American Readers(and others too)

[Eruanna]

Wasn't it George Bernard Shaw who said that America and Britain are two countries divided by a common language?
This thread proves him right!

Apart from all of the differences in spelling and misconceptions about various foods; there is one thing that has always puzzled me. I like to cook and have often wanted to try recipes from America. However, I haven't yet managed to find out, exactly how much is a 'cup'?

Sophia, your Seed cake certainly sounds like the one my mother used to make.

For those looking to try Vegemite...don't bother, 'tis but a pale shadow of the delight that is Marmite

[Sophia the Thunder Mistress]

I believe a 'cup' is equivalent to a half-pint. Pretty sure you Brits know how much that is.

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Sophia the Thunder Mistress

[Edit] Excuse my ignorance, Rumil, but what is Manx? As far as I've always known it's a breed of cat? Is it a language/dialect as well?

I'm neither a Noldorin scribe named Rumil, nor even a Brit, but I think I can answer this question.

To the best of my knowledge, Manx refers to the Isle of Man, a largish isle situated between Great Britain and Ireland, and home to an indigenous, Celtic-style culture. I also believe that the tail-less Manx cats come from here.

[Lalwendë]

The Isle of Man also has a strong Viking heritage, and it has the oldest parliament in the world, the Tynwald. Manx is not a living language in the same way as Welsh and Irish Gaelic, which are used on a day to day basis as a first language by many native speakers, but it is undergoing a strong revival, as is the Cornish language.

Culturally, the Isle of Man is interesting with the influence of not only the Vikings and the English, but also two different Celtic cultures, Scotland and Ireland.

I wonder what they call 'cake' there?

[piosenniel]

cake:

jannoo keeak ~ cake

keeak tey ~ tea cake

berreen ~ cake
berreen charvish ~ seedcake
berreen corkey ~ oatcake
berreen Elveishagh ~ Swiss roll
berreen ghryle ~ girdle cake, slapjack
berreen mess ~ slabcake
berreen oarn ~ barleycake
berreen ooyllagh ~ apple tart
berreen ruggyree ~ birthday cake
berreen soo thallooin ~ strawberry cake
berreen spiosit ~ spicecake
berreen spunje ~ sponge cake
berreen Vadeiragh ~ Madeira cake
berreen vanshey ~ bride's cake
berreen vashtee ~ christening cake
berreen volley ~ honey cake
berreen vreck ~ currant cake

[Morai]

Culturally, the Isle of Man is interesting with the influence of not only the Vikings and the English, but also two different Celtic cultures, Scotland and Ireland.

Kinda off topic (sorry) but I do have family there, as well as in England somewheres. Unfortuneatly, I seem to have more Japenese influence than Manx. The closest thing I can recall here that resembles a seed cake, is a rice cake. If you buy them in a store, they're round disk like things where the rice has been baked and fused together.

When I think of sponge cake, I think of those infamous, fattening, and cream filled Twinkies!

[Rumil]

Thanks for the seed cake pic Sophia, that's exactly the sort I remember. Maybe I'll have to go on a cake-related shopping expedition sometime soon.

Meanwhile pio, Lalwende and formendacil have answered the Manx question better than I ever could!

[Nuranar]

And thank you, Rumil, for the "corny" ( ) clarification. (It was begging so hard I couldn't resist.)

Sophia, I love poppy seed cake! I'm hungry now...

Here's another cake question: Is "pound cake" the same all over? What about shortcake (as in strawberry)? Is there such a thing? We always use pound cake for strawberry shortcake - now that this thread has me thinking, it sounds strange.

[mark12_30]

Pound o' butter
Pound o' sugar
Pound o' flour
Pound o' eggs

= pound cake.

Modern recipes have varied, of course, but in the beginning, the above sufficed.

My mom the Mainer assures me this is so.

Do you think hobbits ate cake with their strawberries and cream?

[Mithalwen]

Being a sad bean counter, I can tell you that the difference between a cake and a biscuit is that when exposed to the open air a biscuit will go soft and a cake will go hard. So although a jaffa cake looks like a biscuit .. it is a cake...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A528040

[TomBrady12]

wow Sophia, your mother made that cake too? wierd...

