For those who know and do not mind telling me, what is a rissole?

What exactly is the bacon sandwich known as a "butty" (sp?) made of? Is mayonnaise a component of most sandwiches (I do not like it)? Butter? Lettuce?

How does one order a sandwich on dry toast? I often order things "plain" at home to get it with bread, meat and, if specified, cheese only. Does "plain" mean anything in the UK or parts of it?

Also, are baked / jacket potatoes ever split in half and served with butter (or other toppings)? I once looked at others in a dining room and noticed everyone else peeling their potatoes and then eating them. I have always dipped the white part from the shell and eaten it a bite at a time
with a topping.

Please share any other British food tips.

Thanks for any help.

rissole - sort of a spiced burger - but I've lived here all 40 years of my life and not seen them on a menu.

A butty is a northern, usually lancashire word for a sandwich, nt just bac it could be ham or chesse or chips (french frieds)

plain - we tend not to use that term - just say you don't want dressing or mayo etc.

a sandwich or butty in the north of england (aka as piece in scotland) can be made with sliced bread, or a bread roll, barm cake or bap (various bread rolls - don't worry anout the difference) but in london a sandwich is sliced bread, you have to specify you want a cheese roll.



Baked potatoes are usually split in half and served with butter, beanss, cheese or whatever = i don't know where you saw people peeling baked potatoes but it's not common.

A butty's quite often a roll (a little sub) with whatever on it. It would usually be have butter but not mayonnaise or lettuce.

Just ask for what you want.

Baked potatoes are often served as you suggest and you will find shops which do nothing else.

Other food tips would take forever.

a rissole is like a burger, ie a patty, but made usually with left-over meat [or fish when it is called a fish-cake] stretched with onion, potato, even breacrumbs. These are not likely to feature heavily on any menu of an establishment you are going to be eating in, though you might have found Miss Marple tucking into one 40 years ago.
Fishcakes, on the other hand, made with freshly cooked fish, are very trendy and may well crop up.
Baked or "jacket" potatos are often served split with butter, cheese or other topppings. THey tend to be very big, so you may want to share.
If you want something "plain" you would do well to specify eg if you want butter, but no mayonnaise, you should say so. however, unless it is chicken or salmon, most places would not put anything other than butter in a sandwich, so you don't need to worry about that too much.

If you're getting something made for you, you'll be fine, but IME ready-made pre-packaged sandwiches often do have mayonnaise/dressing etc.

A butty is a very generic term for a sandwich up north.

There is no real definitive design of bread or filling. Usually one would expect a butty to come in a round "bap" or "bread cake", but be careful which you call it as I have been to order some stuff in West Yorkshire asked the lady at the counter, do you have any baps to go with that and the response i got lead me to the understanding of Yorkshire dialects quickly. Asking a lady about her baps in West Yorkshire is NOT asking about her bread buns, something quite different in fact!

If you were to go into a fish and chip shop, ask for a chip butty, generally you will get what you would call french fries in a slightly crusty doey hamburger bun. Having said that chips here are usually not the frozen variety but fresh cut thick chips of potato closer to potato wedges than french fries. Mind you that's only in "good" chip shops! These chip buttys were a staple food for the young many years back and are still served today as a cheap lunch alternative.

>How does one order a sandwich on dry toast?
Hmm well .. this would be considered odd as dry toast is not ordered regularly in the UK as bread for a "sarny" "butty" or sandwich for that matter If it is being made in front of you just ask them not to put any thing on it except what you want. You might be best to go into a "Subway" sandwich shop to get things as such. These franchises have opened up over the last few years in England at least and do make some great subs, which you will recognise, in front of you and you just tell them who to put in and on and they do so. Magic

Baked "SPUDS" have been around for "donkeys years" in England. Ummm sorry, thats Baked "POTATOES" have been around for "a long time" in international English. It was a few years ago considered the healthy option with a meal. Most good quality outlets will half or quarter your potato with a sharp knife so that the white fluffy flesh is slightly pushed up and out of the skin. Topping can be asked for if you are at a buffet type establishment. Once again if you are in a quality sit down restaurant butter should be available on the table for you to indulge yourself and your "spud".

Where English food is concerned, there is one main dish that I hope you will enjoy at what are now fewer and fewer "traditional" English food restaurants. That dish is a full plate of Plain and Simple served up with a smile and finishing with a good hearty sticky toffee pudding during the winter or even a bit of Spotted Dick!

European cuisine is by far more popular now than it has ever been. Garlic and wine are a true delight in the right quantity!

The favourite dish in England according to many many surveys of the last few years is ... wait for it .. Chicken Tikka Massala. Indian restaurants are plentiful here with a few different types and even a few variations according to where you are. A jalferzi in York is hot with fresh chilis in it, whilst in Bradford, 40 miles away, they use a form of cheese ion a dish of the same name!

