Food with funny names, mostly involving potatoes.

Anyone with ancestors from the UK will occasionally have had the pleasure of being treated to one or more of the following dishes, all bearing wonderful old names (the dishes, not the ancestors).

Colcannon: a creamy, yummy mixture of cabbage and potatoes with, variously, milk, butter or cream.

Champ: an Irish version of mashed potatoes blended with onions cooked in milk.

Boxty: hashbrowns made from leftover mashed potato.

Stovies: a combination of potatoes and meat in layers. May be a long-lost relative of Shepherd's Pie or corned beef hash. Not sure why it's plural. (Or why Boxty was singular for that matter.)

And, perhaps my favourite weird food name:

Clapshot: sounds like a very serious, and possibly fatal, medical condition but is actually mashed potatoes and swede - a frequent visitor on the family dinner table when I was growing up. Even more frequent was potato and pumpkin mashed together.

Then after you've eaten your 'tatties in various forms and guises, no doubt you'll be looking forward to dessert:

Cranachan: oatmeal with a slug of Drambuie.

Some Scotsmen I know would have it for breakfast. And hold the oatmeal!