Meat-and-Three (1938)

[Michael Quinion]

> I've been trying to date the southern regional dish of
> "meat-and-three," or meat and three vegetables, as described by
> the Sterns in ROADFOOD.

We seem to be traditionally impoverished here in the UK, as the
standard phrase here is - or used to be - "meat and two veg" or "cut
off the joint and two veg", as the description of a bog-standard
meal, especially one from a pub or the cheaper sort of restaurant (it
would have been the usual composition of the old "shilling ordinary"
in such places). The OED doesn't go back further than 1984 in those
specific formulations, though it has citations back to 1905 that are
variations. An example is in George Orwell's "Keep the Aspidistra
Flying" of 1936: "He strolled into the Prince of Wales for a bite of
food. A cut off the joint and two veg., one and twopence, a pint of
pale ale ninepence, twenty Gold Flakes a shilling".


--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail: <TheEditor at worldwidewords.org>
Web: <http://www.worldwidewords.org/>