Some snippets from an interesting and amusing article. More in the link:

“As Americans wake up to the wonders of The Great British Baking Show, they're also realizing something else: Nobody on this side of the Atlantic Ocean really knows what any of these desserts are.”
……

‘"Pudding" can refer generically to the sweet, final course of a meal, what Americans know as "dessert." (Because it's the UK, this has class implications. Nancy Mitford, in a famous essay comparing the speech of upper-class Britons with everyone else, categorized "pudding" as used by the elite and "sweet" as used by the proletariat.)’
……

“The earliest puddings, in this sense of the word, were sausages; black pudding, a type of sausage made with pig's blood, is sometimes included in a traditional English breakfast.”
……

“Other puddings are sweet, such as spotted dick — a sort of steamed cake with currants that's barely sweet and, like many puddings, flavored with suet, or beef fat, rather than butter.”
……

Americans are the outlier on how we use "biscuit"

“American biscuits are small, fluffy quick breads, leavened with baking powder or buttermilk and served with butter and jam or gravy. They are close to what the British would call scones. But American scones are different, because nothing about this is uncomplicated.

To most of the rest of the English-speaking world, a biscuit is what Americans would refer to as either a cookie or a cracker.”
……

“In the US, a flapjack is a less common way of saying "pancake"; in the UK, it's a chewy, sweet granola bar.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/w...show-pudding-biscuit

Though I quite enjoy them now, I was perplexed and a bit letdown the first time I had Yorkshire Pudding.

wife and I really enjoy the Great British Bake Off,

I've made a couple of the recipes over the years

My father-in-law was born and raised in Newfoundland coming to the United States in the late 30s.

When talking about food when he was growing up it seemed many things were some type of pudding : Pease pudding (boiled peas in a bag), Figgy pudding (type of cake in bag then placed into a can and steamed), Blood pudding (type of sausage). There were others that I can not remember now.

Great man who I dearly miss.

Sorry. I prefer the American idea of "pudding"--a creamy sweet slightly gooey dessert that comes in several flavors: chocolate (my favorite), butterscotch, banana, etc. I would not even eat what the Brits call "pudding". (In fact, the only British dish I really like is fish & chips (either kind).

flashguy

Have you noticed that the contestants on The Great British Baking Show weigh everything? With the metric system, that’s how they bake which is how professional/commercial bakers here operate as well.

I think we Americans may be the only country that uses measuring cups for things like sugar and flour.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Have you noticed that the contestants on The Great British Baking Show weigh everything? With the metric system, that’s how they bake which is how professional/commercial bakers here operate as well.

I think we Americans may be the only country that uses measuring cups for things like sugar and flour.

and measuring spoons for vanilla and spices.

flashguy

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Have you noticed that the contestants on The Great British Baking Show weigh everything? With the metric system, that’s how they bake which is how professional/commercial bakers here operate as well.

I think we Americans may be the only country that uses measuring cups for things like sugar and flour.

Weighing makes SO much more sense for baking.

The relative ratios of ingredient amounts are critical in a way they aren’t for most other types of cooking, and many of the ingredients do not measure very consistently by volume.

It also makes it massively easier to scale recipe sizes. Like a a basic bread recipe might be written as 70% water, 3% salt, 1% yeast. The percentages are used a little differently - that doesn’t mean it’s 26% flour. Rather, the percentages are what percentage of the weight of flour you use for that ingredient. Using percentages this way - as relative percentages of the primary ingredient, rather than as absolute percentages of the total - is called “baker’s percentages.”

Using 1000g of flour to make a great big loaf (or a few smaller ones)? 700g water, 30g salt, 10g yeast. Want to make a small loaf with 200g of flour, or cooking for a big party and need to use 5000g of flour? All super easy to figure out and you can just weigh it.

You can do the same thing with volumes, of course, but not using a common reference amount (not to mention mixed units in the imperial system) makes the math more complicated and then sometimes you have to try to figure out how to measure seven twenty-thirds of a tablespoon of yeast or whatever.

Spotted Dick, would be a hard pass for me!

Figgy pudding is a traditional Christmas pudding only encountered in a Christmas song - 'We wish you a Merry Christmas'.....

