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The Irish For What is with our love affair with coleslaw?

Darach Ó Séaghdha looks back at the introduction of coleslaw to Ireland and wonders why exactly we embraced this strange mix of veg and mayo.

THERE IS A French proverb that says that heaven never made as perfect a marriage as that between pears and cheese.

As well as giving practical advice to try this combination of flavours, it implies that unlikely pairings can work out very well – this is certainly the emphasis of the proverb’s Italian version “do not let the peasant know how good cheese is with pears”. 

In the Irish culinary tradition, a different unlikely pairing comes to mind: the serving of lasagne with dollops of cold, creamy coleslaw. While this isn’t unknown in other countries, it is particularly enduring on this island. But how come? And when did this start to be considered a shibboleth telling of a rural-urban divide?

The Ministry of Food

Coleslaw was first mentioned in an Irish newspaper in September 1942. The Ministry of Food, a wartime department established to teach families how to prepare meals with the rations available, announced “American Week” in the Belfast Telegraph.

It suggested some all-American recipes as a way to make US soldiers billeted with local families feel less homesick (other suggested recipes included pumpkin pie and baked beans).

The coleslaw of the 1940s would not be recognisable to modern diners, however: a recipe from 1947 calls for the inclusion of sugar and pineapple juice.

Seasonality

Refrigerators were still a status symbol in the Ireland of the 50s and 60s, which led to chilled foods such as prawn cocktails, potato salad and coleslaw being the height of sophistication.

So when delicatessens became more widespread in the 1960s and 1970s in Ireland, they appealed to these tastes directly. Coleslaw would have been sold side by side with pre-cooked lasagnes, and the trend of serving them together may very well have its roots in this coincidence.

However, a more pressing motive was responsible for the combination becoming widespread. In a lasagne recipe published in 1977, Georgina Campbell advised readers that while the very best thing to have with a lasagne was a fresh green salad, a bowl of coleslaw would be easier and cheaper to get when such ingredients were not in season.

In this sense, the combination of coleslaw with lasagne is a reminder of a time when importing perishable green vegetables by plane from a country with a very different climate seemed completely ridiculous. We know better now, of course.

Decline

Coleslaw’s popularity, with or without lasagne next to it, continued unhindered throughout the 1980s.

The Irish for coleslaw is cálslá, which wasn’t deemed relevant enough for the 1977 Foclóir, perhaps an indication of how cosmopolitan the dish was seen at that time.

By the 1990s, however, change was afoot as more options became available to a more well-travelled population. Then in 1996, there was a turning point when the Circuit Court ruled in favour of a woman who had contracted food poisoning from supermarket coleslaw while pregnant.

The court heard that coleslaw provided an ideal environment for listeria to multiply and that this was particularly dangerous for pregnant women. 

Although normally the foods that are deemed forbidden to the pregnant are highly prestigious – coffee, soft cheese, sushi – this ruling had the opposite effect on coleslaw.

Rebirth?

Coleslaw became a punchline throughout the Celtic Tiger, but just as previously uncool foodstuffs like Brussels sprouts and coddle have started to make a comeback, the creamy cabbage and carrot combo may very well be ripe for reinvention. 

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    Mute Seymour business
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    Feb 28th 2017, 8:36 PM

    Always seemed to me to be genuinely committed to getting to the truth. Rare enough in big party politics.

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    Mute Randal McNally
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    Feb 28th 2017, 11:50 PM

    Rare ? You mean “Never Seen” !

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    Mute MuckyMoo
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    Feb 28th 2017, 8:35 PM

    RIP. One of the good guys in politics

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    Mute Euro is Dead
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:48 PM

    Cometh the hour, Cometh the man. He will be sorely missed. Ar Dheis De go Raibh a Anam

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    Mute Willie Bill Bryan
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    Feb 28th 2017, 8:51 PM

    One of the good ones RIP Peter

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    Mute John McGuirk
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    Feb 28th 2017, 8:44 PM

    This is a beaufifully written obituary. I’m always first to criticise the Journal when it gets it wrong, but this is a great piece of Journalism. Well done Orla Ryan.

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    Mute Tony Daly
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    Feb 28th 2017, 8:37 PM

    He was well intentioned, principled, noble, decent and fair minded.

    He saw through thevdysfunctionality and malgovernance of the Banks, as well as the deleterious effect of the banking abuses on society.

