f-words to fluff your fritters

Now that I am a foodie (now there’s an f-word for you) and can converse fluently on the subject of what my steak ate before I ate it, and how the apples I prefer grow on trees mentioned in the Magna Carta or spared by the tyro George Washington, it seems appropriate that the ragbag should rustle up a list of those f-words that help create the right vibe at the farmers’ market. These are the sort of bucolic tidbits I mention airily when at my most Bathsheba Everdene, chit-chatting to a besmocked yokel with straw in his ears and dollar signs in his eyes.

• fairing: any baked sweet thing brought back from a fair as a gift for your best beloved or your apple-cheeked progeny.
• finnan haddie: smoked haddock from Findon in Kincardineshire. The principal ingredient in cullen skink and not to be confused with an Arbroath smokie. (Everything about those two sentences makes me grin like a loon.)
• fitchett/fidget pie: potato, meat and apple filling baked with a short crust.
• flead cakes: scone (limey) or biscuit (yank) -esque little bundles of flaky delight made with flead, which is flare fat, and which you must pound into oblivion if you want to get it to cooperate and pretend to be butter.
• flummery: a sweetened starch jelly made from oatmeal or rice. Also used figuratively to mean empty talk and waffling. The Scottish approach to either type of flummery has always involved the addition of large quantities of whisky.
• friar’s omelet: a rich baked apple and egg custard
• frumenty/firmity: cree’d wheat cooked to a jellied porridge and served as an accompaniment to porpoise at the wedding of Henry IV and Joan of Navarre in 1403. (But if you’re not in the mood to put on the Lancastrian dog, it is perfectly acceptable to serve your frumenty Flipper-free.)

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from: Good Things in England: A Practical Cookery Book for Everyday Use, Containing Traditional and Regional Recipes suited to Modern Tastes contributed by English Men and Women between 1399 and 1932 edited by the wonderful, one-eyed Florence White (1932).

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