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Barm Vs Cob: Why Britain Has So Many Names For A Bread Roll
Over centuries, Britons have been divided over just what to call a bread roll. The patchwork of alternative names say much about its history and how the English language evolved.
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The picture Laurel MacKenzie sends me shows an unassuming item: a small round loaf of bread. But ask around at the office, at university, anywhere where people gather from various corners of the UK, and you'll get a great flood of answers about what to call it.
A cob, a roll, a bun, a barm, a batch, a bap – it's just flour, yeast, salt, and water, but the country seems to be overflowing with different names for the humble morsel. MacKenzie, an American linguist now at NYU, began many years ago to ask her students at University of Manchester about the picture. The answers are still rolling in. Why are there so many words for a bap?
MacKenzie's map of eight common words for a small round loaf of bread shows that there are clear regional variations. "Roll" crops up everywhere, but it's most common in the south, with "bun", which also shows up throughout the country, being the favoured word in the North East. "Barm" is very localised to the Manchester area, and "batch" is incredibly specific: this is used just by residents of Liverpool and Coventry.
A good-sized handful of people in the north say "muffin" or "tea cake" (and they would expect this to be an unsweetened, currant-free loaf). "Bap" – the (to me) utterly novel word that, when I moved to the UK from America, told me I was not in Kansas anymore – is used throughout the country.
The wealth of different words for similar breads shows how the English language developed in different areas over centuries (Credit: Getty Images)
Wait, there's more: during a Zoom call on the subject of words for small round loaves of bread, Jonnie Robinson, lead curator of spoken English at the British Library, held up a children's ABC-style image. "C is for Cob," it read. It was a coaster sold as a souvenir in Nottingham, he explained, and showed a certain self-aware pride in the local word. For many people who live in either fairly stable or fairly isolated places, these words are used without much fanfare. But when people leave where they are from, the regional versions of the words become talismans.
"We have lots of wonderful recordings of people moving to London and saying 'I'm off to buy a cob', 'I'm off to the cob shop'," he said. "It becomes a badge of identity in the office: That's the person who calls it a bap or cob." Robinson, who coauthored a scholarly book on East Midlands English in 2018, says that cob shop talk featured prominently. You're more likely to buy a coaster that says "C is for Cob", perhaps, if few people around you would call it the same thing.
As someone from America, a huge physical space with comparatively little variation in English, the idea that there are at least eight words for a small loaf of bread in a space much smaller than the state of California is surprising. We have our regionalisms – the soda versus pop one is very well-known – but these cover enormous swaths of land. Where did all these words come from in the first place?
The key thing is how long English has been spoken in a given place, says Robinson.
"What we call English has been spoken here in the UK for over a thousand years. It arrives in the mouths of Germanic settlers," he says. "Different tribes from northern Europe settled in different areas… And it developed in isolation and became what we called English."
Some of the words for a small round loaf of bread are Germanic in origin – "batch," which is also used more generally to describe a group of small objects, may come from "bachen," or "bake", says Robinson. "Roll" comes from French and would have arrived with Norman invaders later. MacKenzie, pulling up the Oxford English Dictionary entries for these words, notes that a lively variety of processes went into creating them.
Some of the names for bread rolls –such as the Northern term "batch" –may have come from German (Credit: Getty Images)
"You can see that a number of common pathways of new word formation are in evidence: borrowing (roll was borrowed from French), synecdoche (barm meaning yeast gets transferred to bread, the thing containing the yeast), semantic narrowing (cob meaning something round comes to refer specifically to a round bread), and compounding (putting together two existing words of the language to form a new one, e.G. Teacake)," she wrote in an email. These all cropped up at quite different times over the course of the last thousand-odd years.
Once words were in common usage, the fact that people largely stayed where they were from played a major role in cementing these regional differences, says Mackenzie. "Separation plus time is what gives you dialect differences," she said.
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Now, when national supermarkets and brands tend to opt for one name across the whole country, using a dialect word is only really feasible for small, local suppliers, says Robinson. He gives the example of a pre-packed ham and cheddar cheese sandwich he bought in Ashbourne, Derbyshire. The local word for such a thing is "cob", and it duly appears on the label. That's one reason why, perhaps, people love to talk about their local words for small round loaves of bread. If the world feels more and more homogenous, language is one way to hang on to difference.
Will new words for bread enter English, and will they be regional variants? Robinson points to "bagel" as a word for a bread product that arrived in English not long ago – the OED has it first appearing in print in 1898. He speculates that because the era in which bagels have become widespread in the English-speaking world has involved such swift communication, we've just got the one word for the round, boiled-then-baked foodstuff. "Panini", for a hot-pressed sandwich, arrived from Italy in the 1950s.
"Because they are so recent, they've become universal," he says.
