98 Fun Facts About Irish Food

Soda bread rises because baking soda reacts with the lactic acid in which ingredient?

Buttermilk supplies the lactic acid that reacts with the bicarbonate of soda to release carbon dioxide, so the dough is mixed lightly and baked at once rather than kneaded.

What is soda bread made with raisins colloquially called in Ireland?

Spotted dog is white soda bread studded with raisins or sultanas, once carried warm to farm workers in the fields as a treat; in some parts of Ireland the same loaf is called railway cake.

In Ulster, the sweetened wholemeal variety of soda bread usually goes by what name?

Wheaten bread is the Ulster name for the brown wholemeal soda loaf, often lightly sweetened; further south the same loaf is simply called brown bread, and Ulster keeps 'soda bread' for the white kind.

Colcannon is a traditional dish on St Patrick's Day and on the feast day of which other Irish saint?

St Brigid's Day, 1 February, is the other feast traditionally marked with a dish of colcannon; the name comes from the Irish 'cál ceannann', meaning white-headed cabbage.

Champ is mashed potato mixed with butter, milk and which allium?

Scallions give champ its flavour, though some areas used nettles instead; the dish also lives on in the Ulster insult 'as thick as champ', said of someone dim or sullen.

On Samhain, a dish of champ with a spoon was left for the fairies under which tree?

A hawthorn, the 'fairy thorn' of Irish folklore, was where the bowl of champ and its spoon were set out for the fairies on Halloween; the dish was also made with the first new potatoes of the harvest.

An old rhyme warns that if you can't make boxty, you'll never get a what?

Man is the rhyme's payoff: 'Boxty on the griddle, boxty on the pan, if you can't make boxty, you'll never get a man'; boxty is the potato pancake of Leitrim, Cavan and Fermanagh.

Whatever the recipe, every version of boxty contains what?

Finely grated raw potato is the constant; in one classic method it is wrung dry in a cloth and mixed with mashed potato and flour, then fried as pancakes, baked as a loaf or boiled as dumplings.

Which layered stew of sausages, rashers, potato and onion was reputedly a favourite of Jonathan Swift?

Coddle is simmered in stock rather than browned, so its sausages come out pale enough to alarm newcomers; Swift is reputed to have loved it, and it turns up in James Joyce's Dublin.

In 'Molly Malone', Dublin's unofficial anthem, which shellfish does the heroine sell alongside her cockles?

Mussels are the other half of Molly's cry; no record shows that she ever lived, which did not stop Dublin raising a statue to her for its millennium celebrations.

Irish stew is traditionally made with root vegetables and which meat?

Lamb or mutton is the traditional meat: sheep were kept for wool and milk, so older animals went into the stew and needed hours of slow simmering with potatoes and onions.

Sloke, a seaweed stewed in Ireland, is the plant the Welsh make into which dish?

Laverbread is laver boiled for hours into a dark paste; in Ireland, where the seaweed is called sleabhac, it was eaten from the pot with a piece of bacon or from the pan with butter.

According to Irish stew purists, which of these ingredients spoils the true dish?

Carrots, like turnips and pearl barley, are additions that purists say spoil the true flavour; their pot holds only the meat, potatoes, onions and water, simmered slowly.

What does finding the ring in a Halloween barmbrack traditionally foretell?

'They will marry within the year' is the ring's promise; the pea meant no wedding that year, the stick a quarrelsome marriage and the coin riches, and shop-bought bracks keep only a toy ring.

What does 'bairín breac', the Irish name behind barmbrack, literally mean?

Speckled loaf is the literal meaning, the speckles being the sultanas and raisins, which most recipes soak overnight in cold tea or whiskey.

Irish coffee is credited to a 1940s chef warming passengers who reached Foynes by what?

Flying boat passengers, in the Foynes museum's telling, had turned back from an Atlantic crossing in rough conditions when chef Joe Sheridan put whiskey in their coffee; the old terminal now houses that museum.

Which San Francisco bar began serving Irish coffee in 1952 after a travel writer brought the idea home?

