99 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 the everyday Irish name for white soda bread studded with raisins or sultanas; the same loaf is also called railway cake, and a caraway-seed version was once common.

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, chopped and softened in warm milk, give champ its flavour; in some areas nettles were used instead, and 'as thick as champ' survives as a Hiberno-English insult.

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, whether the mix is fried as pancakes, baked as a loaf or boiled as dumplings; boiled boxty is a Halloween tradition around Cavan and Leitrim.

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

Coddle, the Dublin stew of sausages, rashers, potatoes and onion simmered in stock, is reputed to have been a favourite of Jonathan Swift and also appears in the work of James Joyce.

Enthusiasts of the Dublin sausage-and-rasher stew regard which step as an unacceptable cop-out?

Browning the sausages is the cop-out: the true Dublin stew is simmered gently in stock so the sausages and rashers stay pale, a look outsiders often find off-putting.

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.

What is the Irish name for laver, the seaweed the Welsh make into laverbread?

Sloke, from the Irish 'sleabhac', is the name for laver in Ireland, where the purple Porphyra seaweed is stewed slowly into a dark paste and eaten with butter, much as in Welsh laverbread.

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

Carrots, along with turnips and pearl barley, are what purists say spoil the true flavour; their recipe is neck mutton chops, potatoes, onions and water, simmered slowly for hours.

Finding the ring in a Halloween barmbrack traditionally means what for the person who gets it?

'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.

Chef Joe Sheridan invented Irish coffee in the early 1940s at which flying-boat terminal?

Foynes, the flying-boat terminal on the Shannon estuary about 15 km from today's Shannon Airport, was where Sheridan warmed cold transatlantic passengers with whiskey-laced coffee; a museum there tells the story.

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

Buena Vista Cafe at Fisherman's Wharf began serving Irish coffee on 10 November 1952 after Chronicle columnist Stanton Delaplane, who had tasted it at Shannon, worked with owner Jack Koeppler 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.

Baileys took its name from what?

'A restaurant beneath its creators' London office' is the origin: Baileys Bistro sat under the team's office in Soho, and the R. A. Bailey signature on the label is fictional.

In which year was Baileys Irish Cream first launched?

1974 was the year Gilbeys of Ireland launched Baileys Irish Cream, the first Irish cream liqueur on the market, blending Irish whiskey with fresh dairy cream in a stable emulsion.

What is the declared alcohol content of Baileys Irish Cream?

17% alcohol by volume is the declared strength of Baileys Irish Cream; the cream and whiskey are held together as an emulsion with refined vegetable oil, so no preservatives are needed.

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

New gold is the meaning of 'ór nua', the Irish phrase behind the name adopted in 2015 by the former Irish Dairy Board, founded in 1961, which markets Kerrygold.

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

England hosted the October 1962 test launch, in the Winter Hill television area of the north-west; Germany, now Kerrygold's biggest market, followed after Ireland joined the EEC in 1973.

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 in the city in the 1690s; the roll won EU Protected Geographical Indication status in 2013.

A blaa is often filled with a luncheon meat that locals nickname what?

Red lead is the local nickname for the pink luncheon sausage sliced into a blaa; the breakfast blaa with egg, rasher and sausage is the other favourite filling in the roll's home city.

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

Spice bag is the dish: salt-and-chilli chips and shredded fried chicken with sliced peppers and onion, shaken together in a paper bag, first served off-menu at the Sunflower in Templeogue.

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?

Regulators had in fact only banned a carcinogenic dye; the drink is still a favourite mixer with whiskey.

Barry's Tea was founded in 1901 in which Irish city?

Cork is where James J. Barry opened the tea business in 1901 on Prince's Street; the family later produced Fine Gael politicians across several generations, including Tánaiste Peter Barry.

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

Lyons, the brand founded in Dublin in 1902, is Barry's great rival; the pair split most of the Irish market between them, Barry's strongest in Munster and Lyons in Dublin and the east.

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 lease term Arthur Guinness signed on 31 December 1759, at an annual rent of £45, for the disused brewery at St James's Gate.

How can you tell the Guinness harp from the harp on Ireland's coat of arms?

'It faces right; the state's faces left' is the tell: both copy the Trinity College harp, but the brewery registered its version as a trademark in 1876, so the state's harp had to face the other way.

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

The toucan, first drawn by John Gilroy in 1935 and given its famous verse by Dorothy L. Sayers at the S. H. Benson agency, became the best-loved of the Guinness animals.

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

Nitrogen, mixed with carbon dioxide in roughly a 75:25 blend, dissolves poorly and so forms the tiny bubbles of the creamy head; mathematician-brewer Michael Ash perfected the system for draught Guinness in 1959.

