How 15 Bizarre British Dishes Got Their Names

Let’s be honest: British food has long been something of a culinary punchline. Around the world, it has a longstanding reputation for being bland, brown, and stodgy, if not revolting. But as much as dishes like black pudding (a sausage-like concoction of pig’s blood) and jellied eels (served in the gelatinous goop the eels secrete during cooking) might not sound particularly delicious, any self-respecting Brit will tell you that this reputation is wholly undeserved. Not only is British cuisine itself now ranked among some of the best in the world, but if you were to actually try any of these bizarre combos yourself, there’s a good chance you’d become an instant convert—as the recent viral trend for Americans trying good old British beans on toast suggests.

If there’s one reputation British dishes can’t escape, though, it’s their weird and wacky names. On the lunch menu of a typical UK pub you’ll likely find dishes named things like beef wellington (a filet of beef wrapped in pastry, supposedly named after the Duke of Wellington) and bangers and mash (sausages and mashed potato, supposedly so-named because the low-quality sausages served during the First World War had a habit of exploding when they cooked). But those are just the tip of an increasingly strange iceberg. Take a deeper dive into the recipe books and regional delicacies of the UK, and you’ll find surely some of the most bizarrely named dishes that any nation has to offer. 

1. Battalia Pie
2. Bedfordshire Clanger
3. Bosworth Jumbles
4. Clapshot
5. Huffkins
6. Ninety-nine
7. Pond Pudding
8. Rumble-de-Thumps
9. Singing Hinnies
10. Spotted Dick
11. Stargazy Pie
12. Tipsy-laird
13. Toad in the Hole
14. Welsh Rarebit
15. Wow-wow Sauce

Battalia Pie

Historically, Britain’s savory pastry pies were a means of prolonging the shelf life of their contents and a handy way of utilizing offal, trimmings, and all kinds of other cheap or unpalatable meats by hiding them beneath a layer of pastry. This method disguised the taste and texture of the meat by dicing it finely and flavoring it with a rich sauce or gravy. (If you’ve ever eaten humble pie, for instance, you’ve figuratively enjoyed a serving of umble pie—a medieval dish of deer entrails cooked in a pastry case.) Battalia pie is no different: It’s typically made with an inexpensive concoction of poor-quality meat and offcuts, which may include undersized poultry, oysters, thymus, pancreas and other sweetbreads, and even hen’s coxcombs and lamb’s testicles.

Battalia is a Latin word for military exercises, but this 17th-century dish actually takes its name from a French word, béatilles, for random trinkets and odds and ends—describing the miscellany of offcuts the pie typically contains. (Historically, these random béatilles were sewing samplers and pincushions featuring religious scenes and iconography sewn by nuns, and so the word can ultimately be traced back to an even earlier French word meaning “blessed.”) Somewhere along the line, though, the pie’s French religious name became confused with the similar-sounding Latin military name—so much so, in fact, that battalia pies often feature a decorative set of edible crenelations, making the dish resemble a pastry castle. 

Bedfordshire Clanger

A pastry dish you’ll find all across the UK is the pasty, in which a filling of meat, vegetables, or both is sealed inside a pastry crust and baked. The Bedfordshire clanger is effectively a variation of a pasty, although is more elongated in shape and contains different fillings at each end—one savory, one sweet—kept apart by a pastry barrier inside. Traditionally, the clanger was eaten as a midday meal by local workmen and laborers in Bedfordshire and the surrounding south-central counties of England; it typically contained a mixture of beef and vegetables at one end and jam at the other.

Exactly what the name clanger is meant to refer to is unknown. But given that early and more traditional forms of the dish were closer to a rolled suet dumpling than a pasty, the clanger’s name might be related to another local Bedfordshire word, clungy, describing food that has become stodgy and close-textured. 

Bosworth Jumbles

Historically, a gemel (also spelled gimmal or gimmel) was a style of finger-ring, either comprised of or broken into two separate halves as a symbol of the two partners it brought together. (Appropriately, the name gemel can be traced back to the Latin word for a twin.) The jumble in the Bosworth jumble may be an alteration of gemel, as sweet biscuits shaped into rings or knots have been going by this name since at least the 1600s.

The Bosworth jumble is a Leicestershire variation of a traditional jumble biscuit, usually rolled not into a ring, but an S-shaped curl. The name Bosworth, meanwhile, alludes to Leicestershire’s Battle of Bosworth, at which Richard III was defeated in 1485. Local legend would even have you believe that the recipe for Bosworth jumbles was found in the dead hand of Richard’s chef in the aftermath of the battle.

Clapshot

Clapshot is the curious name of a traditional Scottish dish of boiled and mashed potatoes and turnips, often served as an accompaniment to meat dishes such as stews or haggis. Although it’s been suggested that the name is meant to replicate the clanking sound of the potato masher striking the inside of the pan, where it actually comes from is a mystery; it’s Orcadian in origin, so like many words from Scotland’s Orkney Islands, the name may have Norse origins. Either way, it’s a name not everyone thinks suits such a tasty and wholesome dish: The poet George Mackay Brown once wrote that “everything about clapshot is good,” but that its name “sounds more like a missile used in the Thirty Years’ War than the name of a toothsome dish.”  