Buena Vista Cafe began serving Irish coffee on 10 November 1952 after columnist Stanton Delaplane, who had tasted it at Shannon, spent hours with owner Jack Koeppler working out how to recreate it.

What was the first flavour of Tayto crisps, said to be the world's first seasoned crisp, in 1954?

Cheese & Onion was the flavour Joe 'Spud' Murphy's Dublin firm launched in 1954, billed as the world's first seasoned crisp; earlier crisps came plain with a twist of salt in the bag.

Tayto's visitor attraction near Ashbourne, opened in 2010, was renamed what in 2023?

Emerald Park became the name on 1 January 2023 when Tayto's sponsorship deal ended; the theme park and zoo near Ashbourne, County Meath, had opened as Tayto Park in 2010.

A Black Velvet cocktail mixes Guinness with which other drink?

Champagne and stout make a Black Velvet, said to have been first mixed at Brooks's Club in 1861 to mourn Prince Albert, its colour recalling the black worn by mourners.

In which city did admen invent Baileys Irish Cream in the 1970s?

London is where admen working to a brief from Gilbeys of Ireland stirred whiskey, cream and chocolate powder together; they took the name from Baileys Bistro, the restaurant beneath their Soho office.

As of 2025, which drinks giant owns both Baileys and Guinness?

Diageo was formed in 1997 when Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan, whose drinks arm made Baileys, so the stout and the cream liqueur ended up under one owner.

Ornua, the co-operative behind Kerrygold butter, takes its name from the Irish 'ór nua', meaning what?

New gold is the meaning of 'ór nua', the name the Irish Dairy Board took in 2015; Kerrygold itself was picked in 1962 from a shortlist that also offered Leprechaun and Tub-o-Gold.

In which country was the Kerrygold brand first test-launched in October 1962?

England hosted the October 1962 test launch, in the north-west; the butter was sold abroad for eleven years, reaching Germany in 1973, before it finally went on sale in Ireland itself.

The Limerick dish 'packet and tripe' pairs tripe with which gelatinous pudding?

Drisheen is the soft, gelatinous Munster pudding, like a very smooth black pudding set with milk, salt and fat, that goes with tripe in packet and tripe; it was once flavoured with tansy until that herb proved toxic.

What are crubeens?

Boiled pigs' trotters, from the Irish 'crúibín' meaning little hoof, were rural pub food eaten by hand like corn on the cob, and their saltiness conveniently made drinkers thirstier.

The blaa, a soft square white roll dusted with flour, is a speciality of which Irish city?

Waterford is the home of the blaa, traditionally traced to Huguenot bakers who settled there in the late 1600s; since 2013 EU protection has meant only rolls baked locally may use the name.

County Armagh, nicknamed the Orchard County, holds protected status for which apple?

Bramley apples grown in Armagh carry protected geographical status, though the variety began in an English garden: a girl in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, planted the first pip in 1809.

Which takeaway dish did staff at Templeogue's Sunflower restaurant create off-menu around 2006?

Spice bag began as the Sunflower staff's own after-hours meal of chips and crispy chicken shaken with spices in a bag; friends kept asking for it, so it went on the menu.

Ireland's favourite deli food, sold in every petrol station, is a baguette filled with what?

A breaded chicken fillet, sliced into a buttered baguette with lettuce and taco sauce, makes the chicken fillet roll, the deli-counter staple of Irish petrol stations and convenience shops.

According to a persistent Irish urban myth, red lemonade had been banned where?

The rest of Europe never banned red lemonade: regulators had only outlawed a carcinogenic dye, and a spokesperson for one maker said the rumour had not a grain of truth in it.

Which fish, caught in Lough Neagh for centuries, holds protected geographical status?

Eel from Lough Neagh carries the protected name: the fish arrive as young from the Sargasso Sea, mature for years in the lough, then swim back across the Atlantic to spawn.

Ireland's great tea rivalry pits Barry's against which other brand?

Lyons and Barry's are the two dominant brands in Irish tea, and which is better is a standing national debate; Lyons, though, began with the British teashop empire J. Lyons and Co.

