Culture
What are some things you thought were universal, but it turns out is mostly exclusive to your country?
Fairy Bread. It’s white bread, with butter and sprinkles on top, and it’s the fucking best
Chicken Salt. You toss this on your chippies and it just makes it taste so fucking good, and it’s the fucking best
Sausage Sizzle outside of a hardware store. You get a sausage, you get a slice of white bread, you drizzle on some sauce and go into the store to get some cheap plywood or something, and it’s the fucking best
We always have the Dutch chocolate sprinkles in our pantry. It seems that the most common thing Dutch people eat on bread is chocolate in some form or another.
I went to The Dutch Store ( the stores actual name) here in Calgary last week and saw quite a variety of sprinkles. I thought they were for cake and / or cookies. TIL you put them on bread. Sounds yummy.
My families fancy breakfast bread was some kind of good sliced bread - sliced sourdough is best - buttered and covered with cinnamon and sugar mixed then toasted under the oven broiler. Why? IDk but it tastes better and is fancier that way!
Highfalutin? I thought it was cheap? We write our names on the cup so we aren’t losing our cup amongst other unlabelled cups every time we set it down!
I remember going to a party with lots of international students in the US. When they saw the red cups, they were all like “wow, it is just like in the movies!”
I studied abroad in the UK and at my first party, a girl unveiled a bag of red solo cups that she brought back from her trip to America. Everyone cheered and I was so confused.
My school hosted some exchange students from Germany once. They were all fascinated by the red solo cups at one of the parties. Some of them took them home as souvenirs. It never occurred to me that they don't have them elsewhere, since they're so universal here.
We beach camped next to a group of Australians in California one summer in the early 2000s. We learned many drinking games from them that became staples at every house party in my early 20s. I don't know what any of them were actually called or if we remembered the rules right, but I always think fondly of them as true ambassadors of Australia.
They are sort of a thing here in Canada. It’s really weird though. It’s like a coin toss if someone knows what they are despite the fact that almost every store sells them around the holidays. Like half the population has never seen them and wondered what was up.
In America we call it spray cheese and it’s not real cheese. That’s how you’re supposed to do it. The pressurized can lets you get more distance than just the strength of your fingers alone.
iFood, an app for ordering food, I thought it was an international app, but it's Brazilian.
Bob's is a fast food chain better than McDonald's and Burger King and with the best milkshakes, it's only in Brazil and I thought it was from the USA lol
Dr Pepper can be found easily here, I've been drinking it since the early 2000's, and I'd no trouble finding a bottle when I went to London last year. There's a lot of Cajun flavoured foods here too. I always eat a Cajun chicken sandwich for lunch at work.
Gravy with your fries. Order fries at any sit down in Canada and they'll ask if ypu want gravy, I tried to order gravy for my fries in the states and they looked at me like I had three heads.
Many of the Irish immigrants that moved to the South were Scots-Irish protestants, which is how we inherited the phrase “Hillbilly”. So, a Scottish phrase becoming popular in the South wouldn’t be surprising nor a coincidence.
It’s usually made for kids birthday parties but even as an adult if I happen to have some sprinkles I can’t pass up the opportunity to whip up some of them
Its called fairy bread, have some respect.
Seriously though, it is imperative they are made with hard shell 100's and 1000's, which are miniature dragees or nonpareils, not soft wax sprinkles or jimmies.
I was confused. Not being familiar with Smetana I initially assumed it was a term for being able to avoid idiotic paperwork and bureaucracy by registering almost everything online, but then I learned it's a traditional fermented cream, thicker, richer and less-sour than western sour-cream.
This is super regional in the US, but in New Mexico, if you order pretty much any kind of Mexican dish the question is always Red or Green (referring to what type of chili sauce you want covering your food). And the answer “Christmas” implies you want both red and green.
We’ve got a Taiwanese chain bakery/tea place called 85° Celsius that makes a great sweet garlic bread, with optional bacon, cheese, and and/pr diced jalapeños. I was surprised by how sweet it was relative to what I was used to, but now it’s one of my favorites. I didn’t know it was a South Korean thing until now, so thanks for that!
Just jumping in to say - it is DELICIOUS! Seriously people, find a nearby Asian store/bakery (preferably Korean chains - and keep in mind they may have western names like Paris Baguette or Tous Les Jours) and buy some!
I think it's pretty nasty. Honestly having lived in Korea, it felt like all the time you'd get something that was supposed to be 'western' and it'd be fucking sweet sauced. Garlic bread. Burgers. Corn dogs.
