sessions. Approximately 150 chefs are currently involved in the scheme (2011).
The main Aims of Chefs Adopt a School are: To introduce children to 'real' food: how to taste and appreciate the joys of eating. To advance the education of children and young persons in food, nutrition, hygiene, health and related subjects. To develop their knowledge of food and food provenance, and understanding of the diversity of foods eaten by different people for cultural and medical reasons.
On the 16th July 2001, Adopt A School Trust was officially registered as a charity.

Chelsea bun

The bun can be recognised by the spiral pattern on the top, a result of the making process. The rich yeast dough is rolled out flat into a square, or oblong, and spread with a mixture of currants, sweet spice mixture, lemon peel, brown sugar and butter before being rolled into log. The log is cut approx. every 1.25 inches into slices, and each slice will become an individual bun. These are left to rise and the secret to getting the customary square shape is the spacing between them which should allow the rising buns to touch, thus forming straight sides. The buns are then given a sweet glaze before baking (and often afterwards too).
The Chelsea bun was created in the early 1700's at the Bun House, Chelsea (demolished in 1839), an establishment which was patronised by the royal family and famous people. Cinnamon was a very popular spice in those times, a fashion which was enthusiastically taken to the new colonies in America and has remained strong there. Americans have cinnamon on and in everything and their 'cinnamon roll' is practically a Chelsea Bun.

cherry batter

A very old favourite in Kent but may well have originally come from their neighbours nearby in France, as the recipes for this dish do seem to be suspiciously faffy to be English.

Cheshire pork pie

A pork pie but with apple, sugar and nutmeg. The preferred apple seems to be Cox's Orange Pippins.

Chichester Pudding

U

Chichester pudding is an egg yolk custard flavoured with with almonds and lemon and thickened with course dry bread crumbs, Stiff, whipped egg white is partly folded in. It is baked in a buttered dish and served immediately from the oven.
Its another way to use up stale bread in a pudding.
See also: 'bread and butter pudding' and 'wet Nelly'.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Unknown!

Not yet fully investigated, cannot make an assessment.

chicken Balmoral

Chicken and haggis wrapped in bacon and baked in the oven.

chicken lips

An expression sometimes used to summarise meat of uncertain identification, and that which usually ends up inside minced meat type products, e.g. burgers, sausages, haggis, etc.

chicklin

A Leeds word for 'chitterlings'.

chill lamp

A 'chill lamp' is a Cornish oil lamp which burnt fish oil, known in Cornwall as 'saime', a by-product of pilchard processing.
A Cornish word for a wick made from a rag and fish oil is a 'booba'.
See also: 'pilchards'. 'huers' and 'pilchard palaces'.

chip butty

1

A chip butty is a chip sandwich, available from all decent chip shops, though the size and nature of the bread will differ according to local taste. Some will serve the chips in a huge two hander of a bun whilst others will serve chips in a standard bun, but overflowing, but generally chip shops are generous with their chips in butties.
A chip butty was traditionally dressed with salt and vinegar and/or red or brown sauce but may today contain curry sauce, mushy peas, gravy, etc., and I even came across one in Lancashire which contained stew (and was called a 'Sloppy Joe').
The chip butty has been around for as long as chips though historically there were differences to the modern version. For example, in living memory chip butties were served in Leeds in floured sourdough bread, spread inside with beef dripping, but today's health conscious public would turn their noses up at it (but not strangely at a chip butty itself). Some traditional foods transcend guilt!
See also: 'chip', 'butty', 'fish butty', 'fish and chips', 'sit down fish and chips' and 'chip shop curry sauce'.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Safe

1. Nationally produced and/or consumed
2. Very strong traditions in one village, town, county or region.

chip shop / fish and chip shop / fish frier

The chip shop is also formally known as a 'fish and chip' shop or as a 'fish shop' but informally as the 'chippy, 'chipper' or 'chip 'ole'.
The modern chip shop is a very characteristic place where fish and chips are cooked and sold hot, though these days a chip shop might sell other types of food, now also considered traditional chip shop items. What is actually sold may be specific to your area or region (e.g. pies, steak and kidney puddings, mushy peas, haggis, sausage, saveloy, pease pudding, fish cakes, gravy, rag pudding, etc.), but the mainstay is still deep fried chips and battered fish. Traditional fish and chip shops have stainless steel frying ranges which are great for hand warming or for leaning on in winter, and the food is at eye level, adding to the anticipation first triggered by the smell as you approached.
But it wasn't always like this and chip shops were originally, in the 1830's, smelly back street affairs found in the alley ways of poor areas and didn't sell chips at all, only fish, and were known as 'fried fish sellers'. These establishments were set up in the kitchens of private homes and the fish, and eventually fish and chips, were sold from the front door.
Their popularity grew and by the 1860's the first purpose built fish and chip shops were being built, possibly in Lancashire or West Yorkshire, but nobody really knows. By the 1870's fish and chips shops were spreading all over the country and many working class people would enjoy fish and chips three or four times a week. Their spread was aided by the invention of the steam trawler and the ability to move fresh fish quickly on the ever expanding railways, and it soon became a national favourite.
The original back street fish and chip friers had a bad reputation for poor hygiene, both odour and filth, so in the early 1900's fish friers tried to improve their image with purpose built cooking ranges and colourful, hygienic, light reflecting tiling, in a marriage of industry and art, which resulted in beautiful ranges in different styles throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The early ranges were coal fired nut only three Edwardian ranges survive today. Every industrial town would once have had its own range making company. The fish and chip range is still common today because it has never been bettered, though sadly the tradition for colourful tile work has all but gone.
Some fish and chip shops evolved into restaurants known as 'saloons' some of which were huge. Many of these survive today though they no longer use the word 'saloon', and even new fish and chip shops aspire to have a seating area where they can also serve bread and butter with pots of tea.
Mobile fish and chip shops were also popular, coal fired, horse drawn and mounted on a cart, but the last one stopped serving in Spennymore, County Durham, in 1972, after 50 years of good service. It has been restored and is on show at the Beamish museum.
As our tastes have widened, over the last 50 years, the fish and chip shop went into decline, but not terminal decline as was once feared, and they are now holding their own against other fast food establishments. With their 160 year old track record and a current resurgent interest in traditional food, they are even seeing a rise in popularity against the fleeting fashions for other types of food. For a while the curry became the nations favourite 'take-away' but fish and chips are back on top with 250 million meals being sold over a one year period, and in Britain there are 12 fish and chip shops for every one MacDonalds. In many places chip shops are returning, and sometimes even displacing food outlets of other ethnic origins, which once displaced a chip shop, a reversal of a trend which has lasted for 50 years. Apparently chip shops are becoming very popular in China and there one or two in the Middle East.
Salt and vinegar have always been the traditional condiment though some chip shops offer red or brown sauce (sometimes indistinguishable from the vinegar except for their colour) and chips shops gave rise to a new creation called 'chip shop curry sauce'.
Chip shops come in all sizes from tiny ones with barely enough room to squeeze into, and huge ones like Harry Ramsden's near Leeds (world record 10,000 portions of chips in one day, and using tons of potato per week).
Many old occupations have evolved interesting and traditional occupational names but I have never come across any word which describes an exponent of the noble and honourable art of fish and chip making, so I've invented one, a 'chipateer' (like in mustakteer).
Quote: Fish fryers motto: "In cod we trust!".
Joke: "Doctor, doctor there's something wrong with my legs, they won't walk past chip shops!" - Tommy Cooper.
See also: 'fish and chips', 'chip butty', 'fish butty', 'sit down fish and chips' and 'chip shop curry sauce'.
[Aus-NZ-US-Can-SA-Eire-Faroe Islands]

Lane's Extinction Grading: Very Safe

Culturally exported so globally produced and consumed (i.e. its fate does not rest soley in our hands).

chip shop curry sauce

Chip shop curry sauce is so called because that's where it was invented. It appeared at a time when people were experimenting with curries but didn't like them to be very spicy and so a unique mild sauce, not available in Asian establishments, evolved in chip shops and grew in popularity until even supermarkets started selling it.
Chinese 'take-aways' got in the act and began to produce their own version which is more spicy and this too became popular. So in some traditional chip shops I was amazed to discover that it is possible to specify which type of curry sauce you prefer with your chips, 'English' or 'Chinese'.

chips

Deep fried pieces of elongated potato pieces (slab-cut). The more floury potatoes are favoured for chip making, such as 'Maris Piper', 'King Edward', 'Romano' and 'Desiree'. Not to be confused with rather pathetic American 'fries' or those hollow things done in ovens.
Sayings: If you've 'had your chips' then it is estimated that your end, or demise, is near.
See also 'fish and chips', 'chip shop' and 'sit down fish and chips'.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Very Safe

Culturally exported so globally produced and consumed (i.e. its fate does not rest soley in our hands).

chitterlings

3

Large intestine of pig, poached. Eaten in many regions of England and In the Leeds area they are known as 'chicklin'.
Dialect: In Somerset, where the intestines were knotted and boiled for eating, they may also be referred to as "nottlins" or "nettlins".