When Arthur Guinness took over the St James's Gate brewery in 1759, he signed a lease for how many years?

9,000 years was the term Arthur Guinness signed up for at £45 a year; the lease no longer applies, because the company bought the site outright once the brewery outgrew its original four acres.

Guinness trademarked its harp in 1876, so how does the Irish state's official harp differ from it?

It faces the other way: both copy the medieval Trinity College harp, but the brewery's right-facing version was already a trademark, so the state registered only left-facing harps.

Which bird from John Gilroy's advertising posters became almost as much a Guinness symbol as the harp?

The toucan was painted by John Gilroy, but its rhyming verse came from Dorothy L. Sayers, who wrote advertising copy at the S. H. Benson agency before her detective novels made her famous.

Draught Guinness gets its creamy head from carbon dioxide mixed with which other gas?

Nitrogen forms far smaller bubbles than carbon dioxide, which is what makes the head creamy; Michael Ash, a mathematician turned brewer, worked out how to dispense it, and Guinness adopted it in 1959.

What is the pub game of sinking a pint of Guinness to a precise line on the glass's logo called?

Splitting the G is the goal: one long first gulp so the beer's surface sits halfway through the G of the Guinness logo on the glass, with arguments over precisely where the line should fall.

The word whiskey comes from the Irish 'uisce beatha', meaning what?

Water of life is the translation of 'uisce beatha', which English speakers corrupted to 'usquebaugh' and then 'whiskey'; Irish distillers spell it with an 'e' and most Scots without.

Although not a legal requirement, Irish whiskeys are commonly distilled how many times?

Three distillations are the Irish norm, as at Jameson and Bushmills, against the double distillation typical of Scotch; the extra run lifts lighter aromatic notes and strips out harsher elements.

Old Bushmills claims the world's oldest licence to distil, granted in 1608 by which king?

James I granted the 1608 licence to a local landowner, Sir Thomas Phillips, not to a distillery: the company that built Old Bushmills was not formed until 1784.

By the mid-1980s, Ireland's whiskey industry had shrunk to how many operating distilleries?

Two was the count, Bushmills and the New Midleton distillery, after Irish Distillers closed its old Dublin and Midleton sites in the 1970s; the founding of Cooley in 1987 began the revival.

Poitín takes its name from the Irish word for a small what?

Pot is the root: poitín means 'little pot', after the small pot still illicit distillers used, often set up on a land boundary so nobody could be sure who owned it.

Alongside 'Irish moonshine', what was the other common old nickname for poitín?

Mountain dew was the old nickname, celebrated in the song 'The Rare Old Mountain Dew'; distillers chose windy, broken weather so the smoke from their turf fires would not give them away to the police.

The Great Famine hit so hard partly because Ireland relied on which single potato variety?

The Lumper, a high-yielding but bland and blight-prone variety, fed most of the rural poor; when Phytophthora infestans arrived in 1845 roughly a million died and another million emigrated.

Ireland's earlier famine of 1740–41, remembered as the Year of Slaughter, was caused by what?

Extreme cold weather did it: the Great Frost of winter 1739–40 destroyed potatoes with frost, and poor grain harvests and a milk shortage followed, bringing mass starvation and disease.

By legend, who planted Ireland's first potatoes at Youghal?

Walter Raleigh is reputed to have planted them at Myrtle Grove, his Youghal house, in the 1580s; the garden novelty went on to become the main food crop of Ireland's poor.

Which dish did Irish immigrants in America create by swapping boiled bacon for a cheaper salted meat?

Corned beef and cabbage took over in America, where Irish immigrants bought cheap salt beef from Jewish butchers in place of the boiled bacon of home, where beef was dear and mostly exported.

The white sauce served with bacon and cabbage is most often flavoured with which herb?

Parsley flavours the white sauce of flour, butter and milk served with the dish, long a country staple because so many rural families reared their own pigs.

Which two breads distinguish a traditional Ulster fry from other full breakfasts?

