Food folklore

[AllieDeCorbeau]

Hello,
I am wondering if anybody has any food folklore to share? Or any related to sewing, spinning wool, weaving, etc...
i'm doing research for a fiction book. It takes place in Britain before the start of World War II. I know there was some folklore about never giving your husband a perfectly knitted sweater lest he run of in it.

so I'm looking for this kind of stuff but around food. Even if you have one that you don't think was widespread, I would love to hear it.

thank you in advance

Coins in Christmas pudding
Wishbone
Carrots make you see in the dark

As a maker of elderflower wine and jelly, I thought that this didn't sound right! It sounds like Gran caught a chinese whisper.
Mother-will-die is, apparently, Cow Parsley. It's given its gruesome name to stop their children picking it or (more to the point) similar-looking, poisonous umbellifers e.g. hemlock

Ah, my gran did get very mixed up! Just remember her yelling at us for bringing those berries into the house!

Throwing salt over your shoulder if you spill some.

There's a whole new interesting sub-plot, OP: garbled folklore!
As with any information, it pays to check your sauces sources.

I don’t know if this will be of any interest, but my grandma used to cover all the mirrors and make sure any silverware was put away during thunderstorms, in case they “drew the lightning”. This was in Yorkshire, in the 60s.

You have to tell your bees that a family member has died, so the hives are covered in black cloth.

Christmas pudding should only be stirred clockwise.

To cure a cold, put raw onion slices inside your socks, against the soles of your feet, overnight. Peg on nose optional.

Porridge should be stirred with a spurtle, not a spoon.

Always crush your eggshells (when you have finished with the,) or witches will use them as boats and will cause storms at sea.

Never pick blackberries after Michaelmas as the devil has pissed on them.

Always ask the witch's permission before harvesting elder berries.

If you take the last slice of bread or cake, you'll get a handsome husband. One of my aunts, who'd be close to 100 now if she were still alive, used to say this.

Bread baked at Easter was holy and would last for a long time.

Garlic keeps vampires away.

The number of pips you find when you cut open an apple forecasts how many children you might have.

A very, very ancient superstition to do with threads is that when a woman was giving birth, all the knots in her house were untied to make sure that nothing held up the delivery.

Re clothes -'blue and green should never be seen except upon a fairy queen'.

And re bridesmaids and their clothes: bridesmaids were originally young women dressed in the same way as the bride, so as to confuse any evil spirits wanting to harm her.

Re plants, it was very unlucky to bring hawthorn (aka 'may') into the house, because spirits - even the 'good' ones were perilous - lived in thorn trees.

Planting a rowan tree at your door/gate kept witches away.

lanadelgrey The dairy maid one appears in Tessa of the D'Urbervilles.

Women would deliberately make a mistake in a patchwork quilt as apparently only god can be perfect.

Put coin(s) in the Christmas pudding then the person that gets that slice will have good fortune. We had silver charms for the pudding too (a bit like the monopoly pieces) with different meanings but not sure if they were an old tradition or not.

And yes stirring the pudding a certain way when you make your wish.

Not pre WWII.

The carrots being good for your sight was WWII propaganda to hide the fact the UK had radar. Carrots were one food that grew easily in the UK and were not rationed so people did eat a lot of them.

@AllieDeCorbeau when I was a kid there were not many pumpkins around so lanterns were made from swede. Swede is so much harder to carve.

Also I think in England there was an association of Halloween being celebrated by Catholics and therefore was something to not do if you were protestant.

My grandmother said that her mother (born around 1900) followed the (possibly specifically Scottish?) rule that you use black pepper on red meat, and use white pepper on fish, chicken, and pork/ham. The logic was aesthetic - use the kind of salt that won't show up; you do not want black pepper showing up like little bugs on a pale background.

Working class people in Scotland typically ate a lot of fish and a little poultry and pork/ham and not much red meat in the 30s through 50s and in other times when the economy was challenging, so if they followed the rules they ate very little black pepper. Recently, it's been established that all of the peppers are useful in different ways, but black pepper had special effects to combat arthritis, and so people who avoided it because they ate little to no red meat may have suffered more from this ailment than if they'd just black peppered everything that needed pepper.

cheese in the morning is like gold, cheese for dinner like silver and cheese for supper is like lead
Am trying to remember more

Fascinated by the stuff not to make while on your period. Seems like a convenient way to not have to slave over a hot oven to me!

I can’t think of anything but my granny used to peel all our apple peel off in one go and we’d throw it over our shoulder and the letter it closest resembled was the first letter of the name of the man you would marry.

Rub a cut potato on a stye.

Eating cheese before bed will give you nightmares

There were loads more when I was growing up but I can't remember - I shall ask my mum if she can remember any more.

Ive heard of lots of these too, particularly involving salt, curly hair from eating crusts, rhymes about who your husband will be, throwing salt over your shoulder, apple seeds growing in your stomach

Would also add that I was told that the end of a cucumber is poisonous. I still cut the end off now for no purpose whatsoever!

Yes and the dandelions causing you to wet the bed, eating cheese and nightmares and onions on a sock to cure a cold.

An Irish one but you cut a cross into your soda bread before you bake it to let the fairies /devil out

Never stir anything with a knife - Stir with a knife, stir up strife.
Also it is good luck if you put a kitchen knife down and it happens to sit with the sharp side of the blade pointing up.
My ex and his family all used to do the never passing salt directly thing.
His mum insisted that flat lemonade was good for colds. And that vegetables should be boiled for at least half an hour, and Mr Kipling fruit pies counted as one of your 5 a day 😁

Years ago I watched Gary Rhodes cooking salmon and he put salt and black pepper on the skin side and just salt on the other side so for the same reason.

I recently came across not 'canning' when on your period as the food would spoil. Someone said it was because your body has different hormones and that it is only acidic canning.

I don't think we do much canning in the UK, we are more likely to pickle or make chutney.

Eating fish on a Friday. Is that folklore or religion based? It still prevails though in some places, my mum’s care home and my grandchildren’s schools for example.

Religion.

In the RC church all Fridays were (and I think they have changed it back now) days of 'abstinence' i.e. you couldn't eat meat.

It was changed because a rich person could have salmon and oysters but a poor person may have to throw away a perfectly good meal that wouldn't last until the Saturday. Meat included things like suet, lard and gravy.

You were supposed to do a 'penance' instead, but it was re-established for a few reasons I can't be bothered to look up.

I went to an RC school but the cooks were not RC and there was a very tense morning on one of the days of abstinence where the head teacher had to call the bishop for dispensation so that we could eat the school meal that incorporated meat.

Interesting about the quilt.
When I bought a Turkish carpet, I was told there was always a small mistake as only Allah can be perfect