Foods that aren't Belgian, ones that actually are and complaints about baked herring

I figured since we’re talking about Belgian food, it’s probably a good idea to look at some things and see if they actually are Belgian.

Let’s start with a big one. If you’re in the UK at least. Belgian buns😱.

Belgian bun - Photo by Nik on Unsplash

Belgian buns fall into the category that is ‘aren’t actually Belgian’. Belgians wouldn’t know what they are, they aren’t sold in Belgian bakeries, they’re not Belgian. Why they were named after Belgium is a little unclear.

You could suggest they were probably based on the Belgian Viennoiserie, Danishes in English, called a ‘ronde Suisse’. Suisse, as in Swiss, from Switzerland. Yay! more countries!

Like all Viennoiserie, they’re made from puff pastry. Not just any puff pastry, puff pastry made with a slightly sweet bread dough so it has the rising ‘oomph’ of the yeast and the rising power and the layers of regular puff pastry.

The ronde Suisse is filled with pastry cream and raisins before being rolled into its spirally shape, baked and glazed with fondant sugar icing. They’re crunchy and flaky and sweet and slightly sticky.

Anyways, the Belgian bun has been around for maybe even a hundred years and a British invention.

Next up, fries! These, while called French are, probably, actually Belgian!

It took a long time before potatoes became something people actually ate in Europe. Introduced by the Spanish¹ , they were first seen as poisonous because they looked a ton like actually poisonous native plants. ²

In 1900-ish fries had become a generally available dish in Belgium but it wasn’t well-known outside of Western Europe.

Until WW1. This is where we get obviously a huge mingling of people from North America and Allied countries who probably wouldn’t have crossed paths otherwise.

Belgian fries - Photo by Durenne Loris on Unsplash

As far as we can tell, while these very young people were having to try to survive, a few Belgian officers showed some North-American soldiers how to cook this beloved dish. The American guys loved it and took it back home with them. Belgian officers at the time would have been French-speaking³ so whether they just liked the alliteration, felt it would market better or they mixed up some stuff, this might just be how fries became known as French.⁴

What was that about the herrings? Ah yes, during the same WW1 quite a few Belgians ended up as refugees in the UK. One of the few cookbooks featuring Belgian cuisine in English is in fact a book published back then with recipes sent in by refugees. You can still buy the book today but having had a browse, you can tell it’s more than 100 years old.

The Belgian refugees were often taken in by British families and generally seen as pleasant, the only complaint people had was that they struggled to get the smell of their Belgian guests’ baked herring out of their net curtains!

Baked herrings are very old fashioned for sure. A less smelly option to try would be rolmops, pickled herring served in a mayonnaisy dill sauce. Wait, where were those invented?

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If you’d like to read a bit more about what actually is Belgian baking, take a look at my previous post below for some examples.

And if you’d like to read the second part of the ‘Wait, is that Belgian’ mini-series, you can do that here👇

1. Because they had conquered/colonized/invaded parts of South-America where potatoes were grown by the people there.

2. They were first fed to humans in Europe in Prussia, so the story goes, as food for prisoners. A French prisoner in one of these Prussian prisons found them quite edible so after he was released, he started to introduce the potato to France.

3. It would be decades before Dutch was used as a language by officials as well as French, at this point, only French was used in official matters which included the army.

4. One snag in this story would be a reference to ‘French-style’ potatoes in an American cookbook from the mid-1800s.