Soda farls and potato bread, both fried in the pan, mark out the Ulster fry, which despite its breakfast billing is eaten at any time of day.

White pudding differs from black pudding chiefly because it contains no what?

Blood is the missing ingredient: white pudding binds oatmeal or barley with suet, and using blood was nothing unusual in early Ireland, where living cattle were bled and the blood mixed with milk and butter.

Which County Kerry village names a black pudding with EU protected geographical status?

Sneem's black pudding breaks the usual mould: instead of being packed into a casing it is baked in trays and sold in squares, and in 2019 it won EU protected status.

Dulse, the dried red seaweed snack, is traditionally sold at the Ould Lammas Fair in which Antrim town?

Ballycastle's Ould Lammas Fair, held on the last Monday and Tuesday of August, was put into song by John Henry MacAuley, a fiddler who sold his bog-oak carvings from a shop in the town.

Carrageen moss, gathered on Irish coasts, is the basis of a traditional drink reputed to ward off what?

Colds and flu are what carrageen moss simmered in milk was traditionally drunk to ward off, the seaweed's gelling agent thickening it; the same property makes it a setting agent for puddings.

Cashel Blue cheese takes its name from a famous rock in which county?

Tipperary is home to both the Rock of Cashel and the Grubbs, whose first Cashel Blue of 1984 was made in an old copper brewer's vat on their farm near Fethard and sold at local markets.

'Dublin Lawyer' is an Irish dish of what?

Lobster cooked in whiskey and cream is the Dublin Lawyer: the meat is tossed in foaming butter, flamed in Irish whiskey and finished with cream, a rare treat given what the ingredients cost.

Which chocolate bar was invented in Dublin by Cadbury Ireland and launched there in 1985?

Twirl began in Ireland in 1985 as a single-finger bar; Britain had to wait two more years, and got it as a twin-finger bar instead.

Irish cooking pioneer Myrtle Allen is associated with which country house and school?

Ballymaloe House in Shanagarry is where Myrtle Allen opened a restaurant in her own dining room in 1964; her daughter-in-law Darina later set up the Ballymaloe Cookery School nearby.

Why, most likely, was butter buried in Irish bogs?

'To store and ferment it safely' is the usual explanation: the cool, acidic, oxygen-poor bog preserved the butter and aged it into something like North African smen, though the original motive is unclear.

Legend says St Modomnoc brought which creatures to Ireland when they followed his ship home from Wales?

Honeybees, the legend says, swarmed after his ship when he left St David's monastery, where he had kept the hives; early Irish law later gave bees a tract of their own, the Bechbretha.

Bánbia, literally 'white foods', was the early Irish name for which staple group of foods?

Dairy went by the name: with grass growing ten months of the year, early Ireland lived on milk, butter, curds and cheese, and had separate words for hard cheese and skimmed-milk cheese.

What was a mether, in traditional Irish gatherings?

A wooden communal drinking cup carved, handles and all, from a single block, the mether was passed round the feasting hall, each guest drinking sparingly so that it could complete the circuit.

Bilberries, known in Irish as fraochán, were traditionally picked on which August festival?

Lúghnasa, the harvest festival at the start of August, sent people up hills and mountains to gather the berries, a custom that lasted into the 20th century as Bilberry Sunday.

Ireland's first fish and chips were sold in Dublin in the 1880s by an immigrant from which country?

Italy was the homeland of Giuseppe Cervi, who sold fried fish and chips from a handcart in 1880s Dublin before opening a shop; his wife's 'Uno di questa, uno di quella?' gave Dubliners the phrase 'one and one'.

What do people in Ireland usually call a fish-and-chip shop?

Chipper is the everyday Irish word where Britain says 'chippy'; in Dublin an order of fish and chips there is still a 'one and one'.

Arthur Guinness began as a brewer of which drink before turning his Dublin brewery over to porter?

Ale was what Arthur Guinness brewed first, at Leixlip and then at St James's Gate; he took up porter, the dark beer English brewers were then selling all over Dublin, and gave up his original line.

Which shellfish does Galway celebrate with an international festival every September?