Lane's Extinction Grading: Unsafe/Decline

1. Still enjoyed by the older generation in one area.
2. Enjoyed by dwindling numbers (shunned by pretentious people and kids).
3. Sucessfully revived in small pockets for a few families.

chitting

'Chitting' is the process by which a 'seed potato', or 'tuber', is encouraged to sprout from its 'eyes'. This is achieved by putting the tubers, most eyes upwards, in a seed tray or egg box, and then leaving in a light, cool, frost free place place.
Once the potatoes have 'chitted' all but two or three of the sprouts are rubbed off and then the tubers are planted out. Good Friday was traditionally the time to plant potatoes but this will be deeply pondered by every allotment owner you mention it to.
Chitted potatoes crop earlier than those that weren't, and often with higher yields.
Seed tubers may be planted without chitting and many amateurs do just that, but without chitting some tubers may fail to grow, causing gaps in the rows, whilst others may send up as many as seven or eight stems which, being overcrowded, become tall and spindly. This weakened growth will yield only a poor crop of potatoes, most of them small.
See also: 'potato', 'seed potato' and 'potato day'.

chocolate

A solid or a liquid which can be consumed directly (usually sweetened) or may be added to other foods.
Many women display an almost obsessive desire for chocolate claiming it to be better than sex (some chocolates have a physiological effect on the body and can be linked to serotonin levels in the brain). Men have noticed this addiction and so will often buy chocolates during courtship hoping it will lead to sex. Several female friends, upon discovery that I had created a unique traditional British food glossary, immediately, without hesitation, asked if I had chocolate on it.
Chocolate is an ancient food of South America brought to this country by the same people who introduced us to potatoes, tobacco and slavery, but the cocoa bean is now produced commercially in Africa where they produce two thirds of the worlds cocoa production.
Chocolate is made by fermenting 'cocao' beans which are dried, roasted and cleaned. The shell is removed and then this shell is ground to form cocoa which may then be processed into cocoa solids or into cocoa butter. True chocolate is a mixture of cocoa butter and cocoa solids with other ingredients added. White chocolate contains no cocoa solids and therefore, technically, is not chocolate, but I don't think we care do we?
The first chocolate house was opened in London in 1657.
Numerous famous chocolate companies arose in Britain during the industrial revolution, many created by members of the Quakers movement. All are now gone or under foreign control.

chop house

A chop house was a type of Victorian working class restaurant but was also patronised by higher status gentlemen and professionals who also appreciated them. They served, amongst other things, chops but were generally known for their good value, no nonsense British dishes, served in no-nonsense surroundings (bench seats forming cubicles around a table), Chop houses were the 'greasy spoon' of their day. The greatest numbers of 'chop' houses were found in London though not exclusively so, and they even found their way to America (though they didn't survive there).
The title 'chop house', again linked to eating, is making a strong revival, though the modern establishments which have adopted this name would bear little resemblance to the originals. Most though have stayed true to the English origins of the name, and to their philosophy, and serve only British food and drinks, consequently the word 'chop house' is quickly becoming a signpost to quality traditional British food in the same way that 'trattoria' points the way to Italian dishes, and 'nouvelle cuisine' indicates tiny portions of expensive French food.
Alt: A 'chop shop' is a modern slang phrase for an illegal location or business which disassembles stolen automobiles for the purpose of selling them as parts.

chopin / chapin / chapine / choppin / chapon / chopine

The chopin in was a unit of liquid capacity in Scotland (13th-19th centuries). It was half a Scottish pint (jug/Stirling jug), which is equal to two 'mutchkins' or one and a half imperial pints.
The choppin is equivalent to about 51.85 cubic inches, or 0.845 litres.
The 'chopine' was a traditional French unit of volume which is obsolete in France but apparently survives in some French language cultures as a word for the English/Imperial pint.

Chorley cake

Round parcels of short crust pastry are filled with currants and traditionally buttered before eating. One of several cakes originating from Lancashire that has a currant filling, the other main two being 'Eccles cake' and 'sad cake'. Less sweet than it's cousin the 'Eccles cake', and more fruity than the 'sad cake'.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Very Safe

Culturally exported so globally produced and consumed (i.e. its fate does not rest soley in our hands).

Chorleywood Bread Process

During the 'age of the technologist' scientists at the Flour Milling and Baking Research Association in Chorleywood, in 1961, came up the CBP (Chorleywood Bread Process), a way of making bread in 1 hour instead of the usual 3. The Chorleywood process relies on high-speed mixing, which agitates the dough, to reduce the fermentation period. (Traditional bakers would insist that it's a long fermentation time that allows the texture and flavour of bread to develop.)
It enabled the large scale industrial production of bread, and in doing so sent small craft bakers to the wall in favour of national 'sliced white' brands. During the 1960's 20,000 bakery workers were put out of work.
80% of the UK's bread is currently made using this process which cannot be replicated in a normal domestic kitchen.
See also 'sliced white'.

Christening piece

5a

A tradition linked with the Catholic church and was common in Scotland and and northern England, but perhaps other places too.
A 'christening piece' or 'piece' was given the first person you encounter (specifically a child in many cases but not all) but always of the opposite sex to the child which is about to be christened, or has just been christened (depending on your local custom).
The 'piece' could be a bag with fruit and/ or sweets (or some other goodies) and a coin in it or it could be a specially baked biscuit or cake, again sometimes with a coin in it. Or a coin was simply sandwiched between two biscuits before being handed over.
I have seen an account of the contents of a particular Christening bags explained thus: a coin to bring riches to their life, a candle to light their way through life, and something sweet to bring sweetness to their life.
The purpose of the Christening piece was presumably to ensure good luck for the new born child and possibly originates from a time when infant mortality was very high. But why give the 'piece' to a child of the opposite sex? What's the significance of that?
The practice led to poor kids hanging around churches and tea rooms when they knew a christening party was due or was taking place.
The tradition appears to have been on the wane on the run up to the second world war and sadly seems to have finally died out in the 1960's.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Extinct

Extinct but a useable recipe, knowledge or appropriate experience exists.

Christmas breakfast

Christmas morning breakfast used to be more important than it is now and many regions had traditional dishes that they ate on Christmas Morning, some ancient like brawn and cold rabbit pie (in Suffolk), and some more modern such as the full English breakfast with 'dock pudding' (Yorkshire), which is only possible since the invention of domestic freezers.

Christmas cake

A fruit cake of varying colour and texture but in my experience, from my travels throughout Britain, it is usually dark, rich, spicy, heavy cakes. Cakes are often soaked in alcoholic drink (sherry, brandy, whisky, etc.) but these are not to everyone's liking and some cakes have been known to even cause drunkenness. Christmas cakes are not generally iced but family, local or regional variations are many.
An old tradition requires all the children to take a turn in the mixing for good luck. The tradition extended to all heavy fruit cakes and puddings and was probably a way to get as many people as possible to take a turn as it is hard work mixing the weighty ingredients.
Christmas cake is traditionally made several months before Christmas, as early as September, and left in a cool dark place to mature.
In Yorkshire Christmas cake is always eaten with cheese and the practice has spread in recent years to other cakes (e.g. Battenburg).

Christmas cracker

Invented in London in 1847 by Tom Smith, a confectioner who was looking for imaginative ideas to sell his sweets when he came up with a sweet wrapped in a twist of paper, which he called 'bon-bons'. He then went on to insert mottos in with the sweets, the fore runner of the awful jokes we find in crackers today. The cracker became larger around 1861 to accommodate the 'snap', the thing that makes the cracker crack, and was launched with the new marketing name of 'Bangs of Expectation'. It was around this time also that small presents were inserted in place of the sweets and the modern cracker was born.
Traditionally crackers are pulled at Christmas Dinner which wouldn't be the same without cheap Christmas cracker paper hats falling over your eyes as you try to eat, and the communal groaning as the very British jokes are read out (and then explained in detail to small children and your granny).
We used to make our own crackers from toilet rolls when we were kids but they were rubbish and had old bits of toys in them that somebody didn't want.
[Aus-NZ]

Christmas dinner

The main adult focus of Christmas day (the kids being only interested in breaking their toys and eating chocolate until they are sick). Traditionally the dinner was roasted goose but it has been replaced in recent times by the cheaper turkey, but goose is making a bit of a come-back. Accompanied by pork, potatoes (mashed and roast), vegetables, 'pigs in blankets', stuffing and flimsy, ill fitting paper hats obtained from Christmas crackers. The main course is followed by 'Christmas pudding', usually eaten just before the Queen's speech, a prelude to snoring from older relatives. Christmas dinner is special, more than a meal, and especially important to a nation which regularly still sees its children travel the world or work in foreign countries, an event where families make the biggest annual effort to be together (even if they know they will argue all day).

Christmas pie

U

I only know about this from a nursery rhyme, which isn't actually about a pie anyway, its about a bloke who, by fair means or foul, ended up with a free manor house. I am assuming that the 'Christmas Pie' is actually the once famous 'Yorkshire Christmas Pie' though these pies were meat filled and did not contain plums.

Little Jack Horner sat in the corner.
Eating his Christmas pie.
He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum!.
And said "What a good boy am I!"

Lane's Extinction Grading: Unknown!

Not yet fully investigated, cannot make an assessment.

