I had a scouse missus for a good while not long ago, her and her family would go on about scouse regularly because I had never heard of it. I eventually tried it and they seemed insulted when I told them it's just a bog standard stew. They're weirdly protective of it, act like it's special and something only scousers can produce. However in relaitt it's a staple dish that'll be eaten all over the country with absolutely nothing unique about it. It's a fitting summary of their fans really.
It’s an odd thing, Liverpudlians and scouse.
The Scandinavians took THEIR DISH(!) to ports all over the Baltic Sea, North Sea, English Channel and Irish Sea.
When you look at the cities that are on these seas, you’ve got all of the following capital or major cities: St Petersburg, Helsinki, Tallinn, Riga, Stockholm, Khalingrad, Gdańsk, Copenhagen, Oslo, Gothenburg, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Cardiff, Dublin, Belfast and Edinburgh and many other minor cities like Bergen, Hull, Brighton, Portsmouth, Southampton, Plymouth, Bristol, Swansea, Liverpool, Aberdeen, Dundee,… with many other cities where the dish will have spread to cities with inland ports like Manchester, Hamburg, Glasgow…
There’s pretty much nothing Liverpudlian about scouse. If it had originated in Liverpool and was taken from there to all these places, I’d undoubtedly give it to them; or if it was an unusual dish that nobody else ate other than people in Liverpool, I’d give it to them… but it’s not from Liverpool and everyone all over Northern Europe eats it.
