AIBU to think this was NOT a ploughmans lunch?

[Yellowbird54321]

I was chatting to my sister on the phone yesterday when she mentioned she had made her kids a ploughman's lunch and they had really enjoyed it.

One of her kids is a bit of a fussy eater so I asked if he had eaten all of it, including the apple; this is when she admitted there was no apple in the ploughman's!

When I asked what was in it she listed: cheese, ham, lettuce, coleslaw, bread and pickle. No meat knocker!!!

AIBU to think a ploughman's lunch without apple and meat knocker is not actually a ploughman's lunch at all?

Hopeless press the report button and give reason for classics...

Great thread. Ploughmans to me is cheddar, bread, salad and pickle. Meat or pork pie are extras, same as other cheese or coleslaw. Apple sounds ok but not essential.

Never heard of meat knockers or long eggs either!

It's not that funny.

Not something I have a lot of but I had a veggie ploughmans at a very naice place in Dorset last year. It was local cheese, lettuce, hard boiled egg, pickle and crusty bread with proper butter. The meat version substituted the egg for ham.

a ploughman's is a huge hunk of cheese, crusty bread, pickled onion, branston pickle & salad.

Absolutely! All this talk of pork pies and apples is wrong. That's not a ploughman's. It's Random Cold Stuff On A Plate.

Also, there's no such thing as a "veggie" ploughman's because the proper version is already meat-free and is just cheese, a big old chunk of bread and butter, and some Branston. The luxury option including pickled onions and a spot of that salady sort of garnish that you aren't really expected to eat because it's already been "recycled".

can 1950's pub food really be traditional? McDonald's has a longer heritage

I love this thread!

I'm from Lancashire and have never heard the term meat knocker for pork pie

I live in the US. There is nowhere within 1000 miles where I can get a meat knocker pork pie, branston or any other of the necessary ingredients of a good ploughmans.

Would it be indulgent to fly home for the weekend JUST to have a ploughman's? My parents love going out for a pub lunch, so they'll be happy (if I bit surprised) if I call in on them and suggest it.

The modern 'ploughman' was a marketing tool of the Cheese Board and consisted of cheese, bread and pickle. Anything else is an extra. I think your SIL's child ate a good selection of food.

I'm aghast that some people don't know that Melton Mowbray is the spiritual home of the pork pie!

Oh yes my sisters DC did eat a good selection of food penfold however they did not eat a ploughman's lunch due to lack of aforementioned apple and knocker

Is the 'Cheese Board' a real thing - like a sort of regulatory body for cheese production? Is that where the term 'cheese board' (like the cheese board at Christmas) actually comes from?

You'll note how quickly I found the long egg video. It is fascinating. i first encountered them back when salad bars were popular, they came frozen and I sliced them up.

I think the cheese board was for marketing cheese, it had been restricted so long maybe they figured new young housewives wouldnt remember what it was?

I dont think it has anything to do with boards for serving cheese.

can 1950's pub food really be traditional? McDonald's has a longer heritage

it did used to be common to pay workers and apprentices a certain amount of money, a certain amount of beer, and measures of foods like bread, cheese, meat, grain etc. (as well as housing and even clothing to work in) the amounts and items varying by job, gender, age of worker, etc. so it is likely that the standard lunch to give ploughmen in the season you hired extra men for that particular work was beer, bread, and cheese, at least. Probably not chutney. But maybe an apple. The practice was dying out by WWI and I think outlawed in favor of cash wages only between the wars. So, post war, it would have seemed nostalgically rustic.

The making of those long eggs seems a massive faff. Surely it would have been loads easier to invent chickens to lay long ones. Cut out the middle man so to speak.

Cross a chicken with a sausage dog perhaps?

It is most definitely not safe to google 'meat knocker'.

I was totally on board with the long eggs until they froze them.

That's when they stopped looking like food.

It reminds me a bit of the "fish sticks" with the orange stripe down the side, that are apparently extruded like the coating for electrical cables

You guys all have to go and watch the OTHER video, how to cook an egg in a potato. Really. It's quite something.

I also call a pork pie a meat knocker so it must be a regional thing specific to us. I'm from north Lancashire.

Or, I'm related to the OP

Both DH and I are Northern born and bred and neither of us has ever heard of a meat knocker - in any sense of the word.

Anyway wasn't a ploughman's lunch invented by the Milk Marketing Board in the 70s, or somewhere about then, to encourage people to eat more cheese?

Yep the Cheese Board was real and an apple isn't a compulsory element.

Gala pie contains long eggs.

I won't tell you the story, from my teenage, way back in the last century, of what a young man did to a gala pie after he had extracted the long egg.

I still need brain bleach!

Pickled onion! A Ploughman's lunch has to have a pickled onion.

How come nobody has mentioned pickled onions so far?

Cheese, crusty bread, butter, pickled onion and Branston with a bit of limp lettuce on the side which no - one eats. Definitely no pork pies, meat knockers, ham or eggs as I love ploughman's but don't like any of those things.