History of Corned Beef & Cabbage
Origin of Traditional Irish American St Patrick's Day Recipe
Mar 3, 2009
Corned beef, a salt-cured brisket, was traditionally packed and stored in barrels with coarse grains, or "corns" of salt. One of the earliest references to corned beef appears in the 12th century Gaelic poem Aislinge Meic Conglinne, where it references a dainty, gluttonous indulgence. By the 17th century, salting beef had become a major industry for Irish port cities of Cork and Dublin, where Irish beef was cured and exported to France, England and later to America.
Traditional Irish Recipes Contain Salt Pork Instead of Corned Beef
With the majority of Irish beef being exported, beef was an expensive source of protein and unavailable to the majority of Irish citizens. Cows, if owned at all, were raised predominately for their dairy products, from which butter, cheese and cream could be obtained, and were only slaughtered when they were no longer good for milking. Sheep were raised as a source of wool and hogs and pigs were one of the only livestock species raised by the peasantry for consumption.
Salt pork and bacon, therefore, became the commonly consumed meat protein of Irish tables. In Feast and Famine, Leslie Clarkson writes that "fat from bacon supplemented the lack of fat in the farmhouse diet" and Sir Charles Cameron states that he does "not know of any country in the world where so much bacon and cabbage is eaten." Even today corned beef and cabbage appears infrequently in Irish pubs and restaurants, except for those in heavily touristed areas, and is much more likely to be replaced its traditional counterpart - an Irish stew with cabbage, leeks, and a bacon joint.
Corned Beef & Cabbage Eaten by Irish Immigrants After Arriving in America
After the Irish potato blight, or Great Famine, of the mid-19th century brought hundreds of Irish emigrants to the shores of America, the newly immigrated Irish Americans found corned beef to be both more accessible and more affordable than it was in Ireland. Both corned beef and cabbage were ingredients of the lower working class, and their popularity among the Irish population likely had little to do with similarities to the food of Ireland and more to due with the relatively inexpensive nature of salt cured beef and green cabbage.
For several decades following the Irish immigration, St Patrick's Day was celebrated with music, crafts and revelry but banquets, while lavish, contained a scarcity of traditional Irish cuisine. However by the 1920s, corned beef and cabbage came to have an association with Irish American cooking, according to Hasia Diner in Hungering for America: Italian, Irish and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration and joined Irish bacon and greens as a food reminiscent of Ireland.
Corned Beef's Association with St Patrick's Day Has Irish American Origins
While both salted beef and green cabbage have historic connections with Ireland, the ritual of serving corned beef and cabbage for St Patrick's Day is exclusively an Irish American tradition. The scarcity and high price of beef in Ireland prevented it from being consumed by the majority of the Irish peasantry until arriving in America, where corned brisket and cabbage were cheap and readily available to the poor. As the stigma of eating working class food faded and the celebration of Irish ancestry grew in popularity, corned beef and cabbage became a staple dinner meal for many North Americans every March.
To read more about traditional Irish food, see History of Cabbage in Ireland.
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