bubble and squeak

English

Etymology

(food): Named from the sounds during cooking.

Noun

bubble and squeak (countable and uncountable, plural bubble and squeaks)

1. (British, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia) Cabbage and mashed potatoes etc. fried together.
   • 1853, Pisistratus Caxton [pseudonym; Edward Bulwer-Lytton], chapter VIII, in “My Novel”; Or Varieties in English Life […], volume II, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book eighth, page 348:

     “But if she had rank and title?”
     “Rank and title! Bubble and squeak! No, not half so good as bubble and squeak. English beef and good cabbage. But foreign rank and title!—foreign cabbage and beef!—foreign bubble and foreign squeak!”

   • 1915, John Galsworthy, chapter XVIII, in The Freelands‎^[1]:

     “Better have it—better have it first. No hurry. What've you got in the pot that smells so good?”
     “Bubble and squeak, sir.”
     “Bubble and squeak! Ah!” And with those words the agent withdrew to where, in a farm wagon drawn up by the side of the road, three men were solemnly pulling at their pipes.

2. (Cockney rhyming slang) A Greek.

   Synonym: bubble

Derived terms

• bubble (verb)

Further reading

• Jonathon Green (2024) “bubble and squeak n.¹”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang
• Jonathon Green (2024) “bubble and squeak n.²”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang
• [Francis Grose] (1785) “Bubble and squeak”, in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, London: […] S. Hooper, […], →OCLC.