Happy St. Patrick's Day!
We are having BBQ chicken pizza, and maybe some Irish beer. We don't eat very much cow, and on top of that, I don't really like corned beef. I did buy some corned beef to placate the beef eaters in the family.
To answer the title question, corned beef takes a circuitous etymological path. "Corn" is an Old/Middle English word that generically meant grain. Back then, corn could describe wheat in England, oats in Ireland and rye (korn) in Germay. It was us Yanks that verbally restricted corn to the yellow (or white) stuff on the cobs.
Corned beef was then so named because of the small (generic) grains/corns of salt that corned beef uses. Sometime around 1560, corn morphed into a verb to mean preserved with (grains) of salt.
In case this sort of thing keeps you up at night. So instead of Irish recipes, all I've got today is an Irish blessing (food for the soul?):
May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind always be at your back,
may the sun shine warm upon your face, and rains fall softly upon your fields,
and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.
Eat Well. Be Well.
We are having BBQ chicken pizza, and maybe some Irish beer. We don't eat very much cow, and on top of that, I don't really like corned beef. I did buy some corned beef to placate the beef eaters in the family.
To answer the title question, corned beef takes a circuitous etymological path. "Corn" is an Old/Middle English word that generically meant grain. Back then, corn could describe wheat in England, oats in Ireland and rye (korn) in Germay. It was us Yanks that verbally restricted corn to the yellow (or white) stuff on the cobs.
Corned beef was then so named because of the small (generic) grains/corns of salt that corned beef uses. Sometime around 1560, corn morphed into a verb to mean preserved with (grains) of salt.
In case this sort of thing keeps you up at night. So instead of Irish recipes, all I've got today is an Irish blessing (food for the soul?):
May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind always be at your back,
may the sun shine warm upon your face, and rains fall softly upon your fields,
and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.
Eat Well. Be Well.
