Thanks, Christopher, for the black bun description.
Anchovies on toast and a pot of tea around 4:00?
I can't eat anchovies on pizza, let alone on toast.
When I came back from Oxford, I found that two items
there continued Stateside: tea with cookies or cake
midafternoon, and Bird's custard, by which the Oxford
desserts were smothered.
As my heading suggests, maybe we can sidle back to
poetry as well as food--there must be good poems with
foody themes out there(?). I'll start with a poem by
the Irish comedian Denis Leary, which he claims was
written by his dog:
You gonna eat that?
You gonna eat that?
You gonna eat that?
I'll eat that.
Candice
--- MC Ward <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Our scones are thick and tasteless apart from the
> dried fruit they contain: currants, raisins,
> apricots,
> etc. They are so full of flour that they get stuck
> to
> the roof of your mouth. I've never understood why
> anyone likes them, but they're fairly popular and to
> be found in the better bakeries.
>
> Candice
>
>
>
> -- Christopher Walker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Candice:
> >
> > <snip>
> > I had some experience with English cooking when I
> > was at Oxford one summer
> > in the 1970s. I learned, for instance, that there
> > are several different
> > versions of afternoon tea:
> > [...]
> > The lunches were worse, so I finally appealed to
> the
> > Bursar for yoghurt,
> > fruit, cheese, and peanut butter
> > <snip>
> >
> > English catering was ever a struggle. (In *Nose to
> > Tail Eating*, Fergus
> > Henderson urges prospective cooks never to show
> fear
> > 'because your
> > ingredients will know it, and misbehave'.) That's
> > why so many domestic
> > bursars came from the Forces, why food bills were
> > known as battels and why
> > undergraduates were fined in ale for breeches of
> > dining etiquette. But
> > peanut butter lunches?
> >
> > And you never had anchovy toast with a nice pot of
> > Lapsang at around, say,
> > 4.00pm?
> >
> > <snip>
> > And I'd like to know what black buns are
> > <snip>
> >
> > Well 'black bun' was trailing a coat. Baking
> > declines as you go South, it
> > seems to me: the fight against bad bread was lost
> at
> > Chorleywood.
> >
> > As Lyn M says, it is actually a Scots baked good
> > intended for Hogmanay. It
> > may be eaten occasionally without suffering undue
> > harm. And her description
> > is a nice one; I had forgotten the little crust.
> The
> > only thing to add is
> > that it has _elements_ of Christmas cake and
> > Christmas pudding without being
> > either of these. In short, it is sui generis.
> >
> > As to those 'split and buttered' eatables Joanna
> > mentioned, there is an
> > English/Scots divide over *scones*: short /o/
> versus
> > long. A Scots scone is
> > anything between a sort of circular pancake and a
> > flat circular bread baked
> > on a girdle. (According to Gavin Douglas, Aeneas
> ate
> > them along with other
> > foodstuffs; however, they weren't used as
> trenchers,
> > which are mentioned
> > separately.) Most, and certainly potato scones,
> > should be cut up into
> > triangles. A Southern English scone, on the other
> > hand, is much smaller
> > and higher and is shaped like a miniature toque;
> > which is where the
> > connection with fine cooking starts and ends. Too
> > often it is made of a
> > strange off-white material which gets between the
> > teeth and coats the roof
> > of one's mouth. Sometimes it contains currants,
> > presumably so that you can
> > measure how much of it you have taken as you bite
> > and proceed to chew.
> >
> > CW
> > _______________________________________________
> >
> > 'What's the point of having a language that
> > everybody knows?'
> > (Gypsy inhabitant of Barbaraville)
> >
>
>
>
>
>
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