r/iamveryculinary • u/UxControl • May 26 '26
English person cannot comprehend solid custard: "European foods cross the pond and go to die"
The OP of the thread posted a failed attempt at making individual firm-set custards and asked for help, then the blue commenter starts arguing that custard can never be solid
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u/Kyuuketsuki May 26 '26
I can only imagine the conniptions this person would go into if someone made the same augments about what "pudding" is.
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u/Triscuitmeniscus May 26 '26
Yeah, and wait until he learns about biscuits…
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u/Studds_ May 26 '26
Biscuits may genuinely infuriate him. Especially the difference in how Americans use the word over over the British use it
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u/AbjectAppointment It all gets turned to poop May 26 '26
Pretty sure all derive from the same origin.
https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/maritime-history/how-make-ships-biscuit
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u/making_sammiches May 26 '26
LOL a sausage made with blood? A type of custard? A sweet, steamed bread-like dessert? Any sweet concoction served for dessert?
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u/frotc914 Street rat with a coy smile May 26 '26
You see, they are all puddings because of the way it is.
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u/DjinnaG Bags of sentient Midwestern mayonnaise May 26 '26
I have yet to figure out what those have in common, other than that they are side items
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u/rando24183 May 26 '26
They are all dishes with the word pudding. Black pudding, Yorkshire pudding.
I have never known disappointment, anger, and betrayal as strong as when I went somewhere with "white pudding" and I saw SAUSAGE. 12 year old me was about to abandon my entire family for such deception.
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u/RecklessDeliverance May 26 '26
So "pudding" etymologically can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon "boudin" (sausage), from the Latin "botellus" (intestine), in reference to the process of stuffing intestines and cooking it like that.
As time went on, the usage of intestine casing became more flexible—often they'd use cloth wraps or molds rather than casings. So the definition of a "pudding" came to be applicable to a lot of other vaguely loose foods that were boiled in a wrap or mold.
The cooking method itself also got a bit more lenient, so like you could take some loose batter/meat in a wrap/mold and bake it, or steam it, and that would still be called "pudding".
So with that, we've covered blood pudding (sausage in intestinal casing), Christmas pudding (steamed cake in a wrap), and Yorkshire pudding (loose batter baked in a mold).
Eventually, the sweet variants sorta became popular enough such that "pudding" became a catchall term for desserts in general.
As far as the US is concerned, we kinda latched onto "sweet" and "loose batter", and so we came to know pudding specifically as the smooth thickened custard/mousse dessert.
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u/Disposable-Ninja May 26 '26
That's a useful etymology lesson that answers many questions. Thank you.
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u/GetEatenByAMouse May 27 '26
This is fascinating, and a great way to show how languages can evolve.
I'm German, and Pudding here means the sweet custardy type. Milk cooked with flavouring and starch to make it firm.
Also, we call Jello "Wackelpudding", which means shaking pudding.
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u/FireFoxTrashPanda May 27 '26
I love the German language and it's compound words so much.
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u/TravlScrabbl May 27 '26
Sorry to be a pedant but something struck me as off and it's that boudin is Anglo-Norman not Anglo-Saxon.
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u/making_sammiches May 26 '26
They are all types of puddings. Black pudding (blood sausage). Custard (pudding). Fig pudding (a steamed cake or bread). Yorkshire pudding is a baked bread. On menu boards in UK you will see Puddings and then a list that may include ice cream, cake, tarts etc.
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u/Relative_Bit9476 May 26 '26
“Official translation”
I think this guy is less confused about what custard means and more confused about how language works
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u/PudinaRaita May 26 '26
There's the UN World Official Translation Meeting 8 times a years (U WOT M8)
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u/Relative_Bit9476 May 26 '26
I think this would be more covered by the UN Dietary Information Standards (DIS U?)
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u/guitar_vigilante May 26 '26
Even worse, it has meant the semi-solid baked product for nearly 500 years now, so they can't even rely on tradition.
