Name of British recipe

February 18, 2007 10:19 AM

Looking for the name of a recipe that, near as I can recall, appeared in the early 70’s in an article in the New Yorker. It's a British accompaniment for cold leftover roast pork, and it had a reduplicative name—like “Huffy Duffy” or “Harvey Scarvey”: that sort of name. The recipe itself was quite simple:

a cup each of minced apple, minced celery, and minced onion, mixed with a little oil and vinegar, probably with some salt and pepper. So I can make the dish, but I would dearly love to know the name again.

posted by LeisureGuy to food & drink (14 comments total)

If nobody here can help you, I suggest asking at alt.usage.english -- or I'd be happy to ask for you. Food is always On Topic there.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:15 AM on February 18, 2007

Thanks, corpse. It would be great if you could ask, even greater if someone could answer. :)
posted by LeisureGuy at 11:31 AM on February 18, 2007

Is it Bubble and Squeak? There seem to be a lot of variations to it but I cannot find any with apple.
posted by loosemouth at 12:16 PM on February 18, 2007

No, this one is not cooked at all. It's more along the lines of a relish, as you can see: just mixed the minced apple, onion, & celery, add oil & vinegar, and chill.
posted by LeisureGuy at 12:52 PM on February 18, 2007

Was it Chow Chow or Piccalilli?
posted by iconomy at 12:58 PM on February 18, 2007

No, Bubble and Squeak involves mashed potatoes.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 12:59 PM on February 18, 2007

The New Yorker has all its back issues on searchable DVD-ROMs. Assuming that you don't want the answer badly enough to drop $60 for them, you might ask here to see if somebody who owns them would do the search for you.
posted by bac at 1:45 PM on February 18, 2007

If you and I are thinking of the same New Yorker...

In "The Complete New Yorker," there's an annotation for an article from Jan. 20, 1962, that goes:

A REPORTER ON WHEELS describing a railroad trip from N. Y. to California tells about eating crew hash, or as the railroad crew called it "Good Daddy" hash. Whenever they serve prime ribs of beef, there's always a certain amount left over. So the chef cuts it up and sautes it with onion and celery and such and serves it with brown gravy and rice to the crew. The first time Sam, the chef, made it, one of the waiters took a bite. He yelled to Sam, 'Say this is good, Daddy.' So now they call it Good Daddy.

Is that it?
posted by arco at 2:13 PM on February 18, 2007

No, but I do recall that article. Good idea about the DVD-ROMs. I'll follow that trail.

Again, this dish is not cooked, just chilled, and in the article it said explicitly that it was served with cold pork. (I just made some, anticipating some leftovers from the roast I'm cooking.)
posted by LeisureGuy at 2:37 PM on February 18, 2007

That's the only thing I could find using several different combinations of your keywords (pork, apple, onion, etc) on the NY DVDs. Let me know if you have any other keywords or can remember any other salient facts about the article, such as who wrote it or what it was about.
posted by arco at 3:27 PM on February 18, 2007

I do recall "cold pork" as a pair that occurred in the article, because the writer commented that we don't often think of cold pork as a dish. Who wrote it escapes me, as well as what it was about. The comment on the dish was sort of a "by the way" thing. Darn it...
posted by LeisureGuy at 3:56 PM on February 18, 2007

The only article that matches "cold pork" in the DVDs is from 1943, and is from an article about Vogue magazine (?!). Keep in mind that this only searches the brief descriptions/annotations for the articles, NOT the entire text. You could always ask the NYker librarians.
posted by arco at 4:05 PM on February 18, 2007

A poster to alt.usage.english passed it along to uk.food+drink.misc. Two suggestions from there: Apple Scrapple and Blister Sister. As much as I hate to encourage the use of Google for reading Usenet, you can read the thread here.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:11 AM on February 19, 2007

Many thanks, corpse. Neither of those names seems to ring a bell, but I like the ingenuity of "apple scrapple." :) I'm hoping the New Yorker Librarians will come through. In the meantime, I've made the pork roast (herb-crusted rack of [heritage, in this case] pork) and will have the leftovers today with the mystery dish.
posted by LeisureGuy at 10:54 AM on February 19, 2007