Colcannon is most commonly made with only four ingredients: potatoes, butter, milk and cabbage. Irish historian Patrick Weston Joyce defined it as "potatoes mashed with butter and milk, with chopped up cabbage and pot herbs".[3] It can contain other ingredients such as scallions (spring onions), leeks, laverbread, onions and chives. Some recipes substitute cabbage with kale.[4] There are many regional variations of this staple dish.[5] It was a cheap, year-round food.[6][7] It is often eaten with boiled ham, salt pork or Irish bacon. As a side dish it can be paired with corned beef and cabbage.[3]
Colcannon is similar to Champ, a dish made with scallions, butter and milk that is traditionally offered to fairies in a spoon placed at the foot of a hawthorn tree.[4]
Etymology
The origin of the word is unclear. The first syllable "col" likely comes from the Irish "cál," meaning cabbage. The second syllable may derive from "ceann-fhionn," meaning a white head (i.e. "a white head of cabbage."). This usage is also found in the Irish name for a coot, a white-headed bird known as "cearc cheannan" or "white-head hen.".
In Welsh, the name for leek soup is cawl cennin, a phrase combining cawl meaning "soup", "broth" or "gruel", when it is not a reference to the typical Welsh meat and vegetable stew named in full "cawl Cymreig", with "cennin," the plural of "cenhinen," meaning "leeks".[8]
Song
The song "Colcannon", also called "The Skillet Pot", is a traditional Irish song that has been recorded by numerous artists, including Mary Black.[9][10] It begins:
Did you ever eat Colcannon, made from lovely pickled cream?
With the greens and scallions mingled like a picture in a dream.
Did you ever make a hole on top to hold the melting flake
Of the creamy, flavoured butter that your mother used to make?
The chorus:
Yes you did, so you did, so did he and so did I.
And the more I think about it sure the nearer I'm to cry.
Oh, wasn't it the happy days when troubles we had not,
And our mothers made Colcannon in the little skillet pot.
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