Christmas pudding

The 'Christmas pudding' is a dark, heavy, fruit laden, steamed, spicy pudding, eaten on Christmas day, with custard or brandy sauce, and the final challenge of the annual endurance test known as 'Christmas dinner'. A pudding which, over a period of about 500 years evolved from 'figgy pudding' into its modern form, though before that it may have been made from meat flavoured with fruits and spices and even today a traditional Christmas pudding should still contain suet. There are some who think that Christmas pudding has evolved from the 'Hakin', or something like it. The Christmas pudding was once boiled in a cloth to give the characteristic canon ball shape but these days it is usually made in a pudding bowl.
Both the Puritans and the Quakers tried to ban the Christmas pudding but it has survived the test of time.
The pudding should be made long before Christmas and it was once the tradition to make them a year before so that they were properly matured. Traditionally 'figgy' and 'Christmas' puddings contained a single lucky silver sixpence but this practice died out about 30 or 40 years ago. It was lucky only if you found it before it broke your teeth. Perhaps we could revive the tradition using something softer, slightly more edible, something which won't result in a visit to the x-ray department of your local hospital, a lucky mint or something?
See also: 'Empire Christmas pudding'.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Very Safe

Culturally exported so globally produced and consumed (i.e. its fate does not rest soley in our hands).

chutney / chutnee

A sweet, spicy pickle of vegetables and fruits. Not usually course in texture like pickles or 'piccalilli' but the definitions overlap somewhat.
Originally of Asian origin, and the name itself is Asian.
Oils, vinegar, lemon juice and sugar may be used as preserving agents. Victorian recipes for chutneys' or chutnees' are endless.

cider

Fermented apple juice and therefore popular in the apple growing areas of England, particularly in the south west of England. Cider is famous for its mysterious mood altering properties. Commercially or locally available. Locally obtained from barns or sheds, and sold to you by bemused farmers with incomprehensible accents, often in re-cycled milk cartons and water bottles. Britain consumes more cider than any other Cider producing nation, but nobody can remember how much. The word 'scrumpy' may be used in place of 'cider', but never sounds right unless done in a Somerset accent (A northerner would never make any money selling scrumpy, potential customers would assume he was selling sex).
Farm labourers wages were once paid in cider but this practice was outlawed in 1887.
England has the highest per capita consumption of cider, as well as the largest cider-producing companies in the world.
Dialect/slang: Whallop or natch - natural dry cider (Somerset),
See also 'perry', 'farmhouse cider', 'haymakers cider', 'apple pomace', 'cheese - fruit' and 'brake'.
[US-Can]

Lane's Extinction Grading: Very Safe

Culturally exported so globally produced and consumed (i.e. its fate does not rest soley in our hands).

cider festival

A cider festival is like a beer festival except it will have lots of different cider instead of lots of different beers, one of which (at least) you will like. Also attending may be apple growers, press operators, etc. and you may be able to witness apple pressing first hand.
Cider festivals used to only take place in cider making areas but festivals now take place all over Britain.
See also: 'apple day'.

cinder toffee

A light (in theory) honeycombed confectionary made from sugar and treacle, and gets its name from its resemblance to coal cinders. Quick to make and is a favourite of small children. It can be entirely crunchy or may revert to a lava state in your mouth, perfect for seeking out loose fillings. Traditional 'Bonfire Night' food and often found on sale at fairgrounds, open days and country shows.

cinnamon

Cinnamon was grown only in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) but now it is cultivated in tropical regions around the world.
Branches are cut from the living Cinnamon tree and the outer bark is skilfully scraped off to reveal the golden inner bark which will become the cinnamon spice. This bark is again skilfully removed from the wood in strips and then the long strips are packed into long semi-tubular strips of over a metre long, and in concentric layers . The end result is known as 'a quill' which is then tightly rolled and dried for two weeks. The quills are packed into cylindrical bundles for transport and storage.
The origin of cinnamon was a mystery for many centuries and Herodotus said that the cinnamon was gathered from the nests of aggressive cinnamon birds which lived on cliffs. These days it is gathered from high shelves in expensive shops.
Cinnamon was very popular in Britain in times past and the fashion for it was carried to the American colonies where it has remained popular.
See also: 'Chelsea bun'.

clamp

A clamp is a traditional means of storing potatoes, and other vegetables (beetroots, onions, swedes and even apples) over winter. If built correctly the clamp will keep late potatoes cool, dark and frost free until spring, just in time for the early new potatoes.
A ditch or a circular hole about 10-20cm deep is dug in well draining soil, preferably on the land from which the potatoes came so that you know it is relatively pest free. The hole is filled with straw. The dried potatoes are piled on the straw leaving a 20cm or more gap between the potatoes and the side wall of the ditch. The pile should be no more than 50cm high. Straw is piled on the potatoes to a depth of about 15-20 cm, thicker if you expect a hard frost. A deep layer of soil (minimum of 15cm) is placed over the pile. A trench is dug around the clamp and it is this soil which you use for covering the clamp. A hole is left on top of the clamp for ventilation but is stuffed with straw.
Straw is the favoured clean insulator but rushes and shredded paper have also been used.
Some people cover their clamp with a layer of polythene but leave a hole for ventilation.
If rodents are a problem then chicken wire can be laid over the layer of straw and 'tucked in' underneath.
Before modern storage methods were employed (warehouses with controlled environments) huge clamps, over a metre high, and 100m long were built in fields.
If you have too few potatoes for a clamp they can be stored in boxes or barrels lined with newspaper.
See also 'potato cave'.

clap cake

A Yorkshire name for a dough type of oatcake which is flattened by the hands (guess how?) and usually baked in an oven. Clap cake or clap bread was once eaten more widely and there is an account of it being eaten in Westmorland in 1698. See also '€havercake'.

clapper board / buckler

A 'clapper board', also known as a 'buckler', is a circular wooden board which is placed on top of a barrel (hogshead) of pilchards whilst they are being pressed into the barrel using leverage created by a pole and a heavy weight (bully stone).
The buckler presumably gets its name from its resemblance to the small circular English shield of the same name.
See also: 'bully stone'.

clapper bridge

A clapper bridge is the name given to strong packhorse bridges made from huge flat slabs of stone.
Their main purpose is to span fast hill streams which are impassable in winter, consequently they were often built at narrow points of a stream, or alternatively strong stone butresses were built out from the banks to artificially narrow the gap. In a few cases central support stones would be placed in the middle of the watercourse so that two slabs could be used to span wider gaps.
Clapper bridges had low or no parapets so that the low slung packs on the horses would not be impeded but some have acquired parapets since. A few found a second life as part of Victorian or Edwardian nature walks and these received wrought iron hand rails.
Clapper bridges are a serious undertaking and without knowledge of their former purpose you will wonder why such a robust but little used bridge was built in such a remote area, and was so over engineered. These days you find them up little valleys or on remote moorland largely hidden from view, and there may be no obvious clue as to their former importance to the year round economy. But look again and you might see a neat row of large, half buried, paving stones, or an overgrown track going away from the bridge, sunken into the earth or bounded by ruined walls. Packhorse trails were the motorways of their day.
See also: 'packhorse' and 'packhorse bridge'.

clapshot

A traditional dish which originated in the Orkneys and is therefore sometimes called 'Orcadian clapshot'. A 'mash' type dish of boiled potato and turnip (Swedes).
See also: 'turnip', 'swede', 'tatties', 'neeps', 'raw fry' and 'potato and turnip pie'.

cloche

A cloche is a transparent covering for a single row of plants in an allotment or vegetable garden and serves the same purpose as a 'cold frame' or a small poly tunnel (which it sometimes resembles).
Prior to the widespread availability of polythene sheet, cloches were often made from sheets of glass leaning against one another to form a triangular tunnel.
See also: 'greenhouse', 'cold frame' and 'poly tunnel'.

clootie / cloutie pudding

Sweet Scottish 'cloth' or 'rag' pudding which contains currants and raisins. Sometime known as 'Clootie dumpling'.
See also 'pudding cloth'.

cloth puddings

Puddings, sweet and savour, boiled in cloths have a long history in Britain. The most famous being the original canon ball shaped Christmas pudding, though the technique may go back further than that.
An old name for cloth was 'clouts' a word still used in the north east of England (to mean clothes or rags) and which has survived in 'cloutie' or 'clootie' pudding, a Scottish boiled cloth fruit pudding. (Though the origins of this dialect word are uncertain the Saxon word for cloth was 'clut'). Other examples of cloth puddings are 'rag pudding' (mince and onions), 'quaking pudding' (custard), steak and kidney pudding', 'plum pudding', 'Bedfordshire clanger' (savoury and sweet), 'onion pudding'. The rag in pre-made 'rag puddings' has been replaced with micro wave proof plastic.
The cloth was largely abandoned in favour of the distinctive pudding bowl whose shape makes extraction easier. Interestingly this shape is now considered traditional for steak and kidney puddings and even pre-made ones, bought from butchers in tin foil containers are still made in this shape. The Victorians went one stage further from the pudding bowl and made elaborate ceramic and metal moulds.
Q: "Hallo! A great deal of steam! the pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastry cook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that. That was the pudding." ~ Charles Dickens (1812-1870). 'A Christmas Carol'

clotted cream

Thick cream from unpasteurised milk is heated then left in shallow pans to form 'clots'. Particularly associated with Devon and Cornwall. Once common but has suffered from the unpasteurised milk paranoia, a passing scare viewed in a similar way, by the press, to the Black Death. There is no better 'cream tea' than one with clotted cream. If you have a problem with unpasteurised milk then don’t drink it, the rest of us are happy with it and have been for thousands of years.
Clotted cream has found its way into many local Devon and Cornwall recipes including hogs pudding.
See also 'raw milk' and 'hogs pudding'.

clove - measurement

A 'clove' is an obscure unit of weight, equal to 7 pounds or half a stone (3.175 kilograms).

clove - spice

The clove originates from Ternate, an island belonging to a string of volcanic islands in Indonesia, but are now grown in many places where the climate is suitable. The name comes from the latin 'clavus' which means 'nail'.
Cloves are the dried flower buds from clove trees. The buds are separated from the stalks by bending them over and then are laid in the sun to dry for 3 days.
Cloves are used extensively in English cooking, whole or ground, and are still commonly found associated with ham where they are pushed into the meat like studs or nails. They were once used in the same way in 'pomanders'. Most pickling spices contain cloves as do many of the traditional bottled sauces.
Cloves have also been used to control dental pain.
See also: 'pickling spice', 'all spice'.