I think up he-ah in the Noth, up he-ah in Waldo County Maine, we ah probibly the closest Americans to the Brits in the Country...Ayup

reading The Hobbit, I tend to think of cake being close to what Sophia showed, but I also think of things like Zucchini Bread, which is loaf shaped with a crusty exterior, and soft, but kind of heavy interior. It is spicey and sweet, i think it has a lot of cinnamon in it, maybe nutmeg, not really sure. Anyway, its good, similar to bananna bread i guess.

Nothing like corn on the Cob from Dickie Ingraham...ok im wandering

Anyway, all i really know is the hobbit makes me hungry!

Ohhh....another thing I might envision is brown bread, which, up here at least, is a traditional saturday night fixture to go along side baked beans.

TB12

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Morai

The closest thing I can recall here that resembles a seed cake, is a rice cake. If you buy them in a store, they're round disk like things where the rice has been baked and fused together.

We have rice cakes in the UK too. They are much beloved of women who sit and eat them at their desks with a look of pure disgust on their faces, and when you ask them what's the matter with their food they say "Ugh, I'm eating rice cakes, they taste horrible and dry, but they are low fat!." I like them myself, especially with tuna on them, and I always think they smell of struck matches.

Originally Posted by Mark 12_30

Do you think hobbits ate cake with their strawberries and cream?

No, strawberries and cream are so nice they need to be eaten on their own. But a cake after a dish of strawberries and cream would be nice, it would 'fill up the corners' perfectly.

[mark12_30]

Originally Posted by TomBrady12

I think up he-ah in the Noth, up he-ah in Waldo County Maine, we ah probibly the closest Americans to the Brits in the Country...Ayup

As long as y'don't go too fah nothwest. Odd folk thataway. But not as odd as them newcomahs down by th' border. Yessuh. City folk. Lost in the Shiyah.

Ohhh....another thing I might envision is brown bread, which, up here at least, is a traditional saturday night fixture to go along side baked beans.

'Specially at pot luck suppahs. To be follow'd by Strahberry rubahb pie. Think Bilbo might like some?

Anyway, all i really know is the hobbit makes me hungry!

Pass the brown bread. All them dwarves'll take some.

And let's give Bilbo some o' that strahberry rubahb, and watch his face.

[Morai]

We have rice cakes in the UK too. They are much beloved of women who sit and eat them at their desks with a look of pure disgust on their faces, and when you ask them what's the matter with their food they say "Ugh, I'm eating rice cakes, they taste horrible and dry, but they are low fat!." I like them myself, especially with tuna on them, and I always think they smell of struck matches.

I wouldn't say struck matches, more like the taste and smell of stale cardboard. Of course, I'm pretty sure good ole Sam Gamgee could make them taste better.

Here's another cake question: Is "pound cake" the same all over? What about shortcake (as in strawberry)? Is there such a thing? We always use pound cake for strawberry shortcake - now that this thread has me thinking, it sounds strange.

I can't say I ever heard or 'pound cake', though I've eaten my mum's delicious strawberry short cake. The cake itself reminds me of 'angel-food cake' (flavored with vanilla, while 'devils food cake' is rich with chocolate) then the cool whip and jucy strawberries.

[mark12_30]

Originally Posted by Morai

...strawberry short cake. The cake itself reminds me of 'angel-food cake' (flavored with vanilla, while 'devils food cake' is rich with chocolate) then the cool whip and jucy strawberries.

We usually used angelfood cake with strawberries. Betcha hobbits would love that.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Special praise goes to mark/Helen for her valiant attempts to keep her posts Tolkien-related!! Let her serve as a shining example to all who post here!

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

I always pictured cram as rice cakes.

Attend: hard (with a rather styrofoam-esque texture), dry, somewhat tasteless, lasts forever.

Picture, if you will, 13 dwarves and an unlucky hobbit living on naught but rice cakes.

Fea

[Elennar Starfire]

Except isn't cram supposed to be very filling? Because I could eat rice cakes all day and still be hungry (if I could stand the taste, that it).

[Celebuial]

I like rice cakes!!! Well Snack-a-Jacks at any rate.... I can't imagine Hobbits enjoying them though, although they could eat them allday without getting full. I s'pose that that would take the fun out of eating though...

I wonder if there is the same kind of divide between The Four Farthings with food? And what about words (just the other day I came across the word "coignes" and was assured that it referred to the British word "quoins"!)?

