Keyboard Kooking Irish Style

sf wrote:

Many Irish dishes are those they picked up in America, at that time
they didn't have those ingredients in their homeland. The immigrant
Irish picked up the version of corned beef associated with St. Paddy's
Day as celebrated in the US from the immigrant Jews who they shared
tenaments with in NYC. Any cut of beef can be corned but that style
of corned beef [pickled brisket] is an Eastern European dish. Corned
pickled brisket was about the least expensive beef dish that existed
back then. The type of corned beef served on rye only began to become
pricy about the mid 1950s. At that time I remember a zoftig corned
beef on rye at a kosher deli cost 25?... on club 30?. A whole pizza
pie at a pizzaria cost 75?... and it was a huge 18" diameter affair
THICK with sauce and CHEESE.. a single slice (that was really plenty
for a healthy lunch) cost a dime. These were peasant foods, they were
cheap, but made of much better ingredients than are used today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corned_beef
"Despite the popular assumption in North America that corned beef
dishes are typical of traditional Irish cuisine, it was not until the
wave of 18th century Irish immigration to the United States that much
of the ethnic Irish first began to consume the corned beef. In Ireland
today, the serving of corned beef is geared toward tourist consumption
and most Ireland Irish do not identify the ingredient with native
cuisine."

"The popularity of corned beef over bacon to the immigrated Irish was
likely present due to that fact that corned beef in their native land
was considered a luxury product, but was cheaply and readily available
in America. The Jewish population produced similar koshered cured beef
product made from the brisket which the Irish immigrants purchased as
corned beef from Jewish butchers. This is facilitated likely by the
close cultural interactions and collabration of these two immigrant
cultures."
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On 3/2/2011 1:05 PM, Janet wrote:

Interesting article, Janet. My mom still cooks CB&C, though sometimes
without the cabbage, for St Paddy's day. She is 100% Irish by family
ties, though born in the US. Her parent's parent's emigrated here. I'll
have to ask her about the tradition. Best I can figure from reading the
article is this:

"Many Irish people, during that period, got their first taste of beef
when they emigrated to America or Canada -- where both salt and meat
were cheaper. There, when they got beef, the emigrants tended to treat
it the same way they would have treated a "bacon joint" at home in Ireland."

So maybe the tradition was handed down from those who emigrated.
 
On Thu, 3 Mar 2011 19:40:05 -0800, "Bob Terwilliger"
arranged random neurons and said:



That explains why I didn't see the OP.

I've never thought of corned beef as an Irish notion, anyway. It's
counterintuitive to their historical type of agrarian culture, AFAICS.
Terry "Squeaks" Pulliam Burd

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