What is the pub game of landing your pint level on a letter of the glass's branding 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 the local landowner Sir Thomas Phillips, covering the Route district of Antrim; the Old Bushmills Distillery company itself was not registered 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 copper vessel in which illicit distillers ran off their spirit, 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 Great Famine of 1739 was caused by what?

Extreme cold weather, the Great Frost that began in December 1739 and gripped Europe into 1741, froze rivers, ruined stored potatoes and oats, and brought the famine of 1740-41 that the Irish called 'bliain an áir', the year of slaughter.

In which century was the potato first introduced into Ireland?

16th century: the potato reached Ireland in the late 1500s, legend crediting Sir Walter Raleigh's Youghal estate, and it passed from garden crop to the main food of the poor far faster than on the Continent.

Which St Patrick's Day staple did Irish immigrants 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 sauce, a white sauce of milk thickened with a roux and flecked with chopped parsley, is the classic partner for boiled bacon and cabbage, the cabbage traditionally cooked in the bacon water.

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

Soda farls and potato bread, both fried in the pan alongside the bacon, sausages and eggs, mark out the Ulster fry; a Scotch-style pancake is often added too.

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

Blood is the missing ingredient: white pudding is made from suet or fat, oatmeal or barley and breadcrumbs, sometimes with pork or liver, while black pudding is bound with pig's blood.

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

Sneem, on the Ring of Kerry, gives its name to Sneem Black Pudding, one of Ireland's handful of EU protected geographical indications alongside Timoleague brown pudding and Connemara hill lamb.

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, is famous for dulse, which is eaten dried and raw along the Antrim coast and known as dillisk in the west.

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's Rock of Cashel gives the cheese its name; Jane and Louis Grubb made the first Cashel Blue at Beechmount farm near Fethard in 1984, and their sheep's-milk sister cheese is Crozier Blue.

'Dublin Lawyer' is a modern Irish dish of what?

Lobster cooked in whiskey and cream is the Dublin Lawyer: chunks of lobster flamed in Irish whiskey and finished with cream, the name a joke about the richness of the legal trade.

Which chocolate bar was invented at Cadbury's Coolock factory in Dublin in the 1980s?

Twirl, the twin-finger bar of rippled chocolate, was developed and first made at Coolock in 1985 and went on sale in Ireland before Britain; Cadbury's first Irish factory had opened in Dublin in 1933.

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

Ballymaloe House, near Shanagarry, was Myrtle Allen's restaurant from 1964, and her daughter-in-law Darina founded the Ballymaloe Cookery School nearby in 1983; the cooking leans on fresh fish, farmhouse cheese and soda bread.

According to the most common explanation, why were barrels of 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 votive offerings have also been suggested.

Who is credited in legend with bringing honeybees to Ireland around the year 540?

Modomnoc, a 6th-century monk of Ossory who had trained under St David in Wales, is said to have been followed home by a swarm of bees; the mid-7th-century Bechbretha, or 'bee judgements', later set out beekeeping law.

What was the early Irish collective term for milk, butter, curds and cheese?

Bánbia, literally 'white foods', covered milk, butter, curds and cheese; táth was a pressed curd, tánach a hard cheese and mulchán a skimmed-milk cheese.

What was a mether, in traditional Irish gatherings?

A wooden communal drinking cup with handles at its corners, the mether was carved from a single block and passed from hand to hand at feasts, usually holding mead or beer.

Which three animals did the Normans introduce to Ireland's diet in the 12th century?

Rabbits, fallow deer and pheasants all arrived with the Anglo-Normans after 1169, kept in warrens, deer parks and game coverts on the new manors; pike may have come with them too.

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

Lúghnasa, the harvest festival at the start of August, had a 'Fraughan Sunday' when people climbed hills to gather bilberries; hazelnuts were the most important wild nut of early Ireland.

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 is the Irish word for a chip shop?

Chipper is the Hiberno-English word, used since the first Italian-run shops of the late 1800s; a 'one and one' there is a single of fish with a single of chips, while 'chippy' is the British term.

In 1799 Arthur Guinness stopped brewing which drink to concentrate on porter?

Ale was Guinness's original product at St James's Gate from 1759; Arthur Guinness began brewing porter in the 1770s and in 1799 dropped ale entirely to concentrate on the dark London-style beer.

What was menedach, the medieval paste of grains kneaded with butter?

'A medicinal food for penitent monks' is how early texts present menedach, a paste of grain and butter valued for its healing qualities by monks on strict penitential diets, which could be spread on bread.

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

'Ancient cooking sites using heated stones' is the classic reading: a trough of water was boiled with fire-heated stones whose shattered remains built the horseshoe-shaped mound; Ireland has thousands, more than any other country.

The letters D.E.W. on Tullamore whiskey bottles are whose initials?