[Morai]

I like rice cakes!!! Well Snack-a-Jacks at any rate.... I can't imagine Hobbits enjoying them though, although they could eat them allday without getting full. I s'pose that that would take the fun out of eating though...

Quite the opposite of lembas eh? I think that if they ate rice cakes, it would most likely be with a mug of ale, because well...they drink it with just about everything.

[Morsul the Dark]

First off, let me acknowledge how dumb it is I remember this thread from 17years ago but struggle to remember my new coworkers’ names.

Now on to the point.

Handkerchiefs. Maybe it’s cultural but the only association I have with handkerchiefs is sort of low brow country folk. Bilbo having a handkerchiefs makes since because he’s so rural. Elrond having one is weird and when I read Bilbo borrowed Elrond’s handkerchief I laughed out loud for some reason. And I can’t quite articulate why. Im haven’t the darndest time seeing him wiping away sweat it just makes me chuckle. And blowing his nose? Out of the question Elves don’t get sick… and if they do don’t loan out the snot one to Bilbo…

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Up until quite recently, the Sixties (and among traditionalists the Eighties), no Englishmen who considered himself or aspired to be a gentleman would be without his handkerchief. This was separate from the one carefully folded in the jacket breast pocket, which was just for show;* the functional hanky was kept in another pocket out of sight, or tucked into the sleeve.

Paper tissues (i.e. Kleenex) simply didn't figure. One could say that the old guard were more environmentally friendly!
____________________________
*Unless handed to a lady who had spilled something on herself, usually with a restrainedly chivalrous flourish

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark

Perhaps it is only because I live n Rhode Island but when Reading TH for the first time I was amazed at how many "cakes" the dwarves ate because I pictured a cake as a birthday cake not a (as Im assuming was meant) a biscuit did anyone else due to dialects misinterpret something as funny or unusual?

I put this here because although about the books it is a not serious

Here (in Denmark) birthday cakes are not necessarily the norm, so I always assumed it was a cake of a more moderate size (like pastry or a custard pie). I was however thrown of by the outlandish nature of the cakes, one was translated as a "cumin cake" which I thought sounded dreadful.

[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Up until quite recently, the Sixties (and among traditionalists the Eighties), no Englishmen who considered himself or aspired to be a gentleman would be without his handkerchief. This was separate from the one carefully folded in the jacket breast pocket, which was just for show;* the functional hanky was kept in another pocket out of sight, or tucked into the sleeve.

Although I'm not English and few things are further from my mind than aspiring to be a gentleman I use handkerchiefs to this very day (often washed together with my trousers because I forgot to take them out of the pocket). Paper tissues are reserved for periods of extreme runniness, hankies take care of everyday business.

As for the question of cakes vs biscuits (not to mention cookies), I've come to understand that this is a matter of severe contention between the English and the denizens of their renegade colonies. Here in Germany we distinguish between kuchen and torten; kuchen are usually dry (except for fruitcakes and cheese cakes), whereas torten are topped with some sort of cream. A birthday cake in English (the kind of thing with candles on top) would in most cases be a torte in German.

Now Bilbo's cumin cake is translated as kümmelkuchen in my German Hobbit, which does sound strange. Spontaneously I would have said it's probably a kind of cracker (ha! another category!), but it could also be something akin to Alsatian flammkuchen (flatbread usually topped with sour cream + other ingredients, all baked together, similar to pizza) or zwiebelkuchen (a kind of quiche topped with onions and usually flavoured with caraway seeds, which is not the same as cumin but related, I believe).

Trust a culinary topic to draw me out of Entishness (Ent-ity?)!

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

As for the question of cakes vs biscuits (not to mention cookies), I've come to understand that this is a matter of severe contention between the English and the denizens of their renegade colonies. Here in Germany we distinguish between kuchen and torten; kuchen are usually dry (except for fruitcakes and cheese cakes), whereas torten are topped with some sort of cream. A birthday cake in English (the kind of thing with candles on top) would in most cases be a torte in German.

Pitchwife, I love you. You have just opened my eyes on why the Russian words for "pie" and "cake" don't really match up to "pie" and "cake" - a phenomenon which confused me for years. That is because the word for "cake" migrated there via Italian and German torte and has nearly the same sound and meaning, leaving the likes of fruit cake and carrot cake and other un-creamed cakes for "pie". You have just enlightened me to an etymological discovery, and that pretty much made my day.