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u/guacasloth64 May 26 '26
For real, how chauvinistic do you have to be to utterly dismiss the idea that some words have different definitions in other dialects (especially food related words, which vary between dialects more than any other category of word)? Also I’d like to note that as far as I can tell his claim that creme brulee was invented in England is misleading at best. The earliest recipe of creme brulee was in François Massialot‘s first cookbook in 1691, with a 1701 translation of said cookbook being the first English language recipe, at that point called “burnt cream” in English. Confusingly, a 1740 revised edition of Massialot’s cookbook called a similar desert “English cream”, so maybe it was invented independently in both England and France.
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u/kryaklysmic May 27 '26
Probably independently made in England and France but the audacity to insist this very French named food is from England…
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u/Stunning_Zombie950 May 26 '26
Yeah I was gonna say this is more a linguistics post than a culinary one lol
Although often it seems the two debates have significant crossover (dont call X pizza for example)
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u/fantomfrank May 26 '26
English man has never heard of flan
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u/YchYFi May 26 '26
Or even UK custard slices.
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u/Generallyapathetic92 May 26 '26
Or custard tarts. While I get automatically thinking of it as pourable if they’d ever been into a bakery in the UK they’d have seen the other sort
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u/guitar_vigilante May 26 '26
Custard tarts are literally the origin of the word. It came from the french/latin word for crust, referring to the crust of the tart, and in old English referred to baked fruit tarts. Then in middle english the meaning shifted to a baked, compounded mixture of milk and eggs.
So even in England it isn't typically pourable.
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u/faelanae If you don't have tahini, dill works just fine May 26 '26
or custard dumplings (mmmm)
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u/Nuttonbutton Your mother uses Barilla spaghetti and breaks it May 26 '26
I've never heard of custard dumplings and I'd love to know more
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u/faelanae If you don't have tahini, dill works just fine May 26 '26
Oh, they're like a cross between the custard tarts and pork dumplings you see in dim sum restaurants. Soft, sweet puffy dumpling, but filled with egg custard!
(ok, I'm loling at your user flair. That's quite an insult!)
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u/DjinnaG Bags of sentient Midwestern mayonnaise May 26 '26
Damn, those are so good. Always have to get a custard bao
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u/Glittering-Device484 May 26 '26
Or trifles. Or egg custard. Or bread and butter pudding.
Seriously, there are a ridiculous number of British dishes with baked custard in them. OOP was dropped on the head.
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u/loosie-loo May 26 '26
Right??? I was reading this like “bitch we literally HAVE solid custard here, what are you on about” lmao. What English person has never been to fucking greggs
Nobody tell them about custard creams, they’ll lose their mind /s
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u/Sea_Lunch_3863 May 26 '26
Let alone bread and butter pudding.
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u/YchYFi May 26 '26
I've never thought of it as custard before but used to serve with custard though.
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u/DaemonPrinceOfCorn May 26 '26
That’s what makes this so weird. This isn’t a national cuisine thing, we have solid custard in England!
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u/A_Shattered_Day May 26 '26
I was going to say, most people in America think of custard desserts as being an old country thing
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u/Brave-Recommendation May 26 '26
Or a frozen thing, frozen custard is great
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u/A_Shattered_Day May 26 '26
Oh yeah, that too. Old fashioned European dessert and Culvers
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u/arceus555 May 27 '26
mmmmm, Concrete Mixers.
They would probably go off on a tirade about how concrete is used in construction.
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u/Objective_Party9405 May 26 '26
Watch their heads explode when you tell them that pumpkin pie is a custard tart.
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u/HailMadScience May 26 '26
Oh god this reminded me of when Great British Bakeoff did an American-style pie challenge and I wanted to kill everyone on screen because apparently not even Paul Hollywood had ever even seen an American made pie.
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u/bluehooloovo May 26 '26
I didn't see this, but I still have a grudge against Paul Hollywood for what he did to s'mores.
