Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2010

I'm an American who cooks.  "Potatoes, pasta, vegetables with or
without eggs, prepared in the oven and often browned or baked with a
(cheese) topping" sounds a lot like a casserole to me -- but only if
it has a binder, a sauce (a roux, usually, often a white sauce or
cream soup) to turn it into one dish, a thick goo with lumps of solid
things.  I find the eggs a bit confusing, thouigh.  Hard-boiled and
chopped?  Or beaten, perhaps with some milk, to be a binder?

In America, "bake" is a way of cooking:  putting mixed ingredients in
a pan and setting that pan in an oven.  Cakes are baked, cookies are
baked, meatloaf is baked, casseroles are baked.  Even pizzas are
baked...

I googled for recipes: auflauf -- and there are many!  It seems the
word is used for lots of different things:  breakfast pancakes, coffee
and almonds soufflé dessert, liver and sausage casserole -- and that
recipe, using the word "casserole" in translating leber und bratwurst
auflauf, is on a U.K. website.  It does meet the American definition
of "casserole":  sauteed bratwurst and sauteed floured strips of
liver, with the flour combining with the oil to form a roux, then
water added to make it gravy; all put in a baking dish and set in a
medium oven for half an hour.

Both ends?

Thinking more about this, I'd expect a "bake" to be significantly drier
than a "casserole".

If it were Midwestern - esp. in the Northern states such as Minnesota
and North Dakota - it would be "hot dish."

njg

I'm an east-coaster.  I've never heard bake used in this sense.  To
me, "bake" as a noun means a big picnic-type event, generally
featuring one particular food as the centerpiece--clam bakes and
lobster bakes are common events in the northeast.  In a vacuum, I'd
assume that "tuna bake" meant this kind of event; "tuna noodle bake"
would throw me for a loop, though the noodles might be a clue that
it's some sort of casserole.

In my language, a casserole must contain a significant amount of liquid,
while baking must, by definition, use dry heat. I could, at a pinch, do
baked vegetables and a casserole in the same oven, but only if the
casserole dish had a good enough lid to prevent steam from reaching the
baking dish.

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 22:54:33 +0000 (UTC) from Garrett Wollman
<wollman@bimajority.org>:

In some places, yes; but I wonder where the border lies.  I have
lived in Maryland, New York, and northern Ohio, and I have *never*
heard "hot dish" live.  The only time I've heard it is on Garrison
Keilllor's /Prairie Home Companion/, nominally set in rural
Minnesota. So I wonder how far outside Minnesota the term is usual.

Even though I may cook it in the over, I wouldn't call that "baking" a
casserole, just cooking it.

By chance I'm half way through making a casserole for tonight's meal (I
started yesterday).   I fried some beef and some kidney, added onion,
carrot, swede and cabbage (small quantities of each), then fried in some
flour before adding beef stock and red wine.  Then I simmered it for an
hour or two.   Oh, and a squeeze of tomato puree.

Today I'll add some dried veg I've had soaking overnight and cook for a
couple more hours and serve with some boiled spuds when we return from a
walk.

I'm going to cook it entirely on the hob, although when I had an Aga
this would have been the perfect thing to leave in the cooler oven while
we were out.

No "binder" in there, unless a bit of flour to thicken counts.