contrast food

Cheddar cheese and apple pie? I think I read about that combination in the James Herriott books.

Spam on toast points

For an American oddity, I've seen people dip french fries into McDonald's chocolate shakes. :: shudder ::

I used to dip french fries in chocolate pudding in elementary school. Yum!

Doesn't help as an English oddity, though; sorry.

You might want to ask the folks over in the Cooking forum, who are very well versed in all manner of culinary distinctions.

Chips (fries) with vinegar struck me as an oddity until I tried it. That should meet your criteria.

I've always thought steak and kidney pie sounded horrible - never tried it. Or Yorkshire pudding.

Cheddar cheese and apple pie is pretty common - and tastes pretty good too.

Now for another Anerican oddity - I've always loved pretzels dipped in ice cream. Puma

ham and sweet potato finished off in pineapple juice. I dry-fry the ham steak (real ham) and microwave two similar (thickness and size) slices of sweet potato. Add sweet potato to fry pan to get some colour on it and add pineapple juice. Cook down until juice is sticky and cover rest of food with the sticky juice.

Strawberries with balsamic. A friend in Cambridge introduced me to this and it's amazingly good!

Combinations

If you mean a single food made of a strange mix how about haggis or black pudding?

Puma, a Yorkshire pudding is similar to your American popovers, but if baked with the roast meat it's scrumptious.

Grilled mackerel with gooseberry sauce: http://bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/panfriedmackerelwith_84849.shtml

Cheddar cheese and raw onion sandwiches

TheIT said:

For an American oddity, I've seen people dip french fries into McDonald's chocolate shakes. :: shudder ::

Click to expand...

I don't dip my fries, but I love french fries and chocolate shakes together. The sweet and salty combination is great.

To make this on topic, my daughter dips everything in ketchup. The weirdest thing to me is when she dips her green beans in ketchup. I guess it's healthier than french fries though.

TheIT said:

For an American oddity, I've seen people dip french fries into McDonald's chocolate shakes. :: shudder ::

Click to expand...

Little kids will routinely stuff fries into their straws and suck them out with a mouthful of soda or shake.

When I was a kid I used to love dipping bread in Kool Aid.

Salted sweet fruits are also popular - like watermelon. My mom and my great-grandmother use salt on grapefruit.

Manix said:

Spam on toast points

Click to expand...

Do they have spam in England? I don't ever remember seeing it when I lived there.

A few weird things:
* A chip butty (a sandwich made with a bun, a big mess o' chips (French fries) and margarine and/or mayonnaise);
* Vegemite on toast. I never ever got used to vegemite, on anything.
* Beans on toast (as in Heinz baked beans). This is actually quite good.
* Sausage and chips--what it sounds like. A big mess o' chips (fries) with a big fat sausage just sitting on top.

They also deep-fry anything they can get their hands on, up to and including frozen pizza or Mars bars. My dorm kitchen at university didn't have a microwave, but it had a deep-fat fryer.

TheIT said:

For an American oddity, I've seen people dip french fries into McDonald's chocolate shakes. :: shudder ::

Click to expand...

You just don't even understand how good that is.
Although I take the more gourmet approach, preferring real fries (thick, with skin) and milkshakes made from scratch.

Excuse me but...

things like grilled mackerel with gooseberry sauce, venison with redcurrant jelly, and wild boar with plum sauce are in fact gourmet and not peculiar at all.

Go look in an old copy of Mrs Beeton or Eliza Acton to see how traditionally British this form of sauce is with fish and meat. You will find many recipes for spicy savoury sauces for meat made from gooseberries, currants, elderberries, hips, plums, gages, damsons and haws.

Mackerel is an oily fish. Tart gooseberyy sauce is perfect with it!

ideagirl said:

Do they have spam in England? I don't ever remember seeing it when I lived there.

Click to expand...

Yes.
And other variations on it as Spam is trademark product, other producers make similar products

Oysters and steak - with the pan juices from cooking the steak and oysters being made into a source to cover them. Look up Carpet-bag (or carpetbag) steak.

ETA: Just noticed wikepias entry about this dish is WRONG and also I am aware other sites also have varying information about the dish.

The first known recipe for the dish despite some American food historian claims that it originated in 1941 and contributed to Louis Diat - the same recipe was clearly published in Australian recipe books at least forty years earlier. Namely by a woman called Jean Rutledge between 1899 - 1905

MMcDonald64 said:

I don't dip my fries, but I love french fries and chocolate shakes together. The sweet and salty combination is great.

To make this on topic, my daughter dips everything in ketchup. The weirdest thing to me is when she dips her green beans in ketchup. I guess it's healthier than french fries though.

Click to expand...

My son? Broccoli and zucchini. And mashed potatoes. Everything, even bacon. Although not corn on the cob, thankfully.

Puma said:

Chips (fries) with vinegar struck me as an oddity until I tried it. That should meet your criteria.

Click to expand...

Not really, as that's completely normal over here.

lexxi said:

-is the sort of things that aficionados would consider a favorite food and everyone else would wonder why anyone thought to put those ingredients together in the first place

Click to expand...

Willowmound - Okay, can the chips and vinegar.

pdr - in your string of sauce items you mentioned hips - as in rose hips or is hips to you something else?

Ideagirl (and Cooee) - What the heck is vegemite? I'd never heard of it until Cooee mentioned it. Puma

ideagirl said:

Do they have spam in England? I don't ever remember seeing it when I lived there.

A few weird things:
* A chip butty (a sandwich made with a bun, a big mess o' chips (French fries) and margarine and/or mayonnaise);
* Vegemite on toast. I never ever got used to vegemite, on anything.
* Beans on toast (as in Heinz baked beans). This is actually quite good.
* Sausage and chips--what it sounds like. A big mess o' chips (fries) with a big fat sausage just sitting on top.

They also deep-fry anything they can get their hands on, up to and including frozen pizza or Mars bars. My dorm kitchen at university didn't have a microwave, but it had a deep-fat fryer.

Click to expand...

Just to clarify, Vegemite is Australian, not British, and we like Vegemite and cheese in Australia which is quite nice (especially melted on toast after a big night out - great hangover cure before the hangover sets in). In the UK, it's Marmite, and it's a little stronger and gooier to spread.

Chips are fat in the UK. Chip butties are ACE!

Deep fried stuff like Mars Bars is generally a Scottish tradition rather than an English one. The frying process seems to take a lot of the sweetness out of the Mars Bar and it is actually very tasty.

I think the Brits got the sausage thing from the French (or vice versa?) as the French love sticking a couple of stinky snags on top of some frites. Euch.

Also, on the dipping French fries into chocolate thick shakes thing, I used to do that in Australia as a kid, before I became a vegetarian and realised there was pig fat in the softserve. The taste is still attractive to me, even if the company and the animal fat are not.

Puma said:

Ideagirl (and Cooee) - What the heck is vegemite? I'd never heard of it until Cooee mentioned it. Puma

Click to expand...

Vegemite is a kind of shoe polish Australians insist is edible. It isn't, but they keep eating it.

That was great, Willowmound! Puma