Oysters are the draw: the festival, first held in 1954, falls on the last weekend of September because that is the opening month of the oyster season.

What were fulachtaí fia, the burnt mounds common across Bronze Age Ireland?

'Ancient cooking sites using heated stones' is the usual reading: stones heated in a fire were dropped into a trough of water to boil it, and their shattered remains built the horseshoe mound; Ireland has more than anywhere else.

Which Irish whiskey is named for the initials of a manager who became an owner of its distillery?

Tullamore Dew carries the initials of Daniel Edmund Williams, who joined the distillery at 15, rose to manage it and became an owner, and brought electricity to the town in 1893.

Which Irish whiskey is named after a salesman whose free rounds had publicans asking for it by name?

Paddy honours salesman Paddy Flaherty: publicans reordering his firm's unwieldily named Cork Distilleries Company Old Irish Whiskey simply asked for 'Paddy Flaherty's', and in 1912 the name became official.

Whiskey founder John Jameson, whose Dublin brand dates itself to 1780, came from which country?

Scotland: John Jameson was a lawyer from Alloa who married Margaret Haig, of the Scotch whisky family, before setting up in Dublin; his great-grandson was the radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi.

Ireland's single pot still whiskey style arose in 1785 to dodge a tax on what?

Malted barley was taxed from 1785, so distillers padded the mash with cheaper unmalted barley; the mix gave the spirit its spicy, oily character, and the style outlived the tax.

After the 1661 tax, spirit from registered Irish distillers was known by what name?

Parliament whiskey was the name for legal, taxed spirit after the 1661 duty of Charles II, as against the untaxed poitín of the hills; landlords meant to enforce the law were often collecting rent from the illicit distillers themselves.

The Guinness Book of Records was born after Sir Hugh Beaver missed a shot at which bird?

The golden plover got away from Sir Hugh Beaver on a Wexford shoot in 1951; when no book could settle whether it or the red grouse was Europe's faster game bird, he commissioned one.

In the 2010s, roughly 40 percent of all Guinness was brewed and sold on which continent?

Africa took roughly 40 percent of Guinness volume in the 2010s; the favourite there was Foreign Extra Stout, a recipe first brewed stronger and with extra hops so that it would survive long sea voyages.

Smithwick's red ale was first brewed in 1710 on the site of a Franciscan abbey in which city?

Kilkenny's St Francis Abbey site, where Franciscan friars had brewed for centuries, was where John Smithwick began brewing in 1710; when the brewery closed in 2013 it was Ireland's oldest operating one.

Bulmers Irish cider from Clonmel is sold outside Ireland under which name?

Magners is the export name because H. P. Bulmer of Hereford owns the Bulmers name outside Ireland; the brand honours William Magner, who began making cider in Clonmel in 1935.

Which Dutch brewer has owned both of Cork's stouts, Murphy's and Beamish, since 2008?

Heineken bought Murphy's Lady's Well brewery in 1983 and took Beamish & Crawford in 2008 when Scottish & Newcastle was carved up, moving Beamish production to the Murphy's site in 2009.

Club Orange is named after a gentlemen's club on which Dublin road?

Kildare Street Club, the gentlemen's club for which the drink was first made, gave Club Orange its name; launched by C&C in the late 1930s, it was Ireland's first orange drink and is known for its 'bits' of real fruit.

Club Rock Shandy, the Irish soft drink, mixes orange with which other flavour?

Lemon is the partner: Club Rock Shandy blends the range's orange and lemon drinks; in 2007 its maker C&C sold the whole Club range to Britvic so that it could concentrate on alcohol.

The soft drink Football Special is made by McDaid's in which county?

Donegal's McDaid's of Ramelton created it in the 1960s so that Swilly Rovers could fill a trophy with something non-alcoholic; it has a beer-like foamy head and was first called Football Cup.

Irish breakfast tea blends are built on strong black tea from which Indian region?

Assam, in north-east India, gives Irish breakfast blends their dark colour and malty strength, usually softened with a second tea such as Kenyan; the result is strong enough to be commonly drunk with milk.