Co-op

Co-operative or better known as 'the co-op', started by weavers in Rochdale in 1844. There were cooperatives in Scotland and Yorkshire prior to the formation of the Rochdale version, but they failed, because they gave credit and encountered fatal cash flow issues (does this sound familiar?). The so called 'Rochdale Pioneers' established similar principles of fair trade and affordable food but differed to other societies in that they gave no credit but instead returned part of the profits as a 'dividend', and many people of a certain age will can still recite their 'divvi' number as it was required each time you made a purchase. On these principles the 'Co-op' became very successful owning thousands of outlets, their own newspaper, a political party, a college, a fleet of ships, tea plantations in India, and were involved in other overseas 'adventures'. The Co-op offered a cradle to grave promise, and every town or large village in Britain will contain a co-op building (which will now probably be used for something else).
In the latter half of the last century the 'Co-op' lost its way, abandoned the 'divvi', and became just another supermarket, but is trying to find its way back, leading the way on fair trade goods, environmental partnerships, and their bank was the first to adopt a customer led ethical policy. They were the first self-service shop (1942) and their original shop, in Toad Lane, Rochdale is a museum and is a place of pilgrimage for co-operatives from around the world, who have based themselves on the principles and examples of the 'co-op'.
Their 'own brand' goods were known as CWS (Co-operative Wholesale Society).
Old northern England saying: "If he fell off the co-op cart he'd land in the dividend!" (He's very lucky).

co-operative pubs

Faced with the endless onslaught on traditional pubs some communities are taking things into their own hands by saving what they feel is a social centre of their community. They are doing this by buying out failing or failed businesses and running them as a co-operative or a community funded business in which the locals become shareholders. The very first was the 'Old Crown' in Hesket Newmarket, Cumbria (in 2003) but more are following, learning from their experience and from each others ventures.
See also: 'pub' and 'gastro pub'.

cob

A large loaf, circular in shape, and domed (no two slices are the same size making it frustrating for sandwich makers).
alt: A cob can also be an oven, a Welsh horse, a cultivated hazelnut, a forelock or crest of feathers (Cornish dialect)), or a mud like building material.

cobbler

A pastry addition to lamb or beef stew like dishes. It resembles a scone but is not sweet. The cobbler is cooked on top of the dish in the final stages of cooking, and rests on top, completely covering the dish. Cobblers can be plain, cheesy or with herbs. Lamb and beef cobbler can be seen on pub and restaurant menus but the cobblers used in these are often pathetic pieces of flat pastry, cooked separately and later thrown on top of the dish just before it is served. In the U.S. 'cobbler' dishes are produced as deserts and this practice is gaining popularity in Britain though we have no history of sweet cobbler dishes.

coble / fishing coble

2

The fishing 'coble' is a distinctive clinker built, flat bottomed boat favoured on the east coast especially in Yorkshire and the north east of England. They are famous for their ability to cope with rough seas and to land on steep beaches. In Yorkshire they pronounce it as 'cobbull' and further north it is pronounced 'coh-bull'.
Each town or village had their own design evolved specifically for the local conditions. Some were 'double ended' whilst others, which were landed backwards on steep beaches or rocks had a truncated stern. All were designed to be hauled up a beach to safety.
Cobles were made by eye and even today there are no plans, except those made in recent times by revival enthusiasts and model makers.
A fisherman who used a coble was once known as a 'cobleman'.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Stable

1. Stable in one or more areas/regions, but not growing.
2. Still enjoyed by a number of families in one area.
3. Successful recent revival with natural local growth.

cobnuts / filberts

'Cobnuts' are a cultivated type of hazelnut, the most famous being the 'Kentish cobnut'. Cobnuts may also be known as 'filberts'.
Cobnuts are bigger and rounder than hazelnuts and are sold fresh (and even 'green' in August), rather than dried, like other nuts.
Kent grows more cobnuts than anywhere else and Kentish people fry the fresh cobnuts in butter for a few minutes.
Recently producers have started to extract cobnut oil from fresh cobnuts, a tasty low temperature oil suitable for salads.
There are several varieties of cobnuts with different characteristics. Variety names include: 'Kentish Cob', 'Butler', 'Hall's Giant' and 'Cosford'.
See also: 'plat'.

cocatrice

The cocatrice was a legendary medieval monster, part snake and part cock, that was hatched from a chickens egg by a serpent. It could kill just by a glance but could be killed itself by a cock's crow.
Medieval cooks took up the theme and presented cocatrice meat dishes of two animals which were combined in such a way as to appear to be one.

cock / cockerel / rooster

A cock is the male of a number of bird species both wild and domesticated e.g. poultry and pheasant.
Domesticated exceptions to the cock are duck and drake, goose and gander, stag and hen (turkey).
The crowing of the cock traditionally marks the start of the day though a crows concept of 'dawn' can differ from ours, and its classic 'cock-a-doodle-do' can sometimes resemble something being strangled or caught in a trap.
There are a number of sayings and expressions involving the cock, many are ancient.
Cock-a-hoop - very pleased, very happy.
Cock of the walk - the best in his field, the strongest.
Cock of the school - The toughest kid in school, one who cannot be beaten in a fight.
'Cock sure' or 'cocky'- showy - strutting around
Cock a doodle do - is the story and nursery rhyme representation of a cocks crow.
Weather vanes were traditionally made in the shape of a cock.
See also: 'cock and bull', ' cock a leeky',

cock a leekie

A traditional Scottish soup, especially eaten on special dates. Fowl (traditionally old fowl) is boiled with vegetables (often leeks) and surprisingly the dish also contains prunes.
This sounds like a winter dish of hard times making good use of an old cock, dried plums and winter vegetables.

cock and bull story

A 'cock and bull story' is one which is unbelievable or untrue but often told in innocence, though not always, and usually heard in a pub.
The 'Cock and Bull' is a common pub name in England, particularly in market towns.

cockle

'Cockles' are creatures of sand, mud and estuaries.
If boiled for a few minutes they part from their creamy coloured or brown shells.
Traditionally eaten cold, with salt, pepper and vinegar. Available from stalls at seaside towns and at some inland ones too. In south Wales cockles are eaten hot for breakfast with bacon and 'laver bread'.
Cockle beds are prone to rapid decline if a storm arriving from an unusual direction rakes up the beds, or if beds exposed at a low spring tide are exposed to prolonged severe freezing.
Alt: It is possible for the cockles of your heart to be warmed, which is a good thing, not a medical condition or a re-heated leftovers technique.
The 'Cockle Shell' heroes was the name of the film depicting the daring exploits of the members of the Royal Navy who formed the elite 'Special Boat Service' in 1940.
See also 'Stookey Blues'.

cockle pie *

There are many recipe variations of this dish from the estuary areas of England and Wales but all seem to contain bacon, preferably smoked. Limpet pie was made, by communities on rocky coasts, to similar recipes.

coddle

To cook gently in liquid just below boiling point. Coddling is a technique used for delicate foods like eggs, fish and fruit. There are some which would suggest that 'coddled' means the same as 'poached' however most agree that poaching takes place in simmering water which is at boiling point. See also 'poaching'.
Alt: To 'coddle' someone is to treat them carefully or gently, or to nurse them.

coffee

A hot beverage made from ground roasted beans of the coffee plant. Once upon a time coffee was simple, it came in a jar and you put a spoonful in a cup and poured hot water on it, but now things are much more complicated. Not only does it come with many complicated names but you are also supposed to know where it comes form, who made it, and whether they have a school and a water pump. Ordering a coffee is a nightmare and I never get what I think I'm getting.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Very Safe

Culturally exported so globally produced and consumed (i.e. its fate does not rest soley in our hands).

coffee house

The first coffee house was created in London in 1652, in an alley off St. Michaels Lane, from where they spread to other English towns. It came about as a result of a Mr Daniel Edwards bringing back a Greek employee (Pasqua Rosée) who made coffee expertly for him, but then went on to open his own coffee shop and coffee house in 1652.
Coffee houses also sold tea and drinking chocolate, but not alcohol, and were considered places of sober conversation, something which was not always possibly in rather bawdy pubs. Some even had rules of conduct, and of conversation, including fines for swearing. Old pictures and woodcuts of coffee houses always show well dressed and well behaved people whereas similar images of pubs and inns usually show quite the opposite.
Coffee houses became places for trading business, news and gossip, for sharing ideas and philosophy, and for forming groups and associations, business and intellectual. The origins of the Stock Exchange and Lloyds can be traced back to coffee houses particularly those on Change Alley. The modern press also has its origins there.
They were also, of course, fashionable places to be seen in.
Coffee houses have continued to this day but have changed shape, size and character and modern ones tend to provide food as well but perhaps lack the intellectual environment of the originals.

coffyn pie / coffin pie

5a

Coffyn or coffin. I really wanted want to eat something called 'coffin pie' but it turns out I've been eating them all my life as it is a category of pie rather than a specific dish. A 'coffyn' or 'coffin' pie (or pye) is one that is fully enclosed in pastry, as opposed to the open topped pie which was originally known as a 'trap'. This word is used in recipes as early as the 1300's and would have been known to Chaucer. See also 'pie'.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Extinct

Extinct but a useable recipe, knowledge or appropriate experience exists.

colcannon

Mashed potato mixed with shredded cabbage plus onion or leek. A dish of Northern Ireland, somewhat like 'bubble and squeak'.
See also 'champ' and 'bubble and squeak'.

cold fish

U

'Cold fish' is the name given to battered fish sold cold from baskets in pubs, certainly in Yorkshire, Somerset and Birmingham that I know of, but there is no documented history. Do you have any stories or accounts? The tradition largely died out 15-20 years ago. The same seller would also have pickled cockles and mussels for sale and would be affectionately known (in our area) as the 'vinegar and sand' man. In the north east of England he sold kippers from his basket instead of cold fish, to be eaten for breakfast and was known, not unsurprisingly, as the 'kipper man'.
Sayings: A 'cold fish' can also be a person, someone who doesn't join in or show any emotion.
See also: 'fish', 'wet fish' and 'fish and chips'.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Unknown!