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    Mute Charlie Wrex
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:01 PM

    Always struck me as a man of principle, good humour, and great insight. One of the good guys.

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    Mute Sean @114
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:27 PM

    His tussles with Vincent Brown were legendary. RIP.

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    Mute Emmet O'Keeffe
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:21 PM

    Always managed to get right under Vincent Browne’s skin.

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    Mute Patrick j Brady
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:27 PM

    RIP….a man of principles. . Called it as it was…. sadly not many td’s like him…

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    Mute FlopFlipU
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:25 PM

    A good apple in a barrel of bad ones rip

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    Mute Paul Lane
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    Feb 28th 2017, 10:13 PM

    A genuinly good guy, albeit I disagreed with a lot he had to say, but he was always very brave on Vincent Browne and sadly missed. What a loss

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    Mute Sparxz1
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:58 PM

    No place in Lenster house for Men of High Calibre and noble principle !
    The Face of Kenny & so-called Dr O’Reilly laughing at dying man(he had already being diagnosed).
    I wonder how many are thinking today, that Lenister house cannot be reformed, & will have to be abolished to some how save the Irish Nation.

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    Mute Diarmuid Doran
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    Feb 28th 2017, 9:43 PM

    Nice tribute Orla.

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    Mute Phil O'Donnell
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    Feb 28th 2017, 10:31 PM

    Sincere condolences to your family and friends. Would not have agreed with you on all policies but was a huge admirer. In my opinion a person of hige integrity and in politics for all the right reasons. R.I.P..

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    Mute Kerry Blake
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    Feb 28th 2017, 8:44 PM

    “Kenny said he was “deeply saddened” by Mathews’ death” hypocrite…..

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    Mute Mick Rick Jones
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    Mar 13th 2017, 7:42 PM

    @Kerry Blake: your comment is spot on, and can be extended to others in Fine Gael and Labour leadership , who drove Matthews and other decent people of conscience, out of the Dail.

    Their hypocrisy extends along the Fine Gael front bench, to Labour as well. No room for conscience on abortion there.

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    Mute the truth
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    Feb 28th 2017, 10:51 PM

    struck me as a genuine fella who wanted to make a difference then realised he hadn’t a hope of being allowed do anything .

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    Mute Noel Holland
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    Feb 28th 2017, 10:42 PM

    RIP peter mathews. That u tube video is worth a watch….

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    Mute Randal McNally
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    Feb 28th 2017, 11:48 PM

    Yes. He asked the hard questions and got few answers from our “Closed Ranked” political and unaccountable civil service parasites ! RIP

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    Mute Aindriú Purfield
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    Mar 1st 2017, 3:57 AM

    Noonan knows nothing about Economics or Finance.

    He’s just a perfect lackey for the ECB and the eurogroup and that is why he was put where he was.

    History has already absolved honest and intelligent politicians like Matthews and shown up Noonan and Kenny for the slimy subhuman worms that they are.

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    Mute William Kelly
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    Mar 1st 2017, 8:11 AM

    Our electoral system yields up some TDs of quality, who stand out from the party foot soldiers as professional, & strong in character, & who genuinely seem intent on contributing to building a better society. Mr. Mathews was one that few, but the stultified & whipped party system failed to recognise & give scope for that powerful intellectual commitment to the community. That his challenges to the “system” we’re smothered by his own party is yet another bad reflection on their recent form.

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    Mar 1st 2017, 12:05 PM

    He was thoughtful, reasonable, well spoken and his own man. Very sad for his family. RIP

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    Mute KerryBlueMike
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    Mar 1st 2017, 10:21 PM

    Rip Peter, you did well sir.

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    Mute Mick Rick Jones
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    Mar 13th 2017, 7:37 PM

    Peter Matthews bravely, with a few others, opposed the Kenny/Labour abortion bill in 2013..

    Like Lucinda Creighton, B Timmons,T Flanagan — all Fine Gael TDs, driven from Fine Gael and the Dail, shamefully refused a free, conscientious vote — Peter Matthews, for his honest principles and stand aginst abortion, was also driven out of Fine Gael, for upholding their election promise not to legalise abortion.

    I hope none of the Fine Gael/Labour pro abortion hierarchy, who refused him and others that free vote of conscience on abortion, show their shameful faces at his funeral, or insult his decent memory now, with their customary crocodile tears of condolence.

    In 2013, we saw how they treated him and others.

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