When in Rome do as Romans do

monocle drops out of eye in shock and disgust

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Sometimes the order of applying an ingredient can be a deal-breaker.
For example, if you order a gyros and they put the ingredients in that order:
Meat - fried potatoes - onion - tomato - mustard - tzatziki it becomes very hard to eat, since the mustard and the tzatziki just explodes on your T-shirt with the first bite :stuck_out_tongue: ā€¦ you might even have to use a fork and knife (oh, the outrage :rofl:)

The structurally correct order is:
tzatziki first spread on the pita- then tomato - meat - fried potatoes - mustard over the meat and potatoes-onion

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I stayed and worked in the Oberengadin for a while. I heard stories of a rich bonzo in a hotel who was so annoyed by his valet, that he crumbled and threw a 100 (or 1000?) Fr. note on the floor for the poor boy to pick up and leave him alone.

While technically not ā€œthe German partā€ of Switzerland (although the germanophone newcomers outnumber the local rumantschs) , tipping culture is about the same, at least among normal people. If itā€™s something small, like a drink, you donā€™t tip, or you just round up or leave the change on the table. If itā€™s more substantial, like a meal, you give about 10%.

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Here, us too.

I prefer cream before jam.

bugcat is a wild rebel

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one day I accidentally put my cream on before my jam and trying to get sticky jam on top of squishy cream was the most unreasonably complicated thing I have ever done.

In contrast when jam goes on scone, followed by cream on jam, its ease is the height of time / deliciousness efficiency

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And, of course, there is How to Be an Alien: A Handbook for Beginners and Advanced Pupils by George Mikes

If stroop is sugar dissolved in water, it certainly should not be translated as molasses or treacle. White sugar is practically 100% carbohydrate. Molasses is the residue after sugar has been extracted from the raw mass and is packed with vitamins and minerals. Black treacle is another name for the same thing.

Checked some internet translator sites and this what they came up with.
So much for those sites :frowning:

Well, itā€™s not just sugar dissolved in water. The most general stroop that a Dutch person will think of when you mention stroop, is made like most syrup, by pressure cooking sweet stuff, then pressing out all the solid stuff and boiling out the liquid until itā€™s very viscous. Itā€™s unrefined, which is why stroop looks so dark, like molasses, but the sugar is not extracted, so itā€™s more like molasses before the sugar was extracted.

Usually stroop is made from sugar beets, sometimes form sugar cane or a combination of those. Also well-known are those made from apples or pears.

Hereā€™s some Dutch farmers making it traditionally:

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Is that the Republic of Here, or the Kingdom? Oh, hang on, I see youā€™re an ancient Roman

Thanks, Vsotvep. Very interesting film (although I couldnā€™t understand too much from the subtitles). Stroop is definitely not just sugar in water then, as the OP led me to believe. It looks like it would have quite a lot of nutritious elements.

Molasses is quite sweet, but also has a strong taste with bitter notes. I once read that they would spray molasses on the fields where sugar cane was grown to fertilize the soil. No citation, Iā€™m afraid.

Ok, attorante, itā€™s a complicated subject, but V has thrown more light on it with the film of its manufacture.

A good tip for using dictionaries is to cross-check by seeking a translation back to your source language of the word you have divided in the target language.

Itā€™s a hard thing to translate, though. Stroop is a general name for syrup, treacle etc. But it is also the name of a specific kind of syrup that every Dutch person knows as the sweet stuff you put on pancakes. The first can be translated, the last canā€™t, since thereā€™s no word for it in English.

Itā€™s like translating ā€œsconesā€ to Dutch. Weā€™d call them ā€œsconesā€, because we donā€™t have a word for them, but when explaining it to somebody who never heard of what a scone is, youā€™d say itā€™s something like a muffin or a little cake.

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Indeed. You have, though, explained very well exactly what stroop is, thank you. As for molasses, it has a Wikipedia page you could consult for more information than I have.

Now Iā€™m wondering how you pronounce ā€˜sconesā€™, because if thereā€™s one thing which divides English people more sharply than which of the jam or the cream should go on a scone first, itā€™s how you pronounce the word itself. Does it rhyme with ā€˜goneā€™ or with ā€˜boneā€™?

Iā€™ve always thought it should rhyme with ā€œgoneā€

There are many who say it this way, but the ā€œproper Britishā€ way to say it rhymes with bone.

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Apparently, it should rhyme with ā€œballoonā€!

(if you ask the right people)

Donā€™t listen to Bhyddn. Weā€™re right, heā€™s wrong. (See, I told you).

I think youā€™ll find a schooner is a drink size haha, never heard scone rhyme with balloon