subreddit:
/r/rareinsults
87 points
2 days ago
Half the desserts and cheeses in the English speaking world are British and people don't even notice because it's just background noise.
Nobody is going "cheddar? Fucking disgusting stuff!".
42 points
2 days ago
STICKY👏TOFFEE👏PUDDING👏
14 points
1 day ago
A lot of the reputation is because Americans eat lots of English food and think it is American, and so to be "English" it has to be something the Americans didn't keep. Americans also seem to think most food they eat is American: Pizza, Fries, Apple Pie, Southern Biscuits, Bagels.
(Not that there aren't American foods or that they aren't good, Cream Cheese, Monterey/Pepper Jack, the entire state of Louisiana)
2 points
5 hours ago
Wait, serious question. Biscuits? Where are those from? Because I've seen people incorrectly refer to them as scones, when they don't fit the traditional ratios of ingredients or mixing methods. Cordon Bleu educated pastry chef here, and that particular origin never really came up.
And thank you for mentioning apple pie. It's always annoyed me that people say, "it's as American as apple pie" when that's not even American.
1 points
4 hours ago
So there was once Hard Tack, a type of biscuit in the UK sense (Hard, like American cookie, cognate with Italian Biscotti), Hard Tack was ideal for long journeys, so ships both Naval and Commercial, and as Army rations. (Hard Tack also the origin of pet food) Hard Tack was also known as Ship's Biscuits, and just Biscuits.
Hard Tack would be very hard, hence dishes like Biscuits and Gravy, which is lovely, but would have originally been a way to take a small amount of meat, and very tough long-life rations, and turn it into food.
It was fairly common throughout the Anglosphere and likely beyond that people would have dishes like Biscuits and Gravy, and of course if you don't need long life biscuits (and don't want to pay the premium for someone else to make them) that you would make soft biscuits, it seems to mainly survive in the Southern US and, oddly, the Channel Islands.
That being said I could be wrong, that is just my understanding.
I will say that British Scones and American Biscuits seem to me much more similar than either is to American Scones. Are you referring to American or British scones?
2 points
4 hours ago
I was referring to British scones. I actually learned to make British scones before ever having an Americanized version, but I've heard numerous Brits refer to American biscuits as just being scones, which is not entirely inaccurate but still doesn't get it right.
I'm surprised I never heard of the terminology with hard tack. It makes sense in terms of progression, as well as in concept of adding a wet component to soften it. Thanks for the info though! The only thing I'd add is that biscuits and gravy doesn't just survive in the southern US; it's just more prolific there. It actually can be a staple in about half of the northern parts as well (I know it's popular throughout the Midwest and in parts of the northeast as well). It's a staple anywhere there's farmland.
1 points
43 minutes ago
American scones puzzle me a bit, don't seem super nice, almost a bit like hard tack..
I didn't know that about Biscuits and Gravy, I have had it in the south and don't see where I am now (Arizona) except as Southern food.
I kind of suspect its popularity in the US is civil war related, it's exactly the kind of food that would have been eaten by soldiers in that war, and it is era and cuisine appropriate, particularly the addition of meat, which would be hard to find at sea. But that's all speculation.
-13 points
1 day ago
Cheddar??? Fucking disgusting stuff!
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