Daniel Edmund Williams joined the Tullamore distillery, founded in 1829, as a boy, rose from general manager to owner and put his initials on the label; he also helped bring electricity and a telephone line to the town.

Paddy whiskey from Cork took its name from what kind of employee?

A travelling salesman, Paddy Flaherty, was so good at his job, free rounds included, that publicans reordered 'Paddy Flaherty's whiskey', and the distillery made the name official in 1912.

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

Scotland: John Jameson was a lawyer from Alloa in Clackmannanshire who married Margaret Haig of the whisky family and took over the Bow Street distillery in the early 1800s; 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 began after a shooting-party argument about which bird?

The golden plover was the bird Sir Hugh Beaver missed on a Wexford shoot in 1951; no book could settle whether it was Europe's fastest game bird, so he commissioned the McWhirter twins' first edition of 1955.

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

Africa accounted for roughly 40 percent of Guinness volume in the 2010s, Foreign Extra Stout being the favourite; Nigeria has at times outsold Ireland, second only to Britain.

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 now owns both of Cork's stouts, Murphy's and Beamish?

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 orange and lemon flavours in one bottle, a packaged take on the pub 'rock shandy' of orange and lemon soda, and is a Club range stablemate of Club Orange.

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

Donegal is home to McDaid's of Ramelton, the family bottler whose Football Special, a sweet mixed-fruit fizzy drink, has been made for generations and is a cult favourite across the north-west.

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

Assam, in north-east India, supplies the strong, malty black tea at the base of Irish breakfast blends, usually softened with Kenyan leaf and cut small so the brew steeps fast and dark enough to take milk.

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

The cream cracker was devised by Joseph Haughton in his Dublin home and first baked commercially by William Jacob in 1885; the 'dock' holes on top stop it puffing up in the oven.

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

Raspberry jam sits under the marshmallow and coconut strands of a Mikado; its stablemate Kimberley sandwiches mallow between a pair of soft ginger biscuits, and Jacob's ads sang 'Kimberley, Mikado and Coconut Creams'.

Gur cake, Dublin's slab of bakery leftovers, is named after children doing what?

Skipping school was being 'on the gur' in Dublin slang, and the cheap cake, a pastry-cased slab of stale bread and cake mixed with dried fruit and spice, was what truant 'gurriers' 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, stirred in a big cauldron at the Midsummer bonfires of 23 June; it doubles as a sickbed food for children and convalescents.

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

Honeycomb toffee is its close relative: sugar, syrup and butter are boiled to the 149 °C hard-crack stage, then vinegar and baking soda froth the mass with carbon dioxide and it is pulled until chewy.

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.

The red-skinned Rooster potato was bred at Teagasc's Oak Park research centre in which county?

Carlow's Oak Park research centre, where breeder Harry Kehoe developed the Rooster for Teagasc in the early 1990s, produced an all-rounder that went on to dominate Irish potato fields.

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

Down is the county: Comber, at the head of Strangford Lough, has grown the early potatoes since the 19th century and won EU protected status for them in 2012; the town's whiskey distillery closed in 1953.

Leo Burdock's, Dublin's oldest chipper, opened near Christ Church in which year?

1913 was the year Bella Burdock opened the Werburgh Street shop beside Christ Church, naming it after her son Leo; the shop's 'wall of fame' lists famous customers across the decades.

In Irish myth, the Salmon of Knowledge gained its wisdom by eating how many hazelnuts?

Nine hazel trees hung over the Well of Segais and the salmon ate their nuts; young Fionn mac Cumhaill, cooking it for the poet Finn Eces, burnt his thumb, sucked it and got all the wisdom in one drop.

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

Heather wine, a legendary Irish drink of whiskey, honey and herbs said to be over 1,000 years old, was the model; commercial production of Irish Mist began at Tullamore in 1947.

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

A fishmonger, Pat O'Connell of K. O'Connell's stall, made the Queen laugh at the English Market in May 2011; the 'English' label dates from the 19th century, to distinguish it from the nearby 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 family has guarded Clonakilty black pudding's secret spice recipe since the 1970s?

Twomey is the family: Edward Twomey bought the Pearse Street butcher's shop in the 1970s and revived its 1880s pudding recipe, which his widow Colette kept secret as the brand grew; the town has a visitor centre devoted to it.

Milleens, the washed-rind cheese made near Eyeries since 1976, sells its small rounds as what?

Dotes is the name for the small Milleens rounds, a Hiberno-English endearment; Norman and Veronica Steele's washed-rind cheese from the Beara peninsula helped launch the Irish farmhouse cheese revival of the late 1970s.

Flahavan's has milled its porridge oats in which village since about 1785?

Kilmacthomas has been home to the Flahavan family oat mill since about 1785, the original being a watermill on the River Mahon, and the firm remains in family hands.