• merc
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    1 year ago

    hell in some countries you move by 100km and the food is completely different.

    People always say that, but it’s never true.

    not even close to chirizo in look, texture or flavour

    It’s still a sausage.

    Then I lost you at McDonald’s and KFC selling European food

    KFC is deep-fried roasted chicken. Frying chicken in fat was something that people were doing in Scotland hundreds of years ago. The fact that KFC is an American corporation doesn’t mean that it’s not fundamentally making a European dish. As for McDonalds, Frisadelle is basically a hamburger patty, and it’s been a German / Scandinavian dish for centuries. Slapping bread around meat was popularized by the Earl of Sandwich around the 1760s. Maybe the hamburger in its current form is a US thing, but it’s merely a slight refinement of a few European ideas.

    I’ve eaten all over North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. That’s why I know that British food is basically just European food, just as North American food is also mostly just European food.

    • wieson@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      So I asked someone from Hamburg (Northern Germany) if they liked Käsespätzle (the most beloved southern German dish). They had never heard of it.

      That made me think, so I asked my cousin’s wife from Bavaria (Southern Germany) if they had ever eaten Matjes (a pretty well liked and popular Northern German dish). She also had never heard of it.

      • merc
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        1 year ago

        Käsespätzle is popular in Switzerland too. It’s very well known except sometimes they call it Chnöpfli / Knoepfle / Knöpfle or Spätzli. It could be that they’d heard of it under a different name? Spätzle is even eaten in Hungary, eastern France and Serbia under local names.

        You can easily find it on the aldi-nord.de website under Spätzle. I mean, it’s possible that there are products that are on sale in local supermarkets that people have never noticed, but then is it really that the diets of the North and South are so different, or is it that some people don’t like variety or trying new things?

        As for Matjes, that’s pickled / brined Herring. It’s no surprise that people far from the sea don’t eat it. But, pickled herring is super common. It’s popular in Germany (apparently only the north), Netherlands, nordic countries, etc. Slightly different versions are popular in the parts of the UK near the ocean, in Russia and Ukraine, even Canada. In fact, it’s pretty common in Minnesota in the US despite them being far from the ocean simply because they had a lot of immigration from nordic countries.

    • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      “The Earl of Sandwich” is just the most greatest thing or I am just too high. I hope he has a statue somewhere

      • merc
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        1 year ago

        What’s interesting is that “The Earl of Sandwich” was just a title like “The Earl of Devon”, “The Earl of Suffolk”, “The Earl of Essex”, etc.

        Sandwiches got their name because that Earl liked playing cards and wanted food he could hold that wouldn’t mess up his cards. So, it’s like calling one of the things he (or his cook) invented “A McDonalds”. But, now, we’re so used to the name “A Sandwich” that the title “Earl of Sandwich” sounds weird. Even though “wich” is a pretty common place name ending, like “Norwich”, “Dunwich”, etc. And, “Sand” is pretty normal as part of a place name, but not as part of food.