Lancashire is a county on the west coast of England, on the Irish sea.
The county is smaller now that it used to be. The size was reduced politically in 1974. It used to include Manchester and Liverpool to the south, and northern bits of it were taken away and added to Cumbria. Some food writers still consider those areas, food-wise, to be part of Lancashire.
Traditional sweets in Lancashire include: Eccles Cake, Chorley Cake, Goosnargh Cake, Parkin Cake, Sad Cake, Sly Cake, and Wycoller Cake.
Well known traditional savouries are Lancashire Hotpot, Lancashire Cheese and, some would argue, fish and chips, plumping for a Lancashire as opposed to London creation of the dish (see entry on Fish and Chips for the dispute.) Other lesser well-known Lancashire savouries include Morecambe Bay Shrimps and cow-heel pie.
Well-known modern food producers include Goosnargh Farms for their fowl, Kirkham Lancashire Cheese, Blackstick’s Velvet Cheese, and Ribble Valley beef and lamb (not to mention Melrow Salads, inventor of the Strawmato Tomato.)
Pie figures large in Lancashire cooking culture, and is popular all over the county, particularly savoury pies. Meat and potato pie is very traditional, as is
Friday Pie, aka Butter pie. Sold on Fridays when you weren’t supposed to have meat, it just has buttered potato inside.
The big commercial maker of pies in Lancashire is Poole’s Pies of Wigan, which sell both personal size and family size. The people in Wigan appear to be particularly avid pie-eaters: people there used to even make a sandwich out of a personal-used pie, by putting it between two slices of barm bread.
History Notes
The first place in England where Potatoes were grown outside an experimental patch was in Lancashire, as a curious delicacy.
Sources
Bateman, Michael. Parts that taste forgot. London: The Independent. 9 January 1994.
Fort, Matthew. Divided by pie: Matthew Fort gets to grips with Lancashire’s pie culture. Manchester: The Guardian. 10 February 2007.
