Regardless of the day of the week, once it’s March 17th, it’s Saint Patrick’s Day. In the States, shamrock everything, green drinks, green minty treats, and a heaping plate of corned beef and cabbage are emblematic staples of the holiday. But take a flight across the Atlantic, and the only thing similar to an Irish celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day are the shamrock decorations. While the green and Saint Patrick’s can be easily rationalized as a modern creation, it’s hard to understand the reasons and differences in a Saint Patrick’s Day meal corned beef — what’s with the corned beef or more precisely lack of it in Ireland’s St. Patty’s Day?
The Food Of The Upper Class — Salted Beef
While Ireland has a history of beef, it was not considered a logical animal for food. Cows in Irish culture were considered important animals and better used for dairy production. Only when a cow got too old to produce milk did people consider using the animal for meat. Though there are records of corned beef being eaten in Ireland in the Middle Ages, it is still hard to say if such beef was eaten by the common people. Yet any opportunity for Irish people to eat beef (commonly in the form of salted beef) would be wiped from the future due to its neighbor to the east. Certain legislations imposed on Ireland by England forced Ireland to produce cows, not for themselves, but as exports to satiate England’s demand for beef. With these British impositions, the meat source of the Irish people changed, and they raised more pigs and sheep for personal consumption of pork or mutton. However once in a while salted beef would come up in Irish cuisine.
Just because the Middle Ages were over, doesn’t mean the act of salting beef was finished. In Ireland, even after the Medieval period, if there was beef, it was still preserved in the form of salting. England would later define the process salting beef as corned beef, where salt crystals, the size of corn kernels, were used to preserve the beef; hence, the term corned beef (rather than salt beef becoming popular nomenclature). Even with salt taxes in Ireland being extremely cheap (about 1/10th of the taxes in England) and corned beef still being made, the meat was still unavailable for the majority of Irish citizens who opted to celebrate certain holidays with bacon, salmon, or mutton.
Connecting Corned Beef To Saint Patrick’s Day
The Irish Famine and the inevitable mass immigration from Ireland are what altered Saint Patrick’s Day forever. In the immigrant sections of New York City, Irish people settled into areas of the city dominated by Jewish immigrants from Eastern and Central Europe. When it came time to celebrate certain holidays with food, the Irish would go to their kosher neighbor butchers. Without pork bacon available, Irish customers opted for Jewish brisket. Although it is a tougher cut of meat, the brisket, when salted and stewed, would become tender and soft.
So in some way, Ireland both does and does not have a history of corned beef, yet it’s safe to say that corned beef wasn’t common among the Irish population. In some ways yes corned beef was in Ireland but it has no association with the Saint Patrick’s Day festivities. If you want to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day with a bit of luck of the Irish from the Emerald Isle itself, you can opt to have the latter mentioned salmon, bacon, or mutton.