Look up 'mince pies'. No meat in mince pies.

You see, unlike the USA and the rest of North America, UK is not big on pies. Our local Shari's
in Eugene OR has about fifty different pies, not one of which is savoury. Here in UK, apart from varieties of apple and apple and something, fruit pies are a rarity.

Cottage pie = made out of minced [ground] beef.

Shepherd's pie = end of a lamb joint ground up.

Both have a mashed potato topping and cooked in the oven.

Pork pie [a specialty of the market town of Melton Mowbray] - ground pork in a secret recipe encased in a hot-water pastry casing.

OTOH, my wife was not brought up weighing stuff - SHE uses tablespoons and stuff like that. However, she would like to know what a 'cup' size actually is? She does fair amount of cooking when we are stateside and always seems to use the same cup[s]... but there are large, medium and small cups, right?

Anyhow, the GBB is to ordinary cooking what 'Braveheart' is to Scottish history.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:

Have you noticed that the contestants on The Great British Baking Show weigh everything? With the metric system, that’s how they bake which is how professional/commercial bakers here operate as well.

I think we Americans may be the only country that uses measuring cups for things like sugar and flour.

While on a long-term project in Barcelona, I walked into the condo after work one day and found my wife in tears, with the ruins of an attempted apple pie sitting on the kitchen counter.

"I can't cook metric," she said.

I contacted the home office in the U.S. and told them to send a care package with measuring cups, spoons, and cooking thermometers showing Fahrenheit.

All was well in the kitchen after that, and when we had some of the Spanish engineers over for Thanksgiving dinner, they said that if my wife opened an American style restaurant in Barcelona, it would be a big hit.

quote:

Originally posted by tacfoley:

my wife was not brought up weighing stuff - SHE uses tablespoons and stuff like that. However, she would like to know what a 'cup' size actually is? She does fair amount of cooking when we are stateside and always seems to use the same cup[s]... but there are large, medium and small cups, right?

In the context of measurements, as in recipes, a cup is 8 ounces, or 237 mL.

For drinking coffee, my cup is twelve or fourteen ounces, but that's not a valid measurement in cooking.

quote:

Originally posted by tacfoley:
Cottage pie = made out of minced [ground] beef.

I searched for a Shepherd's Pie recipe recently only to learn that difference between Shepherd's and Cottage Pies. I went with the Cottage and everyone enjoyed it.

quote:

Originally posted by tacfoley:
Anyhow, the GBB is to ordinary cooking what 'Braveheart' is to Scottish history.

That brought tears to my eyes I was silently (I think/hope) chuckling so hard. Love it!

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by tacfoley:

my wife was not brought up weighing stuff - SHE uses tablespoons and stuff like that. However, she would like to know what a 'cup' size actually is? She does fair amount of cooking when we are stateside and always seems to use the same cup[s]... but there are large, medium and small cups, right?

In the context of measurements, as in recipes, a cup is 8 ounces, or 237 mL.

For drinking coffee, my cup is twelve or fourteen ounces, but that's not a valid measurement in cooking.

It is worth noting that “ounce” does not mean the same thing in the US and UK. US fluid ounces are a little bigger than UK fluid ounces. It isn’t a big difference but in something as precise as baking, it could screw you up. 8 UK fluid ounces is 227 mL.

There is at least one other “cup” measurement you run into sometimes. Japanese rice cookers have water fill lines based on “cups” of uncooked rice, and include a measuring cup for measuring uncooked rice, but the “cup” is not the 8 fluid ounce cup of the imperial system.

The “cup” used for measuring rice in Japan (and for Japanese rice cookers abroad) is a traditional Japanese unit called a gō, which is the size of a traditional wood sake cup. It happens, by pure chance, to be almost exactly 180mL or 6 fluid ounces.

The Japanese have a few antique units that still see use in specific contexts. Some traditional woodworking, carpentry, and building still uses a system of length units based around the shaku, which has been standardized as 10/33 meters.