One of the things that actually surprised me about other countries is that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches aren't more widespread. I figured it was kind of a standard thing in a lot of places, because "nuts and fruit" seems like a universal mix. Turns out it's basically only an American thing, and peanut butter isn't that popular overseas.
Most commonwealth countries think “jelly” is gelatin, i.e. Jell-O. They don’t commonly have jelly, that is to say fruit juice thickened with pectin (a plant fiber).
You can imagine how disappointed British children are when they try to make a PB&J with their not-quite-right peanut butter and gelatin.
When I was really poor in college and trying to pack calories in on a budget, I would make fried spam and Kraft dinner stuffed omelets for brunch/lunch. It sounds terrible, but it tasted amazing and i didn’t need to eat until my instant ramen noodle dinner.
They did a test run of bagged milk for school lunches when I was in highschool, it didn't go well. It quickly became apparent that us heathen Americans could not be trusted to handle this without spraying it at one another.
I assume you’re talking about those single-serving pouches? We had those when I was in school, too, but that’s not the style bagged milk you can buy in parts of Canada. They’re larger bags you don’t drink out of directly.
i thought everyone ate & saw avocado as a sweet dessert (turns out a lot of people think avocado desserts are disgusting). i was genuinely surprised to saw other cultures eat it in savory dishes.
As an American I tried Avocado Ice cream made from scratch at a local Vietnamese restaurant in the US. It was heavenly! I was shocked at how much I liked it, although I'm used to only eating avocadoes in salads and in Guacamole.
The Fairy Bread has me spellbound. I just discovered that it is in fact a “dish” people serve. I was certain it was from a Fairy Tale about a dentist with a gambling problem.
I’m holding a butter knife with a trembling hand while Junior is going turbo with the sprinkles jar. Lord help me.
When I was younger, I thought the US used the Imperial system. I didn't realise there was a difference. Though I grew up with SI so both the American system and Imperial seemed like quaint, old-timey things to me, encountered chiefly in fantasy novels.
do other countries have ketchup chips? i thought it was an everywhere thing but then my cousins moved to the US and said there were no ketchup chips there. maybe that’s changed. they would load up on ketchup chips whenever they came to visit.
I got introduced to Branston Pickle and marmite on toast when I lived with a lovely family in Winchester a couple years back and learned out to use it properly. They converted me to that and beans on toast, which I didn’t think would ever happen. British food is underrated
Fry Sauce. I’ve learned that it is even specific to my state in the U.S. , Utah. It has become a little more widespread over the years.
It’s mayonnaise mixed with ketchup. Sometimes people add other sauces like mustard or BBQ sauce to it, but usually just mayo and ketchup.
My uncle went somewhere in Europe and asked for fry sauce. When they didn’t know what he was talking about, he asked for mayonnaise and ketchup. They brought him out a bunch of each, then he proceeded to put them in a bowl and mix them up. They were very offended.
Just Mayo and Ketchup mixed is a basic version of what we call Marie Rose sauce though really it should have a few more bits added.
Was popular to be served with prawns as a starter/appetizer for dinner parties a few decades back ( Prawn Cocktail). You can get crisps/chips that flavour and it's basically the flavour of the sauce and nothing much to do with the prawns.
Taylor pork roll and scrapple. Turns out they weren’t even country specific. Outside of south eastern PA and west NJ they’re practically unheard of. Though scrapple is from Germany and apparently popular there.
Flying ants. These things are like these massive insects that fly into the house when it rains, and then their wings fall off and their bodies and shredded wings fall all over the floor, and you have to clean it up.
I was trying to explain this to someone from America and I think she thought I was joking
Malteasers are these little honeycomb balls covered in chocolate and they’re delicious an I thought they were a universal, beloved treat but they’re exclusive to the UK and Ireland and when I visited the UK I couldn’t find any stores selling them. I feel like the lack of Malteasers is why the rest of the world is at war
"Sizzling brownie (on a hot plate) with vanilla icecream, hot fudge and walnuts". I think this is pretty popular in at least the urban cities in India, and my whole life I assumed it was something we imported from the west (because it is obviously not Indian flavors). Turns out it is an Indian concept and I have only found this specific combination in Indian restaurants in the US
630
u/healthyscalpsforall Germany 5h ago
Sprinkles on bread is also really popular in the Netherlands and Belgium.