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Bacon

Most bacon sold in England is tank-cured. However, dry-cured bacon, which is like American bacon, is also available here. With dry-cured bacon, you don't need to add fat to the pan before cooking as it yields plenty of its own fat (which may later be used for cooking and flavouring other dishes); also, with dry-cured bacon, the entire strip (rasher) when fried becomes crisp so it's the kind to use when a recipe says to 'crumble the bacon on top [of a salad, etc.]'.

I learned about dry-cured bacon when Michele Barber, an American friend who's lived here for over 20 years, rang excitedly one day to say she'd found dry-cured bacon at the Uttoxeter Farmers' Market, and that it cooks just like American bacon! Many local butchers can also get dry-cured bacon for you and occasionally you can find it in certain supermarkets.

Cabbage, Napa

This is the same cabbage as the one called Chinese leaf,  commonly sold in British supermarkets. It is also known in the US as celery cabbage.

Casserole

In England, casserole  refers to a covered ovenproof dish used for the slow cooking of meat and vegetables; also, the meal cooked in the casserole is sometimes referred to as a casserole  (e.g., casserole of chicken ). Nowadays, an American might call this same meal a stew, but not  a casserole -- in the US, the meal cooked in a 'casserole dish', and referred to as a 'casserole', is something that, in England, might be referred to as a pudding.  A typical American casserole may contain a mixture of noodles, pasta, or rice; beans, meat or fish; some vegetables; all bound together with a sauce (e.g., a white sauce), and often having a cheese and/or cracker or bread crumb topping. To brown or crisp the topping, American casseroles are baked without the lid on. By the way, there was a time when the British meaning of casserole (i.e., the stew type of meal) was also the American meaning. In my 1975 edition of Joy of Cooking,  the authors regret America's loss of the original meaning of casserole, and refer to the pudding type of dish as a 'mock casserole'. But language is a living thing and 'mock' or not, this is the currently understood meaning of casserole in the US.

Dishwashing

In the US, we say we're 'washing the dishes'; here we say we're doing the washing up or washing the pots, but the real difference isn't in how we say it but in how we wash them. In America, we wash and then rinse the dishes, and once they're dry, we simply put them away. In England, we do not rinse the dishes (or pots) -- we just stack them in the rack, suds and all, and leave them to drain. This difference has caused many a marital rift (understatement); indeed, I've heard more than one American claim that drinking from unrinsed glasses can make you ill. Which method is used probably does not matter, but to maintain harmony in American-British marriages, one person or the other will have to compromise. Since the British don't rinse the dishes, their method conserves water, but they then must polish the glasses before putting them away; the American method uses more water but once the glasses dry, there is no need to 'polish' them.

Flour

(NB: this entry
is covered here 
in more detail
than in the book)

It is the gluten, a substance formed by the protein in flour, which gives dough its elasticity, enabling it to rise when gas bubbles are produced by a raising agent. It is also the gluten, or lack thereof, that causes the greatest headaches for Americans and Canadians who try to bake in England. 'Hard' spring wheats, like those grown in the US and Canada, produce 'strong' flours which contain 10-15% gluten and have little free starch -- hard wheats are preferred for bread-making. Wheats grown in milder climates such as England's, however, are 'soft' wheats which have a high starch content and produce a 'soft' or 'weak' flour containing 7-10% gluten -- soft wheats are used for cake-making and other products that need to be tender and crumbly. Although American 'all-purpose' flour and British plain  flour are each blends of hard and soft flours, the American all-purpose flour is the stronger of the two so, to substitute, use British strong plain flour  (or bread flour ) rather than the normal plain flour  -- at least where yeast breads and other yeast products are concerned. By the way, plain  flour simply means flour without any raising agent -- this is to differentiate it from self-raising  flour, which is much more common in Britain than in the US (self-raising  flour is usually a softer flour).

For yeast breads, éclairs, choux puffs, etc., use strong plain flour  or plain bread flour.   For quick breads, cakes, and cookies, normal plain flour  will do.

In the US, to mince something means to finely chop it. In England, 'mince' is usually used as an adjective, as in minced beef  ('ground beef', US), and this adjective is often shorted to a noun: 'mince' (meaning minced beef or other minced meat).

Canola oil is rapeseed oil which has been modified to make it safe for consumption. Rapeseed oil contains erucic acid -- an acid which, "when fed to animals in large quantities, causes adverse changes in the circulatory system" (Good Housekeeping's New Cookery Encyclopedia). For this reason, the maximum allowed content of erucic acid in rapeseed oil for food use is 5% -- this is 45% less than the amount of erucic acid which naturally occurs in rapeseed oil (information supplied by Peter Barnes of PJ Barnes & Associates). According to The Food Lover's Companion, canola oil is the most widely used oil in Canada and is commonly referred to there as lear oil (low erucic acid rapeseed).

Peppermint Patties

York Peppermint Patties are sweets coated in dark chocolate, with a thick and fairly solid peppermint-flavoured fondant centre -- not a creamy, runny centre like the ones in After-Eight mints.

As Peppermint Patties are not sold in England (other than perhaps in speciality shops), I've come up with a recipe for mock Peppermint Patties:

Ingredients: dark chocolate, melted; ready-to-roll white icing (sold boxed); and essence of peppermint.