Not yet fully investigated, cannot make an assessment.

cold frame

A cold frame is an improvised or purpose built mini-greenhouse which was usually made from old window frames but these days can be made from high tech materials such as aluminium and polycarbonate, and even polythene. They would normally have a glassed roof and solid walls and may originally have been simply a sheet of glass leaning against a wall but today, with the extensive use and availability of modern materials, the difference between a cold frame and mini- green house or poly tunnel is blurred. They all do the same job.
See also: 'greenhouse', 'poly tunnel' and ' cloche'.

cold rabbit pie

Traditionally eaten for breakfast on Christmas morning in Suffolk.

cold stone

A large slab of stone found in a pantry and on which things are stood to cool or keep cold. A large slab of stone found in a larder or pantry and on which things are stood to cool or keep cold. In Yorkshire and Derbyshire the 'cold stone' was known as a 'thrawl'.

collops / Collop Monday

Collops are slices of meat but from Elizabethan times the word came to mean slices of bacon. Shrove Monday was also once known as 'Collop Monday' and was an occasion for eating meat before lent, and it became the tradition to eat slices of bacon with a fried egg for breakfast on Collop Monday. I wonder if this is the origin of the English breakfast. I suppose a bacon butty could also be called a 'collop butty'.
The day after 'Collop Monday' is 'Shrove Tuesday' (Pancake Day), another day for eating things forbidden during Lent.

coltsfoot rock

This licorice and aniseed flavoured, jaw jarring sweet was once sold, in stick form, from tall glass jars in chemists (coltsfoot -tussilargo farfara) had a reputation for health benefits, particularly for chest infections). A modern, softer version (less likely to generate legal cases) is still available from sweet shops, with the same six sided stick, though it doesn't seem to have the nostril curling strength of taste that I remember. Once common in Yorkshire and Lancashire.

comics (and food)

Post war comics of the 1950' and 60's reflected the post war austerity and modest food aspirations. Consequently many of the stories found in comics like the Dandy or Beano were food related. Gangs of kids (e.g. Bash Street Kids - Beano) would stare jealously through windows at fat blokes tucking into huge meals, and they would be rewarded for good deeds with a 'slap up meal'. Pies featured heavily and were often stolen when cooling on window ledges. One character ate only pies and the 'cow pie' (Dandy), more commonly known as the 'Desperate Dan' pie, has come to describe any giant pie . Characters even had food related names like 'Plum McDuff' and 'Hungry Horace' of the Dandy, 'Little Plum' and 'Big Eggo' of the Beano and 'Baron Von Reichs-Pudding' of the Sparky. Modern parodies of these characters by Viz magazine saw the creation of 'Biffa Bacon'.

common land

Common land is land owned collectively or by one person, but over which a number of people will have certain traditional rights, such as grazing (pasture), firewood collection (estovers), turf/peat cutting (turbary) fishing (piscary), marl digging (common of marl), mast grazing (pannage) etc.
Common land is often referred to as 'the common'.
Surviving commons are nearly all pasture but prior to the Enclosure Acts' when common land was unjustly taken from peasants who had right to it, the land could have been of mixed usage.
See also: 'Enclosure Acts' and 'Diggers'.

common of marl

A commoners right to take sand or gravel from common land.
See also: 'marl'.

community orchard projects

Community orchard projects are a very recent innovation but one which is gaining popularity. Communities are not just adopting abandoned orchards but are also planting new ones in unused spaces (particularly in urban environments).
Old orchards have been found in the middle of housing projects which have been built on former farm land. Also most old Victorian parks were planted with fruit trees, during a period when local apples were valued, and councils are now making the fruit available to communities.
Many local authorities are partnering with residents’ associations, park user groups, schools and other community groups to help design, plant and maintain community orchards in parks, housing estates, schools and universities. Some offer training. Many types of fruit and nut are being planted, wild and cultivated.
There are over 200 projects nation wide and many of them organise social events, training, apple products competitions, etc. and the orchards have become host to other activities such as bee keeping, bird watching, insect identification. Some have become part of local schools curriculum.

community support bakeries

An excellent strategy to recreate what we once simply called a 'bakery' or 'local bakery' but this new title makes an important point, namely that our local bakeries died because we were all too lazy to use them. Community Support Bakeries are a low investment stepping stone to the revival of our local bakeries (and to a sense of identity and source of local pride).
Community support bakeries make bread locally, often with minimum resources in order to combat highly processed breads (e.g. sliced white) and supermarket domination.
This newly emerging concept employs innovative ways to keep costs down and increase convenience (e.g. no high street shop, local collection points, weekly/monthly payment for a daily loaf, utilising domestic equipment/premises, etc.)

concept food

'Concept' is another word for 'expensive', and concept food is made up of dishes favoured by people who use words the rest of us don't understand, and eaten by people who leave you with the impression that they are having sex with their food instead of eating it. Concept food eaters may also be fans of 'fusion' food, but not of dripping , tripe or of eating fish and chips in the car.

condensed milk

A way of preserving milk. Milk with moisture removed, and sugar added, and tinned condensed milk can keep for decades. Condensed milk has become a food in its own right being favoured as an addition to puddings and fruit desserts, and also as an essential ingredient in dishes of many cultures, including our own. It was, for some kids, the favoured filling in sandwiches.
May also incorrectly be known as 'evaporated milk' but technically evaporated milk is unsweetened and doesn't have the same gloopy consistency.
Names: 'thickers' (Royal Navy).

Lane's Extinction Grading: Very Safe

Culturally exported so globally produced and consumed (i.e. its fate does not rest soley in our hands).

convenience food

Foods for lazy people and the reason for the death of so many traditional dishes. Many traditions, of all kinds, fall in the face of 'convenience', and the excuse "I don't have time" ensures that you will end up just like everyone else.

cooper / cuper

A 'cooper' is a maker of wooden barrels, bushels, vats, etc. The origin is Anglo Saxon, deriving from the German "kuper" itself a derivative of "kup" - a container. The word being first used in England in the 8th century.
There are only four working coopers left in Britain (2009).
'Slack coopering' is the making of barrels or 'slack casks' which do not have to hold liquids (e.g. for transporting fruit, shellfish, etc.) and are often made of lighter woods.
Occupation names: cooper, cowper, cuper, copper, coper, backmaker.

coppicing

Coppicing is a traditional method of woodland management which allows you to harvest wood without killing the tree or leaving the ground.
A tree is cut close to the ground causing it to throw up many shoots the following year. These shoots are harvested when they grow to the required diameter.
Not all trees can be coppiced but those that are may have a special purpose such as hurdle making (hazel and willow), fencing (chestnut), wicker work (willow) or charcoal burning.
An area of coppiced trees is known as a 'coppice'. A coppice will be cut in rotation to ensure a continuous supply of wood, which also creates an area of varied habitat.
See also 'billhook'.

cordials

Non alcoholic fruit or 'botanical extract' drinks were very popular in England up to World War One. They were originally made from traditional ingredients to produce an aromatic syrup, but today the word is often applied to sugary, commercially produced fruit drink concentrates, often of citrus fruits. Traditional cordials are Dandelion and Burdock, Elder Flower, and brandy with Lovage, but Temperance bars were famous for providing many others like ginger, and sarsaparilla.

corkscrew

And where might you have expected the cork screw to have been invented? Well it was invented in England by beer and cider drinkers, and was originally known as a 'worm'. Although their use is documented as far back as the 1600's the first patent was in 1795 (England - Reverend Samuel Henshall).
Corkscrew technology has experienced a new lease of life, linked to the increasing popularity of wine drinking.

corn

Corn is an all encompassing term which means any type of harvested edible grain. Originally this would have been restricted to cereals such as barley and oats but then wheat came along, and in more recent years all manner of pulses and oilseeds.
There is some confusion over the word 'corn' which in America describes 'Indian corn' or 'maize' (or what we know as 'sweet corn').
The word 'corn' was also applied to small grains of salt as in 'corned beef'.

Corn Exchange

A 'Corn Exchange' was a place where grain was bought and sold and most towns and cities had one, though prior to the 1800's such activities were usually carried out in specific, well known, public houses, or in corn or 'meal' markets, some covered, some in the open air.
In large towns and cities the corn exchange was usually a large, well built and impressive Victorian building which often came about by private subscription and only after a serious design competition.
Consequently many of the resulting buildings incorporate elements of local pride, the opinions of the subscribers having been taken into account by the designers, so no two corn exchanges are the same.
Though their purpose faded with time many were so well built, and so attractive, that they survived to take on new roles as theatres, art galleries, public buildings, offices, sports venues, shopping centres, etc. So important were these places that their names also survived to this day and in some places a small but well defined area around the building may also be referred to by locals as the 'corn exchange'. Corn exchange buildings are still a source of local pride in many places.
With the advent of modern communication technologies the role of the local corn exchange declined and they all eventually closed, the last ones ceasing to trade in the 1970's.
Corn is now 'exchanged' on the global market, from anonymous offices, via the internet.

