Saturday 1 October 2016

Clue - The bowl is smaller than it appears


The Boy and Swedish girlfriend came round tonight, and the end result is that I will have - for the first time since the far-off days of my post-war childhood - toast and dripping tomorrow.

Now, children, who can spot the dripping amongst the carefully placed 18th century household items in this wobbly picture?

Cro gets up the earliest, and he is the early worm who may be old enough to know what dripping is as well as having been an antique dealer before he became so busy, so I have high hopes for the lad to get it right before any of you other foreigners!

38 comments:

  1. Are we talking about pork fat?

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    1. Beef. It was a staple in less sophistacted times before everyone started using olive oil for anything other than cleaning their ears.

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  2. So you roasted the Swedish girl and the boy to make the dripping. Personally I prefer beef dripping and on white bread (not toast) with a little salt. Sorry 3am here and I am awake before Cro.

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    1. Well I could certainly eat her, or parts of her anyway.

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  3. You forget my relatives include a bunch named Cox. Beef it was.

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    1. Is Cox an exclusively British name? My sister was a Cox.

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    2. Mostly, it seems. It is occupation related, Anglo Saxon derivation of rooster, or cock. Seems rather farm related, and my Cox relatives were farmers.

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    3. I never knew is was that literal.

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  4. Pukka Beef dripping, with a layer of jelly at the bottom, is a delight. I used to love it on toast with Marmite or Bovril.

    I'm ALWAYS up before Rachel.

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  5. Never heard of "dripping"...it sounds interesting though.

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    1. It sounds disgusting when you haven't heard it since childhood.

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  6. I was up before all of you because we're way ahead in Oz. Bread and dripping - and it was always served in a big white pudding bowl.

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    1. This was a small white pudding bowl, made even smaller by the giant bottle of wine which we drank.

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    2. Did you roast the whole bloody bullock then, Sue?

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  7. It has to be hot toast so that the fat melts in to the bread with the jelly and salt. Mmmmmmmm. The basin has to be china and possibly rather old, cracked and a bit stained. Reminds me of staying with my Grandparents 60 plus yrs ago.

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    1. All the components were as you decree, save the jelly. See below.

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  8. A great meal to be eaten on a regular basis. As my father did and had a fatal coronary at the age of 55.

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    1. Recent scientific surveys have taken the blame away from saturated fats for coronary disease, but I would not like to have it every day as a main meal anyway.

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    2. I read that only in the last day or two. You must be half a world ahead.

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    3. Me too. I think we are about 6 hours ahead, which I suppose is half a rotation.

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  9. Beef dripping with tasty jelly covering white bread with lots of salt and pepper..I loved this when we had it as children....mind you I also loved black pudding until an aunt told me what it was and I went right off it. They serve great dripping with gherkins and bread in restaurants in Gdansk as a nibble with drinks. What is the connection between the boy/swedish girl and the dripping?

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    1. I have re-discovered black pudding in the last 20 years or so. If you eat beef, then you eat blood as well, but they do not bleed cattle as they do pigs. The connection? I don't know of any other than lewd, imaginary ones.

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  10. I liked the brown bits that collected at the bottom of the dripping. Don't forget the salt !

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  11. You need a lot of the top layer and then a bit of that delicious brown jelly which forms underneath. Yum.

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  12. Apart from a childhood treat at my grands I have only ever had bread and dripping once when out...and that was at a pub quiz in the back streets of Sheffield circa 1990.
    Bloody bloody wonderful

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    1. Nobody ever collects it anymore down here in the soft South. I think it reminds them of poverty and rationing.

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  13. I only know it as goose dripping (to eat on bread with salt), while pig fat here is more often used for cooking red cabbage - and sometimes, with greaves and apple and onion in nowadays "Food market halls events", on dark bread.

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    1. According to all the cowboy films I have seen, goose fat was used on men's hair in those days.

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  14. Big dsappointment this morning. The jelly did not form and stayed liquid - probably because it was rib not leg. It tastes just the same, but just does not spread on bread. Damn.

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  15. I was going to say that my dripping never seems to form jelly anymore ..... just liquid , like yours. I wonder why that is ? I would also like to know why you don't get the kidney in a pork chop anymore & why do they take rind from somewhere else and wrap it around a piece of pork ? So many questions !! XXXX

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  16. If you roast in proper lard in the blue pack from Waitrose the dripping sets before you've even gone to bed. I never stopped using lard. I dont get good dripping these days because there is very little fat left on beef today.

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    1. It was the jelly from the bone which was the problem, not the fat. The beef had enough fat to baste itself.

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  17. Toast and dripping now that reminds me of my grandmother she often made it for us as kids, that was before we cooked everything in oil and fried bread was always done in dripping to.
    Merle............

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  18. Tom, I do know about beef dripping...even though I live in the States. When I was growing up in Virginia, it was bacon fat that was saved, and often used in cooking other dishes, like green beans; we called them snaps because of snapping off the ends of the green beans before those beans were cooked.

    It's possible that pork was more available than cows in the early settling of this country, and that's why the English settlers changed up their dripping.

    I do have some ironstone pudding bowls in various sizes, some as small as the one in your photo.

    Best wishes.

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