The Story of Lobby - Part 1

Who would have thought that a traditional German dish made from leftovers served with pickled herrings and beetroot would have resulted in the colloquial name for Liverpudlians?

All this and more can be found in the history of Lobby, a traditional Staffordshire favourite.

Lobby is a classic leftovers dish. It is basically meat, animal bones and onions, boiled in a pot with some water. Whatever else was to hand went in to add flavour and nourishment. Lobby was a staple for the poorly paid workers in the local potteries who could not afford more than basic fare.  Inhabitants of the town of Leigh came to be known as ‘Lobby Gobblers;’ as opposed to their neighbours, the ‘Pie Eaters’ of Wigan.

Lobby is similar to any number of stews that you might find around Britain or indeed Europe.  It is the source of its name that can be traced back along the canals that the potters used to send their wares to Liverpool. There you can find a dish called Lobscouse from which Lobby was derived.

The traditional recipe for Lobscouse consists of a cheap cut of lamb, chopped up and browned in a large saucepan, to which is added chopped onion, carrots, and water or meat stock. The final ingredient is a large quantity of diced potato. The sauce is not thickened but relies on the potato starch to give it its consistency. Beetroot or red cabbage are the traditional accompaniments along with bread and butter to mop up the juices. A more impoverished variety of this dish was known as 'blind Scouse', Lobscouse without the meat.

Locally this potato stew was known as the shorter form, Scouse, from which the term Scousers was derived, meaning the people from Liverpool who ate the stew. (The accent allegedly comes from Irish migrants travelling to Liverpool to work in the polluted, rainy dockyards. Living in damp, crowded lodgings they promptly caught head colds and the Scouse twang developed – a Belfast accent spoken with a bunged up nose.)

With Liverpool being such an important trading port the dish of Lobscouse travelled along the inland waterways to different parts of Britain and is well known in North Wales as Lobsgows, a traditional ‘quarry supper’ in local villages and towns. Not surprisingly, leeks feature heavily in the Welsh version.