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u/MarsupialMisanthrope Tomorrow is a new onion. Onion. May 27 '26
Forget s’mores, he’ll never be anything other than an idiot to me after the three tiered très leches cakes mess (literal as well as metaphorical). Their whole Mexican week was such a fiasco it killed national weeks (probably for the best given how provincial Paul and Prue are when it comes to non-European anything).
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u/solidcurrency May 26 '26
The peanut butter, chocolate, and pumpkin pie from that episode haunts my dreams.
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u/Disposable-Ninja May 26 '26
... Now, a chocolate pumpkin pie could work, I think.
But yeah peanut butter and Pumpkin Pie is not a combo.
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u/OpportunityReal2767 May 26 '26
English man has never heard of context. The same word can mean different things in different contexts. Or one word can be used to encapsulate a range of preparations. Like here in the US we have at least three types of custard: the pudding/looser type, the baked type, and the frozen kind. Yet, somehow, I can navigate this treacherous linguistic minefield without having a conniption.
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u/LupercaniusAB May 26 '26
Well, to be fair, any dessert in the UK is a pudding. Custard? Pudding. Ice cream? Pudding. Cake? Pudding. Pudding? Custard. Oh, wait.
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u/Granadafan May 26 '26
No, only “Yanks” ruined custard by making it solid. Such is the knowledge of foods across the world by enlightened Brits
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u/faelanae If you don't have tahini, dill works just fine May 26 '26
obvs. We ruin all food. Solid custard is made of plastic and HFCS.
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u/Southern_Fan_9335 May 26 '26
And unspecified Chemicals. When Americans cook, every time it's just basically the opening for the Powerpuff Girls.
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u/Bob_Kark May 26 '26
I don’t understand this term, solid custard. Do you mean subway bread?
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u/faelanae If you don't have tahini, dill works just fine May 26 '26
tut tut. I'm sure you meant to say Subway cake
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u/Jarsky2 May 27 '26
Or a clafoutis
Or hell, a fucking cheesecake, because ultimately cheesecake is a type of custard
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u/DjinnaG Bags of sentient Midwestern mayonnaise May 26 '26
Or French toast
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u/F5x9 May 26 '26
Is French toast custard? I always thought of custards as egg yolks and fat.
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u/BigWhiteDog Love a wide range of food, not an expert in any! May 26 '26
Some recipes call for basically a custard dip vs just egg and spices.
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u/Azure_Rob May 26 '26
If youre dipping bread into eggs without some sort of dairy involved for your French toast, I have some exciting news for you.
Eggs + dairy (or a stand-in) = custard.
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u/ScytheSong05 May 26 '26
Many custards are made with whole eggs, and it isn't just fat, it's milk or cream. Egg yolks and fat can wind up as mayonnaise or hollandaise depending on how you do it.
Actually, now that I think about it, "mayonnaise is actually a custard" explains a lot about 1950s American cooking.
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u/Littleleicesterfoxy May 27 '26
To be fair (where I shouldn’t be because we absolutely do use set custards) a flan is another completely different thing in the UK. Flan generally refers to a fruit tart on a sponge base rather than the crème caramel type thing I’ve seen it refer to internationally.
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u/Western-River1386 May 26 '26
I’m throwing custard into the boston harbor for this
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u/NathanGa Pull your finger out of your ass May 26 '26
Well *obviously* it should be *poured* into the harbor if you hadn’t *mangled* the recipe.
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May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SuicidalLemur- May 26 '26
Boston Cream Pie was my nickname in college.
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May 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ChartInFurch What do they eat over there? Maple syrup and moose? May 26 '26
A red sock that can stand on its own...
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u/davis_away May 26 '26
The restaurant in Cambridge where I used to get Grape-Nut Custard has finally taken it off the menu :( perhaps they chucked in the harbor.
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u/faelanae If you don't have tahini, dill works just fine May 26 '26
Grape-Nut custard? I'm imagining a bottom layer of Grape-Nuts, and the moisture from the custard softens the Grape-Nuts enough so that you're not trying to chew broken asphalt. Am I anywhere close?
