- kali
Pronounced "kay-lye", a northern England word for 'sherbert' (mainly Yorkshire).
- kedgeree / kitcheree
A funny one this, full of ethnic diversity, being a combination of a favourite British breakfast of boiled eggs and kippers, and an Indian rice based comfort food called 'kichidi', which became 'kitcheree', and is made from rice, dal and ghee. 'Kitcheree' used by English speaking tongues became 'kedgeree'.
Kedgeree is made today from flakes of smoked haddock, boiled rice, eggs and butter maintaining most of the ingredients of the two original dishes. Older recipes (Eliza Acton-1845) allow for the use of fish flakes of many types of fried fish, including turbot, sole, salmon and brill.
Kedgeree is one of many unique dishes resulting from the combination of British and Asian ingredients during the days of the British Raj.
The dish became popular with soldiers, subsequently being brought back by them and also by kitchen staff returning to England. Kedgeree was most fashionable in England, where it was became a popular breakfast and it is still found on breakfast menus of hotels.
See also: 'British Raj'.
- keel
The 'keel' is a traditional English unit of weight for coal. After considerable variation, the keel of coal was standardised in 1695 as 21.2 tons, or 47 488 pounds (21.5402 metric tons). This is the approximate weight of coal carried at that time by 'keels', the barges on the river Tyne in north east England.
See also 'Chalder'.
- keeve
1 - A vat or fermentation tub.
2 - The process by which fermentation is stopped to preserve the flavour of fruit ingredients (in cider). Also known as 'keeving'.
- keg
Though today we associate the 'keg' exclusively with brewing but it was once the primary means of packaging/transport of many industries who also used it as a standard unit of measurement within their industry. For example a keg of nails weighed exactly 100 pounds (45.359 kg), a keg of herring contained 60 fish and gunpowder was stored and transported in 'powder' kegs.
Within the brewing industry a keg can be any beer container, of any size. A barrel (36 gallons) is often called a keg but so too can containers of much smaller sizes including one you can carry home yourself, a modern reincarnation of the 'party seven'.
The word 'keg' can be used in a disparaging manner, by real ale people, to differentiate industrially produced beers (keg beers), from 'cask conditioned' ones.
Kegs were originally made of wood but today they can be aluminium, steel or plastic. The wooden kegs began to be replaced by metal ones in the 1950's and were called 'kegs' to differentiate them from wooden barrels. By the 1970's most brewers were using metal kegs, driven partly by us and an almost pathological dislike of harmless sediment from which we are now recovering. People who drank far too much liked to blame their hangover on sediment but today the same people blame the condition on something they ate. The beer itself is always blameless, its an unwritten law.
The loss of metal beer kegs (theft) is a major issue within the brewing industry.
'Keg' is norse in origin
Alt: 'Kegs' is also slang for trousers in some parts.
See also 'barrel' and 'cask'.
- Kendal mint cake
Kendal mint cake is a commercially made confectionary made from sugar, glucose, water and peppermint oil. Made in Kendal, Cumbria.
- Kent lent pie *
U
Also known as 'Kent pudding pie'. Rather like a cheesecake and popular around the Folkestone area.
Lane's Extinction Grading: Unknown!
Not yet fully investigated, cannot make an assessment.
- Kent pudding pie
See 'Kent lent pie'.
- Kentish chicken pudding
U
Made with a suet crust and originally boiled in a cloth like a steak and kidney pudding but the Kentish chicken pudding contains ....... chicken!
Lane's Extinction Grading: Unknown!
Not yet fully investigated, cannot make an assessment.
- Kentish cobnut
A variety of cultivated hazelnut which, as the name suggests, is most common in Kent. See also 'cobnut'.
- Kentish well pudding
A buttery suet, currant filled pudding which shares its origins with 'Sussex Pond pudding'. It is cooked in a bowl lined with the suet crust but would once have been boiled in a cloth.
- Kenyan / African top bar hive
Top bar hives are so called because their design incorporates horizontal 'bars' laid across the top of the hive from which the bees create a free hanging 'drape' from each bar.
The concept of 'top bar' hives is ancient but modern developments in Africa have led to wooden constructions known as 'Kenyan' (sloped sides) or 'Tanzanian' (vertical sides).
Modern 'top bar' hives are easy and cheap to make and so have been taken up widely in 3rd world countries. But their use has spread and many bee keepers in industrialised nations are shifting from the 'national' type to the 'top bar', some in an attempt to evade the destructive 'Varroa' mite, others in a belief that the 'top bar' is less stressful to bees than the 'national'.
The advantage of this type of hive is that it is held high, making it easy to work on, and holding it clear of ground vegetation and nasty things which might decide a hive is a good place to live or dine.
British beekeepers are modifying 3rd world designs to local conditions with insulation and weatherproof materials.
See also: 'bee hive'.
- ketchup
Ketchup is a term which used to mean sauces made from all manner of vegetable or fish ingredients. Ketchups were many and varied in the 1800
- ki / kye
Pronounced 'kai'. A naval term for drinking chocolate made to an Admiralty recipe and not considered suitable for children (due to high starch content). It came in blocks of hard chocolate which was scraped to produce flakes which were then slowly melted and then boiled.
- kibbler
A kibbler is a mechanical device for for breaking up hard materials. It is used mainly for grinding cereal for animal feed but kibblers are also used to break up hard dough or biscuit like materials.
- kilderkin
A 'kilderkin' is an obscure unit of volume, equal to 18 gallons (81.83 litres).