Instructions: Roll out the icing, sprinkle on it a few drops of the peppermint essence, fold the icing over, and roll it out again. Do this a few more times, and then roll it to the thickness you want. Press out rounds using a pastry cutter or glass. Coat the peppermint discs with melted chocolate and chill. Store in the refrigerator or in a cool room.

Pudding

Terry's Chocolate Orange Mousse, available in packets in powdered form, makes a nice substitute for American chocolate pudding -- if  you can find it. For some reason it suddenly went missing from all the supermarkets in Burton, and many of the other chocolate mousse mixes just don't compare.

Pudding, in England, can mean any number of things: it is commonly used here as another word for dessert; it often refers to a steamed pudding, such as Christmas pudding; or it may refer to certain savoury meals, such as steak & kidney pudding. To an American however, 'pudding' usually refers to a creamy, sweet dessert -- essentially a thick custard. American puddings are made with milk, sugar, eggs (optional), and a thickener (e.g., corn flour). Vanilla or chocolate puddings are the most common and these, plus endless other varieties, are sold both boxed (in powdered form) as well as ready-prepared in the US. Although steamed puddings are not unheard of in the US, they are certainly the less common of the two. Incidentally, Americans do not refer to dessert as 'pudding'.

To make your own chocolate pudding:

Combine in a heavy saucepan: 4 oz. (115g) plain chocolate, 3 packed level tablespoons light brown sugar, and 16 oz. (470ml) milk [soy milk works fine, too]. Whisk the mixture constantly over a gentle heat, until the chocolate has melted and everything is combined. Set aside.

In a separate container, combine 3 level tablespoons of corn flour with a dash of salt, and add about 3/4 cup (or around 1/4 British pint) of the hot chocolate mixture; whisk until the corn flour dissolves. Pour this mixture back into the saucepan, return it to a very low heat, and whisk for around 8-10 minutes, or until it becomes thick and glossy. Remove from the heat, stir in 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence, and transfer to a serving bowl (or bowls) and chill completely before serving.

(Recipe based on Chocolate Pudding recipe in Mollie Katzen's The Enchanted Broccoli Forest.)

Pudding, plum

Christmas pudding
Plum pudding is a steamed pudding and, despite its name, contains no plums; in England it is called Christmas pudding.

Stuffing, turkey

American and Canadian stuffing (or 'dressing', as it's also called) is very moist, comprised primarily of breadcrumbs, and is cooked in the body cavity of the bird. British stuffing on the other hand, is dry, uses hardly any breadcrumbs, and nowadays, is not usually cooked in the bird's body cavity; at most, some is cooked in the neck cavity and the remainder baked in the oven, or rolled into balls and fried. If the bird is not thoroughly cooked there is a risk of food poisoning, and that is why most British cooks no longer stuff the bird's body cavity. However, if the right precautions are taken, then stuffing the bird is safe. These precautions are: stuff the bird immediately before cooking it; cook it all the way through (the centre of the breast meat should reach 170ºF/76ºC and the centre of the thigh meat, 185ºF/85ºC); and remove the stuffing from the cooked turkey before refrigerating them separately. I (and most other Americans) have all our lives eaten stuffing which has been cooked in the bird's body cavity, and I don't recall ever hearing of any illness resulting from this; we've either been observing the rules or we're more robust than the health officials think.

Tipping

As regards food service tipping, in the US people tip in nearly all instances, with the exceptions being places like McDonald's, roadside food stands, etc. Tips in the US are based on 15% of the bill (before tax), and tipping is not considered an option -- if the service was acceptable, the waiter or waitress will expect a tip. If the service was poor, then an insulting tip (like a penny) is left, but leaving a mixture of silver, and copper (and notes, if the bill was high) is a compliment, indicating you'd emptied your pockets. In England however, the rules for food service tipping are by no means as clearly defined. In London (and perhaps other major cities), some restaurants add a 10%-15% gratuity to the bill, so no need to tip as it's already been taken (always check your bill first to see). In other parts of the UK, however, it is left up to the diner; many people only tip if the service has been exceptional, and then only in the up-market restaurants, not in cafes or pubs (unless it's an up-market pub). How much one should tip here is vague as well; rather than a percentage of the bill, my husband leaves one or two pounds (when he does tip), but I can't figure out his method. Probably the best plan in England is to follow what the other diners do (unless their accent is American).

Tube pan

Tube pans (or tube tins) are designed for baking angel food cakes (angel cakes ). They're around 10" in diameter and have high sides, a high conical tube at their centre, and some have a removable base -- the newer tube pans are often teflon-coated. Since angel food cakes are cooled upsidedown, some tube pans come with supports on their outer rim. If you do not have a tube pan, then a teflon-coated Kuglehopf pan should do, as long as you don't mind your angel food cake having fluted sides.

Wafer biscuits

In England, wafer biscuits  refer to rectangular or triangular waffle-textured biscuits -- basically like a flat ice cream cone -- and these are inserted into a dish of ice cream as an accompaniment. Although ice cream wafer biscuits may  be available in the US, I've never seen them there. However, we do have 'vanilla wafers' in the US, and these are small, light and airy, circular cookies, made with egg whites; they're eaten on their own or used as a base for puddings (such as banana pudding).

Zwieback

Although zwieback bread resembles a thick version of Melba toast -- zwieback being around 3/8" thick (~9mm) while Melba toast is around 1/8" thick -- in flavour they have more in common with rusks,  with the first two ingredients of each being wheat flour and sugar. As of this writing, zwieback are only available from specialty shops in the UK.