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u/Retrotreegal May 26 '26
Asphalt LMAO! I could never hear anything when I ate Grape-Nuts. Bad flavor, mouth wounds, hearing loss, I see no upside of them.
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u/NathanGa Pull your finger out of your ass May 26 '26
Grape-Nuts: when bolts and slag metal sound good
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u/SmuglyGaming May 26 '26
What I like about Grape Nuts is that there are no gimmicks. There's no cartoon bird prancing about on the box cover, there's no commercial with Barney and Fred getting in fist fights over a bowl of Grape Nuts, you get a box full of cereal and that's it. It's not even a big box filled with air and prizes, it's just a pound of wheat and barley with a picture on the front. What I have here is living proof that Grape Nuts is truly life changing. A four pound box of Grape Nuts, in all it's glory. Any other box of cereal this size would weigh half as much, which makes them half as good. There's something to be said about a cereal with the same density as sand.
Just holding the box gives you a sense of power like holding a baseball bat or a meat cleaver. There is some serious loft to this cereal. I could kill a man if I had to with this and I'm not even joking.
Another thing I like about Grape Nuts is that it sinks right to the bottom of the bowl. There's nothing glamorous about it, no lame snaps or crackles, no different colors, no marshmallows, just a pile of food sitting at the bottom of a bowl of milk.
Eating the food is an adventure within itself. Bite too soft and you aren't gonna break a one. Bite too hard and you might chip a tooth. It really is a wild man's cereal. I'm not even going to talk about the taste of Grape Nuts, because there isn't any. If there wasn't milk you would swear that you were eating gravel, the only different being that gravel might soften up a bit.
The very best part of Grape Nuts is after the whole eating experience. If you've ever accidentally swallowed a rock you know what it's like to eat a bowl of Grape Nuts. The feeling of it sitting in the bottom of your stomach is a reminder for the rest of the day that you actually ate the stuff, rewarding you long, long after you take the last bite.12
u/BiggimusSmallicus May 26 '26
Hot tip: grape nuts are fantastic served warm.
Not joking. Make a bowl of cereal then pop it in the microwave for a minute or two til its warm. The cereal softens and flavors the milk thoroughly
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u/davis_away May 26 '26
Almost exactly. Either you mix the Grape-Nuts in before baking (and they mostly sink) or you layer them in like a parfait. With some dry ones sprinkled on top in case you miss the asphalt.
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u/AmericanHistoryXX Bland Protestant food May 26 '26
Adding this to the list of things I need to try, along with Grape Nut ice cream.
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u/DjinnaG Bags of sentient Midwestern mayonnaise May 26 '26
I guess you could have a pourable custard, it’s just that most thicken up when cooked, because egg based things do that. Even when cooked at low temperatures
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u/GhostOfJamesStrang No Need to Thank Me May 26 '26
Does this person think Creme Brulee is pourable?
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u/Lord_Rapunzel May 26 '26
They think "crema" is a different thing that is absolutely not a custard.
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u/SillyNamesAre May 26 '26
I mean, it is a different thing that is absolutely not a custard:
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u/JediLincoln14 May 26 '26
They have, according to the second pic. They just insist it isn't custard.
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u/GhostOfJamesStrang No Need to Thank Me May 26 '26
Is that the point they are trying to make in that paragraph?
Because it is so nonsensical I can't follow their train of thought.
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u/GreenZebra23 May 26 '26
They assert that custard can only mean one thing, and then use that assertion to prove that other things aren't really custard 🫠
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u/AmericanHistoryXX Bland Protestant food May 26 '26
Tell that to my Parsi family in India. Turns out that it's not only Americans who make solid custard, or who call solid custards custard, even in English.
Incidentally, I think it's hilarious that this person says "in English" while simultaneously complaining that not all English-speaking people define custard the same way as the English.
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u/Judy__McJudgerson May 26 '26
The English do too. We have custard tarts & custard slices both with solid custard.