Corn Laws

The Corn Laws were a series of acts (from 1815) designed to protect British agriculture from imports. During the Napoleonic Wars it had been difficult to import grain and so British agriculture grew. It was feared that after the war re-newed imports would destroy farming and so the Corm Laws became popular with land owners who dominated parliament. However, in the fast growing urban areas there was unrest amongst people who were forced to pay higher prices for bread. Riots ensued all over the country and the Houses of Parliament had to be protected by troops during the passing of some of this legislation.
The Acts, and the class driven unrest they created, led to the formation of Anti-Corn Law Associations some of which were joined into the Anti-Corn Law League by Richard Cobden.
The abolition of the Corn Laws (in 1849) was a significant step towards free trade.

corn merchant

A corn merchant deals in all manner of grain crops such as cereals, pulses and oilseed. Originally corn merchants would have dealt locally but some became exporters, importers and speculators.
In earlier times some corn merchants rented out space in their warehouse for storage but this role has been superseded by the invention of the 'grain silo'.
Corn merchants store and supply for human consumption, animal feed and industrial processes. Corm merchants are not generally seed merchants though they once might have been.

corned beef

Finely ground, salted, boiled, cured beef and packed, with jelly, into a very distinctive, and what has become a traditionally shaped tapered tin can which is accessed with the use of a small, irritating key, and the resulting sharp edges are more dangerous than the original animal that went into the can. The word 'corn' refers to the corns of course salt in which the beef is cured, and is an old expression. See also 'bully beef'.

corned beef hash

A mixture of corned beef, mashed potato, and onions. Made popular in the war years when corned beef was relied on heavily, but it is still popular in many homes and is also still served in many 'greasy spoons', pubs and even in a few posh places. See also 'tatie hash'.

Cornish pasty

Originating, not surprisingly, from Cornwall and possibly evolving from the 'hoggan'. This is a universally popular, raised and filled half circle of pastry, joined at the top, and technically speaking should fall into the 'pie' category, being fully enclosed in pastry (traditionally a pasty is not fully enclosed).
Legend would have us believe that the pasty was given its distinctive shape specifically to survive being dropped down tin mines, to hungry miners, by their wives. It's a pity they weren't aware of the 'Geordie' system of bread classification (See 'oven bottom bread'). Though traditionally made with beef, potato, turnip and onion the modern variety may contain various vegetables, and sacrilegiously, no meat at all! The Cornish call the pasty an 'oggy' or a 'tiddy oggy'.
See also 'bridie' and 'pasty'.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Very Safe

Culturally exported so globally produced and consumed (i.e. its fate does not rest soley in our hands).

coronation chicken

Coronation chicken is pre-cooked chicken in a bright yellow, creamy, mayonnaise based sauce flavoured with herbs and spices (curry type). In its basic form it is made with left over chicken, madras curry powder and sultanas.
This dish was created for the coronation banquet of our Queen in 1953 and is still going strong. It can be found at both posh dinners and inside garage sandwiches.

costa monger

East End barrow boys whose commonality evolved into a subculture with its own method of communication called rhyming slang (initially created to confuse the police) and whose strong family associations developed into and pearly kings and queens. For such a small community they have had a huge influence on the spoken English language as snippets cockney rhyming slang can be heard all over Britain and beyond. I bet nearly everyone knows 'apple and pears' and 'tin lids'.

cot

A 'cot' was the name (one of the names) used by private drinking clubs where members could drink outside of licensing hours. A Victorian term of the working class in the north of England.

Cotswold dumplings

Cotswold dumplings are made from flour and suet and grated cheese.
They are coated in bread crumbs, and are cooked by frying, in a pan if you don't mind flat dumplings or you can deep fry for spherical ones.
What you do with them after that is up to you. Some people drop them into stew (the natural habitat of dumplings) but they are also proving popular in posh places, as a starter with dips.
See also: 'dumplings' and 'Norfolk dumplings'.

cottage loaf

An English white loaf made from two lumps of dough. A small lump is placed on top of a larger lump creating a two tier shape in the finished loaf. A nightmare for sandwich making but its shape is perfect when interesting lumps of crusty bread are required (e.g. soups, stews, ploughman's lunch, etc.).

cottage pie

Not technically a pie but who cares?. Minced beef covered with mashed potato and grated cheese, and baked in the oven. Not to be confused with Shepherd

courting cake / soldiers cake / Stanbury cake / supper cake

Courting cake is neither cake nor pastry. Margarine and lard are rubbed into flour. Sugar is added, and then an egg, and a little milk to a consistency which would allow it to be rolled out like pastry. One half is covered in jam and the other laid on top.
It is known as 'supper cake' and 'Stanbury cake' in Yorkshire, 'courting cake' in Cumbria and generally as 'solidiers cake'.
See also: 'jam slice'.

cover / cyfair

The 'cover' a traditional Welsh unit of land area and is exactly 2/3 of an acre The word is an Anglicised version of the Welsh name cyfair.

cow / cattle

A cow is a female ox or other bovine and its meat is known as 'beef'.
The word 'cow' is derived from the Saxon or old English 'cou' or 'cu', pronounced 'coo', and this original form is still used in some parts of England and Scotland.
Cows were once know as 'beasts', and still are today in some regions. This is from the Saxon 'beost' which describes a milking cow, though modern usage tends to apply it to any bovine animal, and in some places to pigs, sheep and goats as well.
Sayings: Something which is difficult to do complete may be described as "a cow" or a "right cow".
See also: 'beast', 'neat', 'oxen', 'cow heel' and 'elder'.

cow heel

Heel of ox or cow, stewed to a jelly and sometimes known as 'neat's foot'. Traditionally eaten in the north of England, by stalwarts of the Empire. Often sold alongside tripe.

cow heel and beef

See 'beef and cowheel'.

Cox's Pippin

Cox's Orange Pippin, a dessert or 'eating' apple appeared in Buckinghamshire, in 1825, thanks to a man called Richard Cox. When the apple is shaken the pips are supposed to rattle around. This is the best apple, in my opinion, for making toffee apples. You heard it here first! See also 'Bramley apple'.

crab

The common brown crab is the one most favoured by the British but the Spider crab, popular on the continent, is set to 'arrive'. Crabs are usually bought ready to eat (orange in colour) and either whole or 'dressed' (which is the term given when the meat is skilfully removed from the body, and from the claws and then is repacked into the shell which becomes both a container and a plate, a British custom which has not yet been killed by the EU or by local councils).
We are the largest producers of crab in Europe, supplying half of the total European catch, because most of it goes abroad. Sadly many hundreds of tons of British crabs never see British plates. Crab is a wonderful food, plentiful around our shores and yet most people have never even tried it, and mainly because supermarkets don't stock it.
Eating a boiled crab is easy. There are little tricks you can learn but basically all you need to do is prise open the shell into two parts then break everything open. There's no real skill needed. You cannot mess it up and sooner or later you'll extract all the meat.
Virtually all the meat in a crab is edible (except the lungs which are easy to see as soon as the shell is open and resemble wet feathers (and are known as 'dead mans fingers'). The crab gives up several textures and flavours of meat, but broadly divided into white meat and brown meat though females can also contain firm orange 'coral' meat. The white meat comes from the claws and legs, and the brown and 'coral' comes from the body (inside the shell). As males have bigger claws they yield the greatest quantity of white meat but as brown is my favourite, spread on a thick slice of brown bread, I always choose females (smaller claws and larger abdomen flap). All you need is a bread board to use as an anvil, and a pile of bread and butter and you have a wonderful meal which will take you ages to eat, that's if you are determined to extract every bit of meat by poking, scraping and sucking, which I always am. Its a wonderful way to slow down and really enjoy your food.
Male crabs are known as 'Jacks' and females as 'Hens'.
As an island race crab is available to all but there are locations on the coast which have a long history in providing crab, the most famous being Cromer in Norfolk where a large proportion of the town's income is still derived from its capture. But there are many coastal towns famed for their crab, reputations gained when crabs were far more popular than they are now, when people preferred fresh British seafood to trendy frozen or tinned imported stuff.
When you buy a crab it is customary for the seller to break open the one you have selected and to show you the inside. It needs to be just moist. If its very soggy or very dry reject it as its either been under or over cooked. If he doesn't show you then don't buy it. Any fishmonger worth his salt will spend time with you if you have any questions.
Live crabs (brown/green coloured) were once favoured over boiled/dressed and tons of them were shipped by train in boxes from the coast to cities but these days people want stuff cooked, in plastic boxes and from Taiwan.
Season: Spring to mid-winter.
Dialect: "hever/heaver" and "ponger/punger" (Kent), "parton" (Fife).
See also: 'shell fish', 'Cromer crab' and 'Crab and Winkle Line'.