Half a kilderkin is a 'firkin' and two kilderkins equals one barrel.
- Kilner Jar
The Kilner Jar is an air tight, rubber sealed, re-usable, glass storage jar used for jams, pickles, etc.
Invented in Yorkshire by John Kilner (1792-1857) and is still being made today.
Though the original Kilner jar had a metal screw top lid the hinged variety may also be referred to by the same name.
Jeremy Clarkson (TV presenter) discovered that his ancestors invented and made the Kilner jar.
- King Alfred's Cakes
Not cakes at all but a fungus (Daldinia concentrica) which grows on dead wood, especially of beech and ash, and resembles burnt cakes or rounded lumps of coal.
Also known as 'cramp balls' (carrying them in your pocket may prevent cramp).
The Saxon King Alfred (of Wessex), also known as 'Alfred the Great', was resisting the Viking conquest of the Saxon kingdoms in AD 877, but things didn't go well at first and he was forced to retreat and to travel secretly to avoid capture by the Danes. He was lodging in a peasant's hut and was asked to watch the over cakes on the griddle. King Alfred was so lost in his thoughts that he paid no attention to the cakes and they were burnt. But Alfred eventually re-grouped and pushed back the Danes until they surrendered and agreed to leave Wessex, then he created fortified towns (called 'burhs', the origin of the place name words 'burgh', 'borough', etc.), a permanent highly mobile army (on horseback) and a new Navy to fight the Danes at sea. Afterwards Alfred was credited with taking Saxon England into a golden age social stability and artistic accomplishment, so perhaps it was worth burning a few buns.
- kipper
1
A kipper or smoked kipper is a split, 'cold smoked' herring, with head and tail intact but innards removed and the modern kipper cure is said to have originated in Seahouses, Northumberland, but has become associated associated with kippers but so too have many east coast ports of England and Scotland, and also with the Isle of Man (Manx kippers) and the Western Isles.
Although a kipper can easily be recognised there are subtle variations linked to the region in which it is cured. There are differences in the kipper size, oil content, the cut (split through belly or through the back), and the taste (mainly the smoke/salt balance). Most curers use oak in the smoking process.
Once the breakfast of choice and eaten by millions. Still eaten at breakfast throughout Britain, but strangely only found on hotel menus, perhaps due to its historic association with breakfast.
Kippers, like many smoked products, have suffered from the 'dye deceivers' so check the small print before you buy. There are only a few smoke houses making kippers in the traditional manner (by hanging in smoke from racks or hooks), but there are others using computer controlled ovens and some even use the culinary equivalent of a 'spray tan'. An easy way to tell industrially processed kippers is to look for the pale flesh and the tell-tale criss-cross indents created by the stacking of the kippers in vertical racks instead of hanging in the traditional way. Smoked in this way only the outer kippers receive an adequate smoking and even then only on their outer side. A major supermarket produces kippers processed in this way (2010) and calls them 'Manx Style' kippers (whatever that means). The criss-cross markings or lines can be seen on these fish (through their expensive packaging).
In the north east of England kippers were sold, pub to pub, from baskets at night (along with pickled cockles and mussels), to be consumed for breakfast. These travelling sellers were known as 'kipper men'.
Names: 'Spithead pheasant' (Royal Navy).
Alt: It is possible to be 'done up like a kipper' especially if you are a cockney in a cop movie. In Kentish dialect 'kippered' also means chapped lips, ears, hands, or skin cracked by cold, wet weather. 'Split the Kipper' is a stretching game played with a knife (also known as 'stretch'), and in the 1960's and 70's it was considered fashionable to wear an extremely wide tie known as a 'kipper tie'.
"Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast" was the parting phrase of Red Dwarf's 'Ace' Rimmer (What a guy!).
See also 'kippering', 'bloater', 'red herring', 'buckling' and 'herring girls'.
Lane's Extinction Grading: Safe
- Nationally produced and/or consumed
- Very strong traditions in one village, town, county or region.
- kippering
The process of making kippers from split herring, but it is possible to have 'kippered' salmon, and other species of fish, and indeed 'kippering' was originally a process created for salmon. The origins of the modern kipper (herring) can be traced back to the north east of England, at Seahouses, where it was originally called the 'Newcastle kipper', but the origins of the 'kippering' technique, utilising other species (mainly salmon) are less clear, but it would seem to have originated form around the borders coastline of NE England and SE Scotland.
- Kit Cat
Not what you think. This was the name of a mutton pie sold in the early 1700's, by Christopher ('Kit') Catling the keeper of a pie house in London which was also the original location of the 'Kit Cat Club'. It is not known if the club took its name from the pie, or the other way round.
- knife urn
A 'knife urn' is a hard wood, urn shaped, knife box popular in high society dining rooms during the 1760's. Though its popularity eventually waned knife urns are still being made and bought.
- knob
1 - A 'rusk' type food, with regional variations in shape and ingredients.
2 - A small measure of butter of varying size and shape, and constantly mentioned in recipes.
- knobbed
Gutted and decapitated fish (as in a 'Buckling').
- kremola / cremola foam
Or more correctly creamola foam was a soft drink made from colourful soluble crystals. It was made in Glasgow and sold in tins mainly in Scotland. Though production ceased in 1998 it has been resurrected in 2010, by an independant sweet maker in Dumbarton, with the name of 'Kramola Fizz'. Available in sweet shops once again.