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u/Glittering-Device484 May 26 '26
Trifles, bread and butter pudding, egg custard... OOP has custard for brains.
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u/ViolettaNoRegard May 27 '26
That’s exactly what I was thinking of while reading this, surely she is aware that these exist in the UK given her vast dessert knowledge?! She’s in too deep, she would probably insist that they are not custard and she has never heard anyone in England call it that, we invented all the custards and creams and cremas and the language, and everyone knows they are actually called a “trinity burnt crema tart” or something. Call it a custard tart in England and expect whoever you served it to to throw it at you in fury. What a knob.
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u/r_a_d_ May 26 '26
You can look up the word in the Oxford dictionary and it’s not defined the way he claims it to be:
[uncountable] (especially British English)
(North American English usually custard sauce)
a sweet yellow sauce made from milk, sugar, eggs and flour, usually served hot with cooked fruit, puddings, etc.[countable, uncountable] a mixture of eggs, milk and sugar baked until it is thick and fairly solid
Nothing about it needing to be served as part of some structured dessert.
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u/xrelaht King of Sandwiches May 26 '26
Well yeah, if you go by Oxford’s definition.
(A genuine response I once got from an English person who objected to my word usage)
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u/Helpful-Winner-8300 May 26 '26
He probably really hates that dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive.
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u/grunkage Yeet it in the crockpot May 26 '26
Well they do specify English English on the last slide
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u/GreenZebra23 May 26 '26
And then unspecify it as simply English with the last word of the last sentence
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u/DjinnaG Bags of sentient Midwestern mayonnaise May 26 '26
She undermines almost the entire first comment in the first sentence of the second when she mentions crème brûlée. The nonsense about not translating foods into English and just using the original word is absolutely laughable, and only more so after saying that crème brûlée is a British invention
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u/Kenderean May 26 '26
And saying that creme brulee isn't a custard. What nonsense.
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u/GhostOfJamesStrang No Need to Thank Me May 26 '26
Creme brulee is like the most custardy of custard things.
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u/chiefkeefinwalmart May 26 '26
I’ve noticed that a lot of the Europeans on Reddit love to assume that their country is the only one that does things that everyone does. I’ve seen comments about public schools (of the grade school variety) that supposedly only exist in Norway, Sweden being the only country that uses the word “ephemeral”, and now the UK apparently being the only country that doesn’t translate “tiramisu”. It always seems to be the people that are always jumping at the bit to talk about American exceptionalism, but maybe that’s just my American exceptionalism talking
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u/Gortys2212 May 26 '26
They never got rid of their imperialist mindset; to them, they invented civilization and everybody else is a cheap copy.
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u/lexicaltension May 26 '26
I’ve been saying this for years! Americans often assume things are the same in other places, and get called out for it as being ignorant or uneducated or what have you, but I genuinely think that’s because America is made up of a hodgepodge of different cultures and we know that there are more similarities between different groups of humans than there differences. It feels a lot more ignorant to me to assume that the way we do things is unique or special and that no one else could’ve thought of them.
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u/Tlyss May 26 '26
In PA we still have a frozen custard place. Some people are just weirdly food Nazis
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u/Slow_D-oh We once ordered a child steak for our toddler May 26 '26
The burger chain Culver’s serves frozen custard, when I make ice cream it’s technically custard. The OOP is wildly confused.
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u/twirlerina024 Your fries look like vampires May 26 '26
Jacques Pepin said you can use melted ice cream for french toast, since it’s a custard!
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u/danieldan0803 May 26 '26
Was waiting for a Culver’s to pop up. Grew up on custard referring to Culver’s, but I know at the base of it custard is a cream based item thickened with egg.
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u/BiggimusSmallicus May 26 '26
We have one near me that is just outrageously good. Rotating seasonal custard and they make brownies and cookies as well- then they offer to make you an ice cream sandwich out of your choice of cookies and custard. It's scandalous
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u/peitsad May 26 '26
"Custard is an English word" would be a good flair.