Which everyday biscuit was invented in Dublin around 1885 and first made by William Jacob?

The cream cracker was devised by Joseph Haughton at his Dublin home and first baked by William Jacob around 1885; during the 1916 Easter Rising rebels occupied Jacob's Dublin factory.

Jacob's Mikado biscuit pairs marshmallow and coconut with which jam?

Raspberry jam sits with the marshmallow and desiccated coconut on a Mikado; in 2009 Jacob's closed its Tallaght plant and moved production abroad, ending 156 years of biscuit-making in Dublin.

Gur cake, thought to be named for Dublin truants 'on the gur', was cheaply made from what?

Bakery leftovers, stale bread and cake mashed with dried fruit between two sheets of pastry, made gur cake one of the few treats a child skipping school, 'on the gur', could afford.

What is 'goody', the Irish dish traditionally eaten beside St John's Eve bonfires?

Bread boiled in sweet milk with sugar and spices makes goody, dished out as the St John's Eve bonfires burned; people then carried an ember home, since the fire was held to bring luck for the year.

Yellowman, sold beside dulse at the Ould Lammas Fair, is a chewier cousin of which sweet?

Honeycomb toffee is its close relative: golden syrup and sugar are boiled to the brittle hard-crack stage, then vinegar and baking soda make the mixture foam up with carbon dioxide.

A traditional Limerick ham is first smoked over branches of which plant?

Juniper branches give the traditional Limerick ham its smoke; after an overnight soak it is boiled, some recipes using cider, then finished in a hot oven to crisp the fat.

Which red-skinned potato was bred by Harry Kehoe at Teagasc's Oak Park in Carlow?

Rooster was bred at Oak Park as an all-rounder for boiling, mashing, chipping and roasting, and went on to become the most widely grown potato in Ireland.

Comber Earlies, new potatoes with EU protected status since 2012, are grown in which county?

Down is the county: around Comber the Ards Peninsula and the Mournes shelter the fields, giving a warmer, drier pocket of land where growers can lift their potatoes early in the season.

Until 2018, Irish pubs could not sell alcohol on which day?

Good Friday had been dry since the Intoxicating Liquor Act of 1927, which also shut the pubs on Christmas Day and, for decades, on St Patrick's Day itself.

In Irish myth, the Salmon of Knowledge gained its wisdom by eating what?

Hazelnuts dropped into the Well of Wisdom from the nine trees around it and the salmon ate them; young Fionn mac Cumhaill, cooking the fish, burnt his thumb, sucked it and took the knowledge himself.

Irish Mist, the first liqueur made in Ireland, was modelled on which ancient drink?

Heather wine was the model: by its makers' account the old recipe had been carried off to the Continent and lost to Ireland for centuries before a traveller brought it back in the 1940s.

Which trader served Queen Elizabeth II on her 2011 visit to Cork's English Market?

A fishmonger, Pat O'Connell, served the Queen on her 2011 state visit; the 'English' label dates from the 19th century, when it set the market apart from the nearby St Peter's Market, known as the Irish Market.

The Dublin Bay prawn appears on restaurant menus under which other name?

Langoustine, or Norway lobster, Nephrops norvegicus, is the same animal: a slim, pale orange lobster up to about 25 cm long whose tails are sold as scampi.

Which West Cork town gives its name to a black pudding made to a secret 1880s recipe?

Clonakilty's pudding recipe came with the Pearse Street butcher's shop Edward Twomey bought in 1976; by the firm's account he tried to stop making it until his customers objected.

Milleens, made near Eyeries on the Beara peninsula since 1976, is an Irish what?

Farmhouse cheese: Norman and Veronica Steele began making Milleens on their smallholding as a way of keeping surplus milk for winter, in the same spirit as salting fish and pork.

Flahavan's, a family mill at Kilmacthomas since the 1780s, is a household Irish name for what?

Oats are the family's business, and little goes to waste: since 1985 the mill has burned its own oat husks in a boiler to raise the steam that cooks the grain.