God I could go on for ever. In fact I do ... try a few of these pages and see what you think. There are some of my trips around and about England here as well as a few comments from the general public.

http://www.york-united-kingdom.co.uk/restaurants/

http://www.hotels-uk-accommodation.c...e/restaurants/

http://www.hotels-uk-accommodation.c...d/restaurants/

Hope you enjoy!

Ah, memories of school dinners in the 50s ;-)

They served what we called "grissoles".
They also served spam fritters which were actually quite edible.

Filled baked potatoes are quite common in places that just serve snacks.

There's actually a chain called Spud-u-Like where they serve nothing else for the main course.

I thought Spud-u-like had gone bust? Nut you will certainly see pubs and sandwich bars offering the option of baked potatoes with your choice of topping.

Rissoles got such a bad reputation in institutional cooking (particularly during WW2) - not to mention the comical overtones of the name (my father used occasionally to sing the opening notes of Colonel Bogey to the words "Rissoles - and the same to you!&quot that you're highly unlikely to see the word anywhere. I'd be surprised if the terminology of restaurant menus would be all that unfamiliar to you.

Potatoes and Europeans: Many believe that the ground is contaminated with heavy metals..Chernobyl(?). Hence potatoes are always peeled! My first English bacon sandwich..a slice of white bread and one thin slice of fried bacon enclosed within! Don't order 'plain'; try 'without' or 'no wtatever'. Surprize, The sandwich without something may cost more than the regular one.

You have to try brown sauce with all of the above. I have no idea what it is made of, but a perfect accompaniment (sp?)

GSteed- in a word- Baloney!!

I don't peel baked potatoes (and I know no-one who does); I don't peel new potatoes, I often don't peel potatoes for gratin, dauphinoise etc. Heavy Metal? You have to be kiddin'!

Absolutely. There may be more easterly places where there's something in the Chernobyl story, but we've all been taught for decades that the vitamins are all in the skin, and I don't peel potatoes for any kind of cooking - except possibly mashing if the skin's a bit too thick and tough.

I don't like mayonnaise either, and I found it to be quite common on pre-prepared sandwiches in Marks & Spencer, Boots, Sainsbury's etc.

I had good luck at the Upper Crust sandwich shops (these shops are ubiquitous in train stations) where there are sandwiches that are listed prominently "no mayo" (and others that do have mayo). Also, Pret a Manger has a nice brie, tomato and basil baguette that has no mayo (these shops are everywhere).

In the US, I usually order my sandwiches "dry" and add "nothing on it"; in the UK, I think the words "no sauce" helped.

The words "no mayonnaise, please" would help a lot. I don't see any reason to make some kind of guessing game out of it. Just say what you want, like you would in a Subway or similar in the US.

Yes, Barbara, of course you are right. All I was trying to say is that if you really want your sandwich plain, it can take some doing, both in the US and anywhere else. You can never quite tell what is going to be slapped on a sandwich, so I usually go into a bit of detail. Being picky has so many drawbacks

So I'd like to ask the Brits and Ex-pats, there was a vegetable my host family used to serve called "swede." It was not carrots or squash, she said. It was yellowish/orange and I liked it.

Is there an American term for it? I wouldn't mind growing it in our garden.

You may possibly refer to the swede as rutabaga.

"Swede" is called "rutabaga" in America. My Irish-American grandmother used to cook it every Thanksgiving.

A few more oddities

Faggot is a strange mix of meat and onions in some sort of organic bag. Unfortunatly the main commercial producer is call Brain hence the term "Brain's faggots". Normally served with gravy you will be lucky to find it in a restaurant.

Similarly tripe has fallen off in recent years. However a vist to Leeds market still finds a shop sell white tripe with vinegar today.

Vinegar is another processed product which may confuse foreigners. It is possibel to buy the real thing made of a number of different wines however the vast majority of products available in street food emporia is a commercial organic acid with added malt colouring.

Liver and Onions is a sold in many pubs and will nornmally be calves liver fried along with a piece of cheap bacon (but not always)

Steak and kidney pudding is basically steak and kidneys baked in a suet pudding. The suet will ten to be high fat.

Haggis comes intwo type meat and vegetarian. Hard to find but worth looking for.

Yorkshire pudding is baked egg and flour mix leading to a fluffy crispy yellow dish which can be filled with onion gravy or chilli or a sweet jam.

Thanks guys. I had thought rutabagas were purple. I'll look into it.

I did enjoy Yorkshire pudding and roast beef. It was amusing to me that the British students called American style puddings as "whips."

Another food I do remember our host family making and loving was homemade mincemeat. She thought it was no big deal to do.