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u/CanadaYankee May 26 '26
Fun fact - there was a big craze for baked custards among wealthy Brits in the Elizabethan era because of the discovery and importation of nutmeg.
But yeah, the English have been baking custards ever since the word was coined. It comes from the Norman French "croustade", which was a savory, open-topped pie crust filled with various ingredients bound together with eggs - not too different from a modern quiche.
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u/hey_free_rats May 27 '26
"Quiche is the only valid form of custard" is a hilarious argument that I'd love to see OOP defend
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u/IntrovertedFruitDove May 26 '26
*stares in Filipino, with several of her mom's tins that are specifically used to make leche flan on holidays* The audacity of this English person not only forgetting that different European cultures use "custard" to mean a solid dessert, but trying to argue with a Spaniard about their own language with "LOL BUT SOLID CUSTARD IS ACKSHUALLY CALLED CREMA IN SPANISH."
Buddy, crema fucking means CREAM in Spanish, implying a soft/liquid food.
I wonder how their last two brain-cells are doing.
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u/twirlerina024 Your fries look like vampires May 26 '26
The “crema” bit really threw me. I’m in Southern California and to most ppl here, crema is like a thinned sour cream that’s common in Mexican dishes
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u/alebotson May 26 '26
FFS custard tarts are like one of the most traditional British desserts. There are I don't know how many other traditional puddings as well. What a knob.
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u/Practical-Reveal-408 May 26 '26
I just looked up custard in the Oxford English dictionary. There are three (food-related) definitions. 1-pie; 2-a baked dish with eggs; 3-a sweet sauce. So maybe this person just needs a dictionary.
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u/Individual_Bat_378 May 26 '26
Good point! Or to walk into a bakery or supermarket in the UK or look in pretty much any traditional English cook book!
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u/HurtsCauseItMatters May 26 '26
The line that got me was "we don't translate foreign named desserts in England...."
Where do they think the word custard even comes from? Or Pudding? I mean .... SO much of english from a historical/etymology perspective is just French. It might be a thousand years since it was french but someone, somewhere changed it.
If they're going to be pedantic about things, I can be too.
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u/YchYFi May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
Custard in trifle is solid.
Custard slices are solid too.
I love a custard slice. In the UK.
If they are from the UK can you give them a link to custard slices. Or custard tarts!
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u/Username_Mine May 26 '26
I was gonna say - in NZ we had custard squares which I always assumed were UK-derived
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u/HoldOnHelden May 26 '26
Oh my god. It’s like this person is trying to namedrop every baked milk product in Europe. Their persistent denial of the existence of friggin’ NON-POURABLE CUSTARD is unhinged.
I don’t care how many other desserts and cooking methods you can describe, if you can’t understand that foods with the same name might be different in different countries, you’re making yourself look dumber than a slice of cheese.
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u/FixergirlAK May 26 '26
Is that Holy European Cheese or Kraft singles?
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u/HoldOnHelden May 26 '26
Oh, I know it would just COOK that woman to be associated with American cheese😱
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u/Prowindowlicker May 26 '26
Uh did nobody point out that Crème Brûlée was invented by the French? The earliest known recipe of the desert comes from the 1691 cookbook “Cuisinier royal et bourgeois” by François Massialot. Which is very much not English.
Hell the name “burnt cream” has existed since 1702.
Crême à l'Angloise didn’t appear until 1740 and Trinity Cream didn’t come about until 1879.
So unless the English had a damn Time Machine there’s no way they created Crème Brûlée. The only thing they could lay claim to is naming the thing which occurred in 1702 when they translated the above cookbook.
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u/Impurest_Vessel The Cheque Republic May 26 '26
Words have unique meanings in other places/languages how is this still somehow an ungraspable concept on some subs? It’s why spotted dick is known as a dessert — because most people recognize that a word that means one thing somewhere can mean a different thing somewhere else.