This whole thread makes me think back to my time in the US Army in Germany as a young Army cook, i was given a chance to try out for and was awarded a special apprenticeship where for about 4 months, I reported to a local Gasthaus and worked for a husband and wife team who owned and ran Der Goldene Gans (The Golden Goose). September to December, 1993.

I had a blast learning in a European kitchen and getting to cook all the local (Franconoia) specialties and am friends with them to this day.

The one day I decided to show them how to make American brownies and when the batter was in the pan, I say "Now we put it in the oven at 350"

Their eyes went really wide and I realized I had just told them to put it in the oven at like 650 degrees (to us). I quickly corrected myself and said "I meant 180!"

quote:

Originally posted by tacfoley:


Cottage pie = made out of minced [ground] beef.

Shepherd's pie = end of a lamb joint ground up.

Both have a mashed potato topping and cooked in the oven.

And NEITHER have cheese on them!!

quote:

Originally posted by tacfoley:
Figgy pudding is a traditional Christmas pudding only encountered in a Christmas song - 'We wish you a Merry Christmas'.....

Also known as Figgy Duff. My father-in-law referred to it as Figgy pudding ... as does this website :

https://www.tasteatlas.com/figgy-duff

Guess the Christmas song needed to have a reason to say Figgy pudding.

quote:

Originally posted by old dino:

quote:

Originally posted by tacfoley:
Figgy pudding is a traditional Christmas pudding only encountered in a Christmas song - 'We wish you a Merry Christmas'.....

Also known as Figgy Duff. My father-in-law referred to it as Figgy pudding ... as does this website :

https://www.tasteatlas.com/figgy-duff

Guess the Christmas song needed to have a reason to say Figgy pudding.

There is a kind of pudd'n called plum duff. Personally I've never had it.

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:

quote:

Originally posted by tacfoley:


Cottage pie = made out of minced [ground] beef.

Shepherd's pie = end of a lamb joint ground up.

Both have a mashed potato topping and cooked in the oven.

And NEITHER have cheese on them!!

Cheese on stuff is furrin'. Like the Eyetalians do, so I'm told.

You have to remember that much of the food here in UK is based on what YOU would call 'poverty food' - stuff that you can make with very little, and with very little effort. I'd like to remind you that most foodstuff items that you'd not even glance at were STILL rationed here in UK almost eleven years after the end of WW2.

True, I wasn't born until AFTER WW2, but I lived through the years of not having any this or that...even clothing was rationed.

There was a flourishing black market, but as the penalties were applied to both seller and buyer in equal measure, it was not something that held any appeal for my parents.

quote:

Originally posted by maladat:

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by tacfoley:

my wife was not brought up weighing stuff - SHE uses tablespoons and stuff like that. However, she would like to know what a 'cup' size actually is? She does fair amount of cooking when we are stateside and always seems to use the same cup[s]... but there are large, medium and small cups, right?

In the context of measurements, as in recipes, a cup is 8 ounces, or 237 mL.

For drinking coffee, my cup is twelve or fourteen ounces, but that's not a valid measurement in cooking.

It is worth noting that “ounce” does not mean the same thing in the US and UK. US fluid ounces are a little bigger than UK fluid ounces. It isn’t a big difference but in something as precise as baking, it could screw you up. 8 UK fluid ounces is 227 mL.

There is at least one other “cup” measurement you run into sometimes. Japanese rice cookers have water fill lines based on “cups” of uncooked rice, and include a measuring cup for measuring uncooked rice, but the “cup” is not the 8 fluid ounce cup of the imperial system.

The “cup” used for measuring rice in Japan (and for Japanese rice cookers abroad) is a traditional Japanese unit called a gō, which is the size of a traditional wood sake cup. It happens, by pure chance, to be almost exactly 180mL or 6 fluid ounces.

The Japanese have a few antique units that still see use in specific contexts. Some traditional woodworking, carpentry, and building still uses a system of length units based around the shaku, which has been standardized as 10/33 meters.

Thank you - I will pass that on the Mrs tac. Funnily enough, I know about the Japanese metrics, as one of my work colleague's brother and nephew carry out repiars and maintenance of the many temples in Kikko, and paying them a visit a few years back was a highlight of a wonderful trip back.