I was watching part 2 of Andrew Marr's History of Britain on BBC iPlayer earlier, which this week was looking at events of the 1950s. Marr mentioned Italian rarebit, which was what pizza was called at the time (I mentioned in a recent post that the word pizza only entered Chambers Dictionary in 1972, having become familiar to most people in Britain only in the 1960s - although judging from the citations in the OED the word pizza was in use in the 19th century).
In 1950s Britain people ate Welsh rarebit, toast with a spicy, herby, cheesy topping (Delia Smith's recipe here). Note that Delia uses the term Welsh rabbit, which was the original term (she explains why she prefers 'rabbit' in this article). No-one is quite sure what the word 'rabbit' means here. Some say that poor people could not afford rabbit, so had to make do with cheese on toast instead. Others say that Welsh tenants were not allowed to hunt for rabbits on the land of their English landlords. There were once English and Scottish rabbits (or rarebits). In the English version the bread was soaked in red wine and in the Scottish version the cheese mixture was grilled on both sides. There's a Yorkshire rarebit too, which includes bacon, and an Irish rarebit, made with stout.
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