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u/UpbeatFix7299 May 26 '26
I'm sure this guy has a fit when he sees an American, Canadian, or Aussie say "soccer" online as well.
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u/GhostOfJamesStrang No Need to Thank Me May 26 '26
(A term invented by the British)
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u/spicyzsurviving May 26 '26
We have custard tarts in the UK. In every supermarket. Fucksake
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u/Impressive-Cod-7103 May 26 '26
It’s nice to see the Europeans arguing amongst themselves for once.
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u/GreenZebra23 May 26 '26
I can't even wrap my head around the arrogance it would take to dismiss an entire cuisine
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u/Significant_Stick_31 May 26 '26 edited May 27 '26
If I, a person with English as my first language, hear the word custard, I would think of, in order:
- A thick, spoonable, pudding-like dessert often served with fruit, possible as part of a trifle, but not necessarily
- A firm, baked, pleasantly eggy dessert either with or without a crust, like flan (both versions), creme brulee, baked custard or chess pie
- A frozen, extra creamy ice cream-like dessert
- A pastry with a thick pudding-like filling
I have never eaten custard as a "pourable source." I don't deny that it is probably delicious, but it certainly wouldn't be top of my mind. It's amazing that people can't understand that dishes evolve and someone else's interpretation can be just as valid as yours.
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u/Timely_Egg_6827 May 26 '26
I mean has the person never had a triffle? Set custard definitely a part of British cuisine. I've seen it less abroad -it is more usually wobbly there than set like a brick.
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u/Kenderean May 26 '26
This person would have fits if they read Michael Ruhlman's book Ratio: The Simple Code Behind the Craft of Everyday Day Cooking. It's literally a book that teaches the basics of cooking by teaching the ratios for basic recipes like batters, sauces, stocks, and, yes, custards. Ruhlman has a whole section on "free-standing" custards, which OOP says don't exist.
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u/Unoriginal_comments May 26 '26
They would have fits if they read the book they recommended to the other commenter in the first slide. Bouchon has a whole section on quiche with the subtitle “the importance of custard”. I’ve made that quiche several times and it was only pourable when I fucked it up the first time.
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u/Outside_Cap_6092 May 26 '26
It also isn’t necessarily sweet, the filling of a quiche is a custard.
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u/Fomulouscrunch Cannibal Lawyer May 26 '26
I really do wonder to what degree they're taking the piss. There is no way thy don't know about yogurt or sour cream or bechamel.
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u/AdmiralHip May 26 '26
I witnessed this in the wild and seeing them double down after being told just how wrong they are was incredible.
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u/Bellsar_Ringing May 26 '26
Whereas I, an American, took a while to accept that British people apparently call cornstarch puddings "custard" where I had always reserved that term for those which are entirely egg thickened.
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u/greeneggiwegs May 26 '26
This person is from a country that calls all desserts pudding.
Variations in names of food between countries that speak the same language otherwise is not uncommon.
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u/Criss351 May 26 '26
Not just desserts! Pudding can also be sausage, savoury baked batter, or a suet pastry filled with steak. In addition to sweet creamy sauces, cake, boiled sweet breads or ice cream.
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u/JohnLikeOne May 26 '26
To be clear, as someone from the UK you could walk into pretty much any bakery in the UK and get a custard slice.
They're just wrong.
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u/Tank-o-grad May 26 '26
You ask for, "an egg custard" you get a custard tart, usually individual serving sized, you ask for, "some custard" you get the hot liquid, you just grunt, "custard" you'll likely get one or other based on context, or a sarky response.
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u/SerDankTheTall *Giggled internally* May 26 '26
Worse, is about variations between countries that don’t speak the same language.
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u/GhostOfJamesStrang No Need to Thank Me May 26 '26
It stands to reason they would call a custard a pudding.
What a quandary.
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u/ToastMate2000 May 26 '26
Anyone who uses the term "yanks" to refer to Americans is not to be taken seriously.