Crab and Winkle Line

The 'crab and winkle' was the informal name given to the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway line on account of the amount of shellfish which once travelled inland from Whitstable by train. Whitstable was once famous for oysters.

crab apple

My experience of crab apples is that they are any small apple growing wild which makes your face screw up when you bite it. Normally eaten by small boys weeks before they are ripe. If left to maturity can provide a variety of flavours and sweetness but strangely a sweet apple found on a wild tree is rarely referred to as a 'crab apple' and so the term is one acquired in childhood prior to acquiring sufficient life experience so as to know when, or when not to eat wild fruit.
Official interpretations may have a more intellectual explanation and will includes words like 'ornamentation' and cultivars' though if you put two fruit tree experts together they never seem to quite agree what 'crab apple' actually means. I prefer my definition, its more useful.
See also: 'crab fair'.

crab fair

Egremont Crab Fair and Sports was established in 1267, which makes it one of the oldest fairs in the world. It combines ancient and traditional events with modern ones.
Activities such as Cumberland Wrestling, the 'Greasy Pole' and the World Gurning Championship (pulling ugly faces through a braffin (horse collar) can be seen at this annual event.
The fair takes place in the small Cumbrian market town of Egremont on the third Saturday in September. Its origins lay in a celebration for a successful harvest.
The fair gets its name from 'crab apples' which are given away, thrown to crowd from apple carts (The Parade of the Apple Cart). Originally the apples were thrown by the Lord of Egremont

crackling

Crackling is the crispy skin of pork much favoured by the British and denied to those people who don't cook their meat properly. According to the Vindolanda tablets the Romans in Britain liked crackling (which they called 'callum').
Good crackling is made by scoring the skin and rubbing in salt and fat/oil, and the best crackling comes from meat with a bit of fat on it.
Alternative use: The word 'crackling' may also be applied to an attractive female.
See also: 'pork scratchings'.

cracknels

5a

The cracknel is a biscuit but there are various recipes documented with some advocating a thin light biscuit whilst others describe it as hard and brittle, but all earlier recipes mention caraway seeds so the end result would be not be dissimilar to a Goosnargh cake.
There are suggestions that the biscuit got its name because it was crunchy or it crackled when eaten, so an account of the paste being boiled first in order to ensure hat the biscuit puffed up during baking may have some credibility.
Certainly the biscuit was designed to be kept for long periods, just like the Goosnargh cake, but how do we account for the different descriptions and recipes? It is possible that the biscuit was, in the beginning, a practical and robust means of saving the harvest into winter (the origin of many biscuits), and perhaps, in time, became more refined (lost its character) in the hands of professional cooks who are always looking for novel ways to impress whilst pretending to be traditional.
The cracknel, in its more traditional guise, was often linked to, or travelled with honey and the connection was even translated into the King James Bible.
King James Bible:
"And take with thee ten loaves, and cracknels, and a cruse of honey, and go to him: he shall tell thee what shall become of the child."
Alternative: Cracknell is also a brittle toffee filling for chocolate.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Extinct

Extinct but a useable recipe, knowledge or appropriate experience exists.

cranachan

Scottish dessert made from oatmeal, whipped cream, whisky, honey and raspberries. Also sometimes known as 'cream crowdie'.

cream crowdie

Cranachan made with crowdie (soft cheese) instead of whipped cream.

cream of tartar

Cream of tartar or 'tartaric' acid are the common names for potassium hydrogen tartrate, also known as potassium bitartrate. It is an acid salt that has a number of uses in cooking, and is commonly used in the confectionary industry. It can also be used to clean copper and brass objects or to remove stains from sinks and bath tubs.
Grapes are a significant natural source of tartaric acid, and cream of tartar is obtained from the sediment produced in the process of making wine.

cream tea

1

The cream tea is the variation of the traditional 'afternoon tea' and one which revolves around hot scones, filled with cream and jam. Particularly associated with the English who still enjoy an afternoon cream tea, especially on a Sundays, or on holiday, and when staying in hotels. Devonshire is famous for its cream teas due to its clotted cream which is said to be more suitable on hot scones than the equally nice Cornish version. This may of course be a rumour created by the Devonshire Clotted Cream World Domination Board. I obviously need to carry out some extensive testing in this area. See also 'clotted cream'.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Safe

1. Nationally produced and/or consumed
2. Very strong traditions in one village, town, county or region.

cree

A north east of England word for pigeon lofts, or chicken sheds but the term is also sometimes applied to other allotment buildings.

crewpot

A modern phrase used by recreation sailors around the Solent to describe 'pork goulash'.

crisps

Crisps are thin slices of potato fried in oil and served cold, and brittle.
They are normally eaten as a salty snack or provided as 'nibbles' at social gatherings.
The typical flavours of crisps are: plain (once known as ready salted), salt and vinegar, cheese and onion, hedgehog, bovril, prawn cocktail, chicken, smokey bacon, Worcester sauce, barbeque, tomato ketchup and roast chicken.
Whilst crisp flavourings are nice they bear scant resemblance to the original food from which they take their name.
Crisps come in 'packets' and can be eaten straight from the bag or put in sandwiches.
Before crisp flavourings were invented all crisps used to arrive as 'plain' with a little twisted blue bag of salt inside. This was so that you could add your own salt. The blue bag gave way to 'ready salted' crisps but for years many people kept looking for the little blue bag. The same people were inordinately happy when the blue bag returned some years later, but it has gone again.

croft

A croft is a small farm. A croft is not the house in which the crofter lives, it is the land which he or she occupies. In England it came to mean the actual dwelling and has largely been displaced by the word 'cotttage'. The term has survived in Scotland where it is still a small farm (averaging around 12 acres) but with special rights and responsibilities.
Croft appears in many place names and farm names throughout Britain.
A person who occupies a croft in Scotland as known as a crofter.
In Cornwall a croft is uncultivated enclosed land esp. for growing furze (gorse).

Cromer crab

Cromer crab is the same crab everyone else catches around Britain, in that it is the same species, however Norfolk people claim locally caught crabs to be sweeter because they are smaller and because they live on a flinty sea bottom. There must be something in it because the town of Cromer, in Norfolk, has been famous for crabs for generations.
See also: 'crab'.

crow pie

Crows and rooks were often killed by farmers, as they still are today, but people in the past put nothing to waste and so crow and rook pies were once widely eaten. Crows are largely solitary but rooks live in large noisy, boisterous flocks and so were easier find and to to harvest in quantity.
The birds are skinned, not plucked and you need about a dozen for a decent pie though recipes exist for smaller quantities. Only the breast, legs and squawk are used.
Rook pies were common and popular from the 1800's right up to the First World War and supplies came from farmers (to whom they were a pest) and were delivered by the hundreds. Rooks once hung outside poulterers, alongside pigeon, pheasant and rabbits and were also enthusiastically used by hotels.
(Crow Pie is also the internationally famous web site renowned for its sophisticated approach to modern foods.)

crozzled

'Crozzled' is a much needed word which means the tasty, crunchy bit at the edges of foods. Crozzled bits can be found on the slightly overcooked margins, or on a crust, and they are much sought after by some, sometimes fought over.
Examples of 'crozzled' can be found on the edges of a cottage pie or rice pudding, or a stew done in the oven. Fried or grilled foods are particularly good at producing crozzle. Cracklin is a perfect example of 'crozzled' food, as is well done bacon.
'Crozzled' is a category of cooking which fills that culinary gap between 'crusty' and 'burnt' though some use it to describe burnt as well.
I know this word is used in Lincolnshire and in south Yorkshire but I'm not sure of the extent of its usage. Do you use it? Its a great word!

cruet / caster

A 'cruet', also called a 'caster', is a small flat-bottomed vessel with a narrow neck and is a container or decanter for culinary liquids.
Cruets often have an integral lip or spout, and may also have a handle and a stopper. They are traditionally made from glass or ceramics but modern ones can be made from stainless steel.
A 'cruet set' has come to mean a matching set of salt and pepper containers for the table.

crumble

Stewed fruit is covered with a layer of 'crumble' (made from flour, fat and sugar) and is then baked in an oven. Crumble is a very British thing and there is a school of thought that 'crumble' was one of the Lord Woolton rationing inspired creations of the second world war. If so then this dish is much more than just a pudding.
An easy way to impress people at scout camp.

crumpet

1

A small and traditionally round, hard pancake, with distinctive holes on top, originally cooked on griddles. Crumpets are said to be of Anglo Saxon origin, although some say the word 'crumpet' comes from the Celtic language. They are often eaten for breakfast, and are particularly associated with the English. The word 'pikelet' is synonymous with 'crumpet' in some regions though a true 'pikelet' originally differed slightly from a crumpet. See also 'pikelet'.
alt: The word 'crumpet' may also be applied to an attractive female.
Q: "The butter keeps disappearing down the holes ... you think there's none on it, take a bite, and woosh, its all over your tie!". ~ Tony Hancock

Lane's Extinction Grading: Safe

1. Nationally produced and/or consumed
2. Very strong traditions in one village, town, county or region.

crushed roots

We have been eating mashed potato, swede and carrot for a long time, often together, but chefs now want us to call it 'crushed roots'. I suppose we should be grateful that they are using English words which we recognise. But I'm not! Crushed? For goodness sake!

crust / knob end

The hard outer hard layer of anything soft after baking in an oven (or in front of a fire). Crusts are desirable on some foods e.g. bread, pies, etc. but not on others e.g. stew.
Although pie has a 'pie crust' the most famous crust is found on bread where it can be used to describe two things, the outer layer (as in 'crusty' bread) or the ends of a loaf. People come into two categories when it comes to bread eating, you either like the crust or you don't. Personally I love both types and I know a bakers who, to meet local demand, deliberately over bake the bread to create a crunchy, very brown, well done crust.
An older name for the end crusts was 'knob ends' but this has fallen from favour since it also came to be associated with a less wholesome subject.
See also: 'sandwich'.

cucumber / gherkin

Cucumbers are believed to originate from India and were introduced into England in the 14th century. The long, sausage shaped. dark green variety is known to all in Britain but other parts of the world have developed their own traditional form which are now being grown in Britain.
The cucumber is eaten raw in salads and sandwiches (traditionally English) though it was once believed that cucumber eaten raw was bad for you and so recipes for stewed cucumber and cucumber soup were common up to Victorian times.
The gherkin is a small immature cucumber, picked specifically for pickling. Its also a large building in London which looks nothing like a gherkin.
Sayings: An unflappable person may be described as being "as cool as a cucumber".

