Sir, – Go raibh míle maith agat, Aoife McElwain, for explaining that the traditional March 17th dinner of Irish-Americans has an ancient and elegant native history ("Why are millions of Irish-Americans serving corned beef on St Patrick's Day?", The Ticket, March 18th).
Beef is the beautiful meat cited in the “Cattle Raid of Cooley”, and corned beef is referred to in an 11th- or 12th-century poem. But now I know that it was the 19th-century emigrants to the US who discovered that beef was also cheaper than pork, and that the salt-cured beef known as “corned” beef was not only delicious but cheap enough to have often. It is a salute to our ancestors that we always have it on the feast of our own saint.
What do we serve with it? Cabbage and spuds, of course.
True too, as Aoife McElwain noted, that we love the Jewish version of the same meat. There is no better lunch than the nearest Jewish cafe’s speciality, a Reuben sandwich – corned beef and sauerkraut on rye bread.
I have been looking for corned beef ever since I left Chicago, so thank you also for telling us where to buy it! – Yours, etc,
MARY MAHER,
Dublin 6.