Huffkins

Huffkins are flattened, circular bread rolls made in the county of Kent in the southeast corner of England. The huffkin dough is rolled into balls and flattened; next, a small indentation is pressed into top with a finger, giving the rolls a characteristic dimple. Although the origins of the name huffkin are murky, the English Dialect Dictionary associates the word with a regional baking term, huff, meaning “to puff up or increase in size.” 

Ninety-nine

A staple treat of every British person’s trip to the seaside, a ninety-nine (or 99) is a soft-serve ice cream cone with a chocolate flake—a layered and ruffled stick of finely flaked chocolate—stuck in the top. The ice cream can also be garnished with chopped nuts, sprinkles (or hundreds and thousands, as they’re known in the UK), or strawberry sauce (a.k.a. monkey’s blood).

There’s a longstanding misconception that 99 refers to the ice cream cone’s traditional price of 99p, but its genuine origins are something of a mystery. One theory claims the cone was first sold from an ice cream parlor at 99 Portobello High Street in Edinburgh. According to the flake’s manufacturer Cadbury, however, ninety-nine was once Italian slang for anything absolutely first-rate, and so was used among Italian immigrants to northern England back in the 1930s to refer to their very best ice cream. Why did the Italians consider 99 such a great number? Supposedly, it’s a reference to the guard of 99 soldiers chosen to protect Italian kings (although it seems even that too might be little more than a myth). 

Pond Pudding

This boiled suet fruit pudding often contains stewed apples or gooseberries and, traditionally, an entire lemon—peel and all. It’s thought to have emerged in the English county of Sussex in the 1600s and is often more specifically known as Sussex pond pudding. It might not be the most appetizing name, but it refers to the way the pudding is served: After being boiled (for upwards of three hours to ensure that it’s been sufficiently cooked through) the pudding is sliced open so that the juices from the lemon and fruits inside flood onto the dish, creating a sweet-tasting “pond.” 

Rumble-de-Thumps

Another popular Scottish potato dish is rumble-de-thumps, in which mashed potatoes are mixed with turnip and cabbage (and sometimes cheese), laid in a broad flat dish, and baked until the top becomes crispy and golden. Its name apparently utilizes a local meaning of the word rumble to mean “to mash or scramble into a mixture.” 

Singing Hinnies

Singing hinnies are griddle cakes typically containing currants most often made in northern England and Scotland (where they—or local variation, at least—are also known as fatty cutties). Hinny is an old northern English term of endearment, and the cakes are said to “sing” as the fatty batter used to make them noisily sizzles and whistles during cooking as pockets of steam and hot air erupt through the surface. 

Spotted Dick

Another traditional steamed suet pudding, spotted dick is so-named because the raisins and currants the mixture contains give it a “spotted” appearance after cooking. Dick, meanwhile, has been used as a jokey nickname for a pudding since the mid-1800s at least. 

Stargazy Pie

A speciality of the Cornish corner of southwest England, stargazy pie is a traditional fish pie in which the heads of the fish inside (often mackerel) poke out through the pastry lid, as if staring at the stars. 

Tipsy-laird

In Scots, tipsy laird literally means “drunken lord,” and is the name of a suitably boozy Scottish trifle consisting of layered custard, cream, and sponge cake soaked in Drambuie or whisky. 

Toad in the Hole

Toad in the hole is another way of serving sausages in the UK, this time by baking them into a Yorkshire pudding-like batter that swells up around the sausages as it cooks. (And just like bangers and mash, this is one of Britain’s most popular dishes.)

Culinary folklore will have you believe this dish was invented to commemorate a bizarre occurrence at a golf contest in the picturesque town of Alnmouth, on the Northumberland coast, in the 1700s. One golfer, having knocked his ball into the hole, had to watch helplessly as a toad that had made its home in the hole pushed his ball back out onto the green, much to the enjoyment of the other players. Alas, there’s little evidence that this fanciful tale is true. Instead, the most likely theory as to how this dish earned its name is also the most straightforward one: The sausages poking out of the risen batter resemble toads peeking out of hollows in the ground. 

Welsh Rarebit

People often mistakenly call this cheese on toast dish “Welsh rabbit,” but that’s actually what this dish was originally known as. Both Welsh rabbit and Scotch rabbit have been recorded as far back as the early 1700s as jocular names for a mix of cheese, mustard, ale, and other ingredients served on toasted bread. The spelling of rabbit was later modified as a pun on rare bit, suggesting a choice offering or delicacy. Just where this joke originated, however, is unclear—it’s been suggested that the name dates back to a time when only the well-to-do could afford actual rabbit, so everyone else had to make do with bread and cheese. It’s likely for the same reason that a dish of scrambled eggs and anchovies on toast has been known as Scotch woodcock since the 1800s. 

Wow-wow Sauce

These days, wow-wow sauce is probably best known as an invention of Discworld author Terry Pratchett, in whose books it was described as a volatile condiment consisting of a fanciful blend of cucumbers, mangoes, mustard, and anchovies, among other things. What Discworld fans might not know, though, is that wow-wow was once a genuine relish-like concoction of beef broth, pickled walnuts, mushroom ketchup (chopped salted mushrooms and their juices), parsley, and other ingredients, served as an accompaniment to boiled meat.

The sauce was invented by an early 19th-century cookery writer named (appropriately enough) William Kitchiner, but the origins of its name are a mystery. Given that Kitchiner’s original recipe suggested making the sauce even more piquant and “relishing” by adding extra capers, shallots, and vinegar into the mix, he perhaps had the diner’s reaction in mind when he named it.

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