Lane's Extinction Grading: Very Safe

Culturally exported so globally produced and consumed (i.e. its fate does not rest soley in our hands).

Cullen skink

A popular traditional Scottish soup, originating from Cullen, Moray, on the north east coast of Scotland. It is made from flakes of Finnan haddock, potatoes and onions and possibly shares the same roots as Kedgeree, and may even be the origin of it, or is that a bit controversial?

cultivar

A cultivated plant (a plant which has been deliberately altered or selected by humans) and has been modified or chosen for its unique and desirable attributes, and given a unique name. It is usually distinct from similar plants and should retain its unique characteristics when propagated.
There are over 7500 apple cultivars.

culver house

Another English name for a 'dovecote'. Culver is derived from the old English 'culfre' - a dove. A keeper of doves may be known as a 'culver'.
Surnames: Variations of the name 'culverhouse', with different spellings, are to be found in surnames and place names all over Britain.

Cumberland plum bread

A tall, round, lightly spiced fruit loaf of medium texture and containing dried fruit and candied peel.

Cumberland sausage

1

A very long sausage (up to 18 inches/50cm) originating from what is now Cumbria, and distinctive in that it is sold in a continuous sausage, unlinked and curled into a flat coil (called 'rings'). It can be obtained shorter, and linked, like other sausages but this is considered untraditional. The Cumberland sausage has a high meat content (over 80%) though unscrupulous sausage makers give the name to sausages which contain much less meat than this. Also the meat is chopped, not minced, giving the sausages a unique texture, and the main flavouring is pepper, though herbs and other spices are used too, often to secret recipes. The sausage was originally made from the meat of the Cumberland pig which narrowly escaped extinction in the 1960's (it is not known where he is now).

Lane's Extinction Grading: Safe

1. Nationally produced and/or consumed
2. Very strong traditions in one village, town, county or region.

Cumberland tatie pot

'Tatie pot' is a Cumbrian potato, mutton (lamb these days) and black pudding dish and is a type of stew, but as the meat and potatoes are laid in layers it has more in common with a hot pot.
Some people add a pie crust which is controversial as the top is supposed to be finished with a layer of overlapping sliced potatoes, laid like roofing slates across the surface.
Traditionally served with pickled red cabbage.
See also: 'hot pot'.

cupped biscuit

5a

Cupped or bowl shaped biscuits were once popular and they were made by cupping the biscuit dough over the end of a mould.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Extinct

Extinct but a useable recipe, knowledge or appropriate experience exists.

curd

Thick, soft substance which forms when milk turns sour. Curds, once commonly available to housewives, are now hard to source due mainly to modern health regulations. See also 'whey'.

curd tart

1

A cake made from curds and currants, found only in Yorkshire where it is still very popular and is produced commercially.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Safe

1. Nationally produced and/or consumed
2. Very strong traditions in one village, town, county or region.

cured hams

2

Hams cured with one, or several methods of curing according to local tradition. The English have the greatest variety of cured hams probably due to the suitability of some of the traditional English pig species preferred in ham making. Mutton used to be cured in a similar manner but this practice has all but died out, the notable exception being 'reestit mutton' in Scotland.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Stable

1. Stable in one or more areas/regions, but not growing.
2. Still enjoyed by a number of families in one area.
3. Successful recent revival with natural local growth.

curing

A method of preservation which dehydrates the food, adds anti-bacterial substances and, as a bonus, enhances the flavour. Curing discourages bacteria and bigger beasties from feasting on your food, thus extending its shelf life. Mainly employed with meats and fish but not exclusively so and some vegetables can also be cured, as can some cheeses. Curing can employ a number of methods, combined with a 'maturing' of the food. A curing process may involve salting/brining, marinating, drying and/or smoking (hot or cold), depending on the food and on local tradition.
Dry and wet - Dry curing nearly always involves salt which removes moisture and creates a hostile environment for bacteria. Ingredients used in wet curing vary, and recipes are jealously guarded, but often involve soaking in brine (sometimes known as pickling), molasses or some similar sugary substance. Foods which are dry cured tend to last longer than those which are wet cured.
Smoking - Foods may be smoked using wood chippings (usually oak, beech or apple) or peat and can be hot smoked (which cooks the food at the same time), or cold smoked which seals the raw flesh inside. Smoking dries the food and adds chemicals to the food which bacteria find it difficult to live on.
The word 'curing' may these days be also applied to radiation curing , to the injecting of pickling fluids, or to the addition of nitrates.
See also: 'brine curing', 'pickle', 'pickling spice', 'bulks', and 'smoking food'.

curry

An English word which doesn’t exist in Asia but which means any spicy dish of Asian origin, and encompasses a vast array of foods originating from numerous countries and cultures. Some curries were even invented in England to local taste (e.g. balti) and do no€t exist in Asia. Recipes for curry have appeared in English cookery books for about two hundred and fifty years, and the first curry 'house' was, it is claimed, opened in London in 1812, two hundred years ago. Curry can also be referred to as an 'Indian' regardless of the ethnic origin of the cook, a clue to where our taste for curry type dishes originally developed.
Alternative uses: 'Curry' (spelled 'cury' but pronounced 'curry') is also a middle English word meaning 'cooking', as used in the 'Forme of Cury' (1300's).

Lane's Extinction Grading: Very Safe

Culturally exported so globally produced and consumed (i.e. its fate does not rest soley in our hands).

curry house

A curry house is any permanent building which sells curries whether it be a restaurant or take-away. The term is not applied to mobile catering trailers.
There are currently 9,000 curry houses in the UK (2012).

custard

Custard, under different names, is a popular dish in many countries and so can be encountered in many tastes, textures and forms. The British version, hot and poured over puddings, fruit, etc. is peculiar to our islands and some would say that "a proper pudding comes with custard" (ok, I admit it, that's what I say) thus differentiating traditionally British deserts from foreign impersonators. In Britain custard comes in two varieties: 'egg custard' and 'custard' (made with custard powder).
A proper custard will form a skin which will either be loathed or fought over, and each family will have a 'lover' and a 'cringer' (whilst the rest look on amused). Two 'skin lovers' in the same household can cause family rifts. Cold, 'set' custard most famously appear in custard pies. Originally British custards could contain meat or fish, though you are probably wincing at this suggestion.
Sayings: "Cowardy, cowardy custard!" (children's taunt).
"He's as hard as cookhouse custard!" (British Army).

custard pie

'Set' custard, in an open pastry base, and with ground nutmeg baked into the top. Always eaten cold.
A custard pie is the only effective substance, known to mankind, which will discourage persistent, annoying clowns (which seems to be most of them). It's the circus equivalent of kryptonite.

Lane's Extinction Grading: Very Safe

Culturally exported so globally produced and consumed (i.e. its fate does not rest soley in our hands).

custard powder

Powdered custard was invented in Birmingham in 1837 by Mr. Alfred Bird (1811-1878), an experimental chemist, for his wife who had an egg allergy (eggs are a key ingredient in traditional custard).
The use of powdered custard, much used during several wars, has been so popular for so long that it is simply known as 'custard' and the traditional variety is referred to as 'egg custard'.
Mr. Bird is said to have owned a custard coloured Rolls Royce.
(Mr Bird also invented baking powder because his wife was also allergic to yeast.)
[US-Canada]

cut round

A 'cut round' is Devon's bread like versions of a scone and was once provided with Devon cream teas. It is a traditional savoury type bread, one of several which were superseded by the scone.

cutlery

Cutlery is a word we use to mean any metal eating or serving implement (knife, fork, spoon, etc.) but technically cutlery was originally anything that cuts, such as a knife or sword, hence the name.
Traditionally most households had two sets of cutlery, one for every day use, and one for guests (or Sundays, visits by the vicar or mother-in-law, etc.) and which may be made from silver or be silver plated (in either case it might be known as the 'silverware', 'best silver' or posh cutlery').
A set of silver cutlery in a wooden case was once a certainty amongst the presents for newly weds but these days people have usually been living independently or together for some years prior to marriage and so this custom has faded (replaced for a short period by toasters).
Plastic cutlery is favoured for outdoor use but it is never any good and can break on coleslaw let alone a steak. Picking bits of broken plastic fork out of your food at outdoor events is traditional in Britain (as are injuries from plastic 'patio' chairs which collapse without warning). Victorian cutlery never broke and could also, in an emergency, be used to weed a garden or dig a short tunnel.
97% of Britain's cutlery was once made in Sheffield.
Other names: Eating irons, eating tools, yaffling spanners (Royal Navy).
See also: 'Thomas Coryat', 'Apostle spoons', 'runcible spoon', 'spurtle', 'pickle fork', 'fish knife' and 'trencher'.

CWS

The 'Co-op's' own brand goods are known as 'CWS' (Co-operative Wholesale Society). The CWS was formed in 1863, entered manufacturing in 1873, and they made and imported a huge range of products utilising their own farms, factories and fleet of ships. The Co-op's CWS led the way with 'own brand' goods and though the principles and ideas behind their production were commendable they inevitably led to a standardisation of taste, and precipitated the demise of local traditionally produced foods, as all industrial food production methods do.