Why is a Belgian Bun?

[Alain Maréchal]

Trench mortars, perchance, Zucchers?

is that type of mortar used in Flemish bond?

[Alain Maréchal]

More research on pastry-linked food finds the following. The final sentence gives food for thought, if you'll pardon the pun ( I imagine you won't)

http://www.tottenhamquakers.org.uk/history/Tott1800s005.html

[Anna]

I always thought they were called Belgiums because otherwise they'd be an Iced Chelsea?
Anyway. on the subject of buns - I haven't seen a Bath Bun for some years, used to love those crunchy lumps of sugar on the top ....

[french frank]

is that type of mortar used in Flemish bond?

That sent me to look for the origin of the word 'mortar' - I don't think it's relevant to Belgian buns, but it's interesting, so I'll post it on the Pedants' thread - if I can find it.

Tottenham Cake? "The tradition of a Tottenham cake is continued today at Tottenham Friends Meeting. Now baked by Peter Brown, the pink icing is usually achieved by using mulberries off the tree in the burial ground." There's posh - mulberries instead of glacé cherries.

[mercia]

I must see if I can work an insult about Horsham into the thread about the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra and its audience hinterland.

I'm not sure I care for all this anti-Sussex talk. Might you perhaps go and find another county to annoy? Several are available.

[french frank]

I'm not sure I care for all this anti-Sussex talk. Might you perhaps go and find another county to annoy? Several are available.

Makes a change from Essex?

[mercia]

doubtless Avon has dodgy coffee machines, dodgy buns, dodgy philharmonics and dodgy A roads too - couldn't he head westwards ?

[french frank]

doubtless Avon has dodgy coffee machines, dodgy buns, dodgy philharmonics and dodgy A roads too - couldn't he head westwards ?

To the joy of the majority, Avon no longer exists, but has metamorphosed into South Gloucestershire, Bristol, Bath and South East Somerset (BANES) and North Somerset (I think that's the total), now all unitary authorities.

Doesn't mean they don't all have dodgy coffee machines (which shall be nameless!), dodgy buns (Bath?) &c.

[Alain Maréchal]

I'm not sure I care for all this anti-Sussex talk. Might you perhaps go and find another county to annoy? Several are available.

It's not particularly anti-Sussex talk, but a) it stems from a discussion in another place about the funding for the Brighton orchestra, which deviated into musings about Sussex, and b) the fact that I only know two English counties, one of which is a thriving bustling stays-up-all-night almost but not quite centre of the universe metropolis, and the other is Sussex. The comparison is unfortunate for the latter.

Having said which, I do find the general self-congratulatory air of Sussex rather a temptation to throw custard pies. It's proud of its weather, for which it can take no credit, its proud of the South Downs (ditto), its proud of its seaside (ditto except the entirely man-made Eastbourne). It has a county song, made into a march, an idea other counties have not taken up - "You're nearer God's heart in the Garden of England"; "Normal for Norfolk"; Buck up Buckinghamshire"; somehow these have resisted publication. Eastbourne points out that Debussy wrote La Mer there - they have forgotten he was looking for somewhere out of the way where his scandalous liason with a married woman wouldn't be observed (and surely that was why people went to the Brighton Metropole). Harvey's beer's good - I'll give it that, and several forumites will agree.

A point in its favour - there are Bath Buns in the Cavendish Bakery next to Camllla's Bookshop in Eastbourne. That's the bakery that's closed on Saturdays by the way.
Does Sussex have a county pastry?

Perhaps its a phase, Leicestershire is rising quickly up the smugness chart. I did work there for three years, I'll see what I can contrive.

[jean]

"...the pink icing is usually achieved by using mulberries off the tree in the burial ground." There's posh - mulberries instead of glacé cherries.

It's where the mulberries grow that might give us pause for thought.

Though - even worse perhaps - mulberries only became red in the first place because, as Ovid tells us, the root of the nearby mulberry tree was soaked in Pyramus's blood when he killed himself (having supposed, wrongly, that his lover Thisbe was dead) and the pendentia mora grew blood-coloured ever afterwards:

ut iacuit resupinus humo, cruor emicat alte,
non aliter quam cum vitiato fistula plumbo
scinditur et tenui stridente foramine longas
eiaculatur aquas atque ictibus aera rumpit.
arborei fetus adspergine caedis in atram
vertuntur faciem, madefactaque sanguine radix
purpureo tinguit pendentia mora colore.

.

[eighthobstruction]

Alain Maréchal : you might come up with something like - fiddling while Belgium buns....

[Anna]

I think it was Spike Milligan who was credited with saying "If a cat has kittens in an oven it does not make them buns" Therefore, logically, it follows that Belgium Buns were not born in Belgium. Bit like French Cricket. Put a bit of icing and a cherry on top and call it something foreign.

[Alain Maréchal]

Alain Maréchal : you might come up with something like - fiddling while Belgium buns....

An apt simile: I'm reminded of such fiddlers as Arthur Grumiaux, Guillaume Lekeu (I was born in the same street), Henri Vieuxtemps, Egene Ysaye, and I suppose, in spite of the name, I'll have to include Sigiswald Kuijken. There are so many others, for some reason Liege churned them out.

I think it was Spike Milligan who was credited with saying "If a cat has kittens in an oven it does not make them buns" Therefore, logically, it follows that Belgium Buns were not born in Belgium. Bit like French Cricket. Put a bit of icing and a cherry on top and call it something foreign.

Its rather similar to the theory that villages or places were not named by the natives - they had no need of a name, but it would be others who called them "by the bridge" or "in the bog" or "on the hill".

There's an anecdote that an MP referred to the Duke of Wellington (born in Dublin) as an Irishman, bringing the riposte "sir, if I were born in a stable would it make me a donkey?"
Wellington - Wellesley - Mornington Crescent!

[french frank]

Intrigued by the name 'parkin' but OED does not yield an answer. Also, there are rowies ('No dictionary entries found for ‘rowie’ ' - what an outrage!) or Eburdeen butteries. Not so sweet and skipping the icing and cherry on the top

[ahinton]

I think it was Spike Milligan who was credited with saying "If a cat has kittens in an oven it does not make them buns" Therefore, logically, it follows that Belgium Buns were not born in Belgium. Bit like French Cricket. Put a bit of icing and a cherry on top and call it something foreign.

Perhaps he was subconsciously remembering Sorabji's comment about some people's allegations as to his own racial origins, namely "a kitten born in a kennel is not a puppy"...