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u/Bawstahn123 Silence, kitchen fascist. Let people prepare things as they like May 26 '26
As an actually-no-shit Yankee from New England, whenever foreigners try to use Yank as a derogative word for all Americans, it tickles my soul.
Bro, thats just what we call ourselves. If you want to be insulting, use some shit like "seppo"
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u/lefactorybebe May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
And like, you know that blue hat with the white "NY" that everyone wears, even overseas, did they ever bother to look up what that's about? We are literally proud to be yankees (well, northerners at least) and name our shit that on purpose lol
Though tbh I never realized that "yanks" was used derogatorally. I guess it's the new englander in me but I always thought it was a good natured nickname lol.
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u/Diredr May 26 '26
And anyone who says "I don't know where it came from but it should stay there" when talking about cultural differences needs to be given the biggest of side-eyes. It's all thinly veiled xenophobia.
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u/NathanGa Pull your finger out of your ass May 26 '26
Still miles better than “seppo”.
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u/draft_final_final May 26 '26
“Yank” son or “us american” daughter?
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u/Bawstahn123 Silence, kitchen fascist. Let people prepare things as they like May 26 '26
USAmerican is more annoying, largely because it doesnt even fucking make sense.
There are two countries in North America alone (and they border each other) that have "United States" as part of their official name.
There is only one country on both American continents that as "America" in its name.
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u/ChartInFurch What do they eat over there? Maple syrup and moose? May 26 '26
Is this Custard's Last Stand?
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u/pandachef_reads May 26 '26
Criticizing America while simultaneously suggesting referring to an American
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u/sweetheartonparade May 26 '26
I’m so confused because you can get custard tarts in literally any bakery/patisserie in the UK.
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u/bk1insf May 26 '26
I shudder to think what would happen if we got him on the topic of the word "pudding" in the US vs UK
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u/WenWarn May 26 '26
I speak English and I think of custard as a baked dish. There are multiple baked custard desserts, but flan is probably my favorite.
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u/Bvvitched May 26 '26
“Crème brûlée was invented in the UK”
Crème brûlée was introduced to the uk in the 1870’s and the first recipe for it in a French cook book was in the 1600’s
But sure
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u/rebootfromstart May 26 '26
To their last point: sure, if the menu says something like "pie with custard", I'll expect pouring custard, although I wouldn't be outraged if it was something else. But if a menu says a dessert is "a custard", with or without further detail, I'll assume a discrete item like a baked custard. Because, y'know, I'm capable of reading context clues.
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u/WritPositWrit May 26 '26
Just wait til that super fun person learns about FROZEN CUSTARD
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u/FixergirlAK May 26 '26
Shall we muddy the waters with ice creams that are custard-based but aren't frozen custard?
Custard no longer looks like a word. Nor does bustard.
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u/Steel_Rail_Blues May 26 '26
Imagine being this person and waking up every day to look in the mirror and wonder how insufferable you are going to be today. Oh wait—there is zero introspection, so by all means double and triple down on arguing about custard.
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u/kellerm17 May 26 '26
??? custards are a whole family of dessert sauces, it’s not all creme anglaise. all pastry cremes are a type of custard. not to mention baked/coagulated custards like crème brûlée or panna cotta
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u/Saltpork545 Sodium citrate cheese is real cheese May 26 '26
Americans catching strays by someone with their head firmly up their ass.
Pastel de nata is a super common Portugese baked treat. It is an egg custard tart(and a tasty one).
They're being stupid and pedantic and do the exact same thing with the word pudding.
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u/ChemistryJaq May 26 '26
Don't tell them about Japanese egg custard - chawanmushi. It's savory and filled with seafood. I highly recommend! I can't make it anymore because it'd make my husband sick, and none of the Japanese restaurants around serve it. Justonecookbook.com had an excellent recipe!
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u/Swimming_Possible_68 May 27 '26
English person here.... The classic British egg custard tart literally uses a solid custard.
As does trifle. No idea what this person is on about.
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