Will the isolation that generates linguistic differences in the future be emotional, rather than geographic? Internet slang develops among the denizens of certain corners of the web, forming language communities that are impenetrable to outsiders (although, 10 years ago at least, writing on the web tended to reflect people's real-life locations, one study found). Or perhaps new dialects may arise at the intersections between old ones, where they brush up against each other and make something new.
One thing is for sure: The English language is not done changing, and not just when it comes to describing a bread roll. Or should that be cob?
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Here Is The Bread Recall List For Residents In California And Nevada
Whether you're planning French Toast for breakfast, making sandwiches for lunch, or making garlic bread to go with your homemade spaghetti, you might want to notice what you're spreading your butter on.
This could be the worst thing since unsliced bread!
There has been a bread recall for California and Nevada residents!
Earlier this month, the FDA (U.S. Food & Drug Administration) issued a major recall of loaves of bread produced by Albertsons Companies LLC due to possible "foreign object contamination."
Since the initial notice, the recall has spread, and the investigation is ongoing.
What Kind of Bread 'Foreign Object Contamination'?Reports of metal and plastic shavings have been found in the products that have led to the recall listed below.
So far, the recalled products include:Signature Select Butter White
safeway.ComThe best buy dates for the products in question have already passed or are coming up, but the fear is people who buy bread and freeze it for later consumption.
READ MORE: Police Department in California Asked To Stop Doing This
What if you have the Recalled Bread?If you possess any recalled products, you should safely dispose of them immediately or return them to the original place of purchase.
For more information on this recall, visit FoodSafetyNews.Com.
TRENDING NOW: LOOK: The 10 largest product recalls of the last decadeEstey & Bomberger, LLP compiled a list of the top 10 product recalls since 2007, ranked based on the number of product units recalled in the U.S.
Gallery Credit: Beth Mowbray
The Five Largest Food Recalls in History That Shocked AmericansSome recalls stand out above the rest because of their magnitude. These are five food recalls that were so serious that they caught the collective attention of the nation.
Gallery Credit: Traci Taylor
Dave's Killer Bread Launches Organic Rock 'N' Rolls Nationwide
MILWAUKIE, Ore., March 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Known for quality organic products balancing killer taste, texture and whole grain nutrition, Dave's Killer Bread® is releasing its latest innovation: Organic Rock 'N' Rolls®. This new offering caters to the growing consumer interest in diverse bread options and is the first nationally available roll from Dave's Killer Bread.
Dave's Killer Bread
Organic Rock 'N' Rolls are a standout choice for those seeking a delicious, soft roll with recognizable ingredients and DKB's signature seedy texture. Baked with quality organic ingredients including whole wheat, barley, oats and flax seeds, each roll has 12g of whole grains, 3g fiber and 5g protein per serving. These rolls are designed with convenience and versatility in mind, making them ideal for snacking, complementing a meal, or crafting creative sandwiches and sliders, like Pesto, Chicken and Mazzarella Baked Sliders with Spring Greens.
Cristina Watson, senior director of brand management at Dave's Killer Bread, notes the changing consumer habits surrounding roll consumption: "Our customers are looking for more than just the traditional dinner roll. The market showed a gap in whole grain options that still deliver on flavor, which inspired us to develop Rock 'N' Rolls using our flagship 21 Whole Grains and Seeds blend that our fans, whom we call BreadHeads, already love."
Dave's Killer Bread is committed to maintaining the high standards of quality and taste that its customers have come to expect. True to the brand's values, Rock 'N' Rolls are Certified USDA Organic, Non-GMO Project Verified, and free from artificial ingredients, artificial preservatives, artificial colors, artificial flavors, high fructose corn syrup, and bleached flour. The 12ct packages retail for $6.99 and will be available at select grocery stores nationwide like Albertsons, Kroger, Sprouts and more, and on Amazon.Com.
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About Dave's Killer Bread
Rocking the bread aisle with delicious whole grains comes naturally to Dave's Killer Bread. First introduced at the Portland Farmers Market in 2005, it is now the nation's best-selling organic bread brand with widespread distribution across the U.S. And Canada. The flagship organic bread brand for Flowers Foods (NYSE: FLO), Dave's Killer Bread pioneered the organic seeded bread category and offers 23 varieties of whole grain organic bakery products, all of which are certified USDA organic and Non-GMO Project Verified. In addition, Dave's Killer Bread is committed to Second Chance Employment (employing those with a criminal background), helping to transform lives through job opportunities. One in three employee-partners at its Oregon bakery have a criminal background. Learn more at: http://www.Daveskillerbread.Com/.
Dave's Killer Bread Organic Rock 'N' Rolls Credit: Dave's Killer Bread
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SOURCE Flowers Bakeries, LLC
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