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Baked Potatoes versus Jacket Potatoes?

(166 Posts)
mae13 Tue 23-Jan-24 11:12:51

I call them "Baked" potatoes but a friend calls them "Jacket" potatoes and further insists that referring to them as "baked" is a sign of being "common". Really?
Give me strength!
She IS a bit of a Hyacinth......

EmilyHarburn Fri 26-Jan-24 19:52:33

Wikipedia
United Kingdom
A baked potato is sometimes called a jacket potato in the United Kingdom. The baked potato has been popular in the UK for many years. In the mid-19th century, jacket potatoes were sold on the streets by hawkers during the autumn and winter months. In London, it was estimated that some 10 tons of baked potatoes were sold each day by this method.[12] Common jacket potato fillings (or "toppings") in the United Kingdom include grated cheddar cheese, baked beans, tuna mayonnaise, chili con carne and chicken and bacon.

Baked potatoes are often eaten on Guy Fawkes Night; traditionally they were often baked in the glowing embers of a bonfire.[13]

France
A baked potato is called "pomme de terre au four" in French. It may be served as an accompaniment to a meat dish, or, in a fast-food restaurant called a "pataterie", be the centre of a meal.[citation needed]

Sloegin Fri 26-Jan-24 20:30:21

welbeck

when i was young, potatoes used to be boiled in their skins, and put on the table, or taken from the saucepan by each eater, with a fork, and then deftly peeled with the knife.
these were called potatoes in their jackets.

Are you by any chance from rural Northern Ireland? Growing up on a farm there that's how potatoes were normally cooked, except on Sundays when they were peeled and mashed or roasted. The side plates we peeled them on to were called ' skin plates'.

pen50 Fri 26-Jan-24 20:34:36

I'm not particularly common but I think jacket potatoes are - they should be baked.

NotSpaghetti Fri 26-Jan-24 20:37:48

Bonfire potatoes... mmmn.
Yum. Yum yum. Cooked in the hot ashes.
Don't know what I called those!!

I have also cooked them more than once in the woodburner in power cuts.

Campfire/bonfire potatoes anyone?
Stove cooked potatoes??

Grandmajb Sat 27-Jan-24 08:02:51

We used to call them jacket potatoes

Mollygo Sat 27-Jan-24 08:33:29

This discussion could well be about chips or fries. They used to be fried in a pan of hot fat. Then came oven chips, cooked in an oven, and now we cook them in a fryer, which isn’t a pan of hot fat.
Then there was the decision that frying food was bad for you. So we added the appellation, “pan-fried” to make it sound better. Before the advent of air fryers what else would you fry food in, except a pan?

Linda48 Sat 27-Jan-24 09:07:59

I'm from South Yorkshire & have always known them as Jacket Potatoes

Oldnproud Sat 27-Jan-24 09:24:26

These days, I am as likely to say baked potato as jacket potato, but when I was growing up, our family always called them jacket potatoes.
That included my grandparents. As working class Yorkshire folk who worked in the woolen mills (where, according to my mum who also started her working life in the mills, they cooked such things for their for dinner in the mill ovens each morning) I'm pretty sure that they would have been amused by the suggestion that the term 'jacket potatoes' was posh. grin

NotSpaghetti Sat 27-Jan-24 09:32:54

Oh my goodness I hadn't even thought about chips Mollygo. That's a name that's entirely related to the shape.

I wonder if we used to call them fried potato chips or similar?

DrWatson Mon 29-Jan-24 05:17:46

Well, cafes up and down the land (UK) commonly (!!) refer to them as 'Jacket potato' on their menus.

I suppose a few may refer to baked potato, but I'd say jacket is more frequently used these days.

NOT that it matters a jot, and anybody going down the "sounds common" route should really get a life.

M0nica Mon 29-Jan-24 16:37:27

As a child I only ever had baked potatoes when they were baked in a bonfire, the potatoes, unwrapped coming out all smeary with ash.

A baked potato, of any size needs at least an hour in the oven and fuel was too expensive to put the oven on that long to cook an inexpensive food like potatoes on their own.

Germanshepherdsmum Mon 29-Jan-24 16:50:10

When I was a child baked potatoes were always cooked in the ash under the open fire. They were delicious.

NotSpaghetti Mon 29-Jan-24 16:59:49

We had an Aga when I was a child so baked potatoes were easy and cheap M0nica.

winterwhite Mon 29-Jan-24 19:37:24

Usually potatoes in their jackets.

The Milly Molly Mandy lid potatoes are a great faff. You put potato on its end in a mug, cut off the top, scoop out the insides, mash them etc, pile them back in - very fiddly - and put the lid back on. By this time they're half cold. Tried it a couple of times when the children were small.

welbeck Mon 29-Jan-24 21:18:02

actually, i'd never come across them as a child, nor heard of them, by either name.
i first saw them on menus in the mid 1980s, but probably didn't try them for quite a while, as i didn't know what they were.