Corned Beef for St. Patty

Filed in archive Morsels of Info , Traditions on March 15, 2006

They have such love for life! And I just love the Irish for it. Don't you? Perhaps I find it easy to relate because the Irish also come from a culture with close family ties. Of course, when we talk about family ties, food is always in the equation!

For St. Patrick's Day this year, food and drink will be flowing. Tables will be groaning with traditional meals and of course, green-tinged beer! What comes to mind when we think of traditional Irish food? Corned beef and cabbage! But then, that's not traditional Irish, it's not what they have in ireland on the patron's holiday.

I didn't realise that till recently, when I was researching something on saints and mythology. I suppose corned beef and cabbage is one myth I didn't think I'd stumble on! So, how's that again?

In Ireland, cabbage is traditional but it is eaten with Irish bacon on St. Patrick's Day. In the early Irish-American settlements, bacon was beyond the reach of the immigrants that they substituted the cheaper alternative, corned beef. So was born an Irish-American tradition.

This tradition has been so ingrained that the predominantly Catholic revelers are dispensed from abstaining from corned beef on St. Patrick's Day if it falls on a Friday within Lent.

This is a classic example of an emergent tradition identified to a nationalities via migrants. I'll write more of those soon.