Talk:Bedfordshire clanger

Is 'menfolk' a technical term?
 * "Menfolk" and "womenfolk" are good Old English words which do not need translating.--Felix Folio Secundus (talk) 13:37, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Any chance someone can find a dissected picture, instead of that rather unimpressive sausage-roll-like item? One which has been cut longitudinally to show the transition between savoury and sweet would be useful. Ta. 122.148.216.22 (talk) 11:00, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Dropping a clanger.
The common english phrase "Dropping a clanger" (meaning saying something extremely inappropriate) is something I always understood to be related to this food item - clearly, dropping something made of pastry with meat at one end and jam at the other would make a truly spectacular mess.

It would be nice to add this to the article - but I don't seem to be able to find a reliable source for it.

Any ideas? SteveBaker (talk) 19:24, 24 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Found it! Done. TY for the great idea I never heard this one but searching, "drop a clanger" yields quite a few references.Housewifehader (talk) 19:13, 25 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes it would be messy. But I believe that it is "clang" as in "bell", such as that described here and not "clang" is in "obscure British foodstuff". Shritwod (talk) 08:01, 26 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Agreed, and the freedictionary.com reference does not mention the pastry. The OED says the phrase just comes from clang meaning to make a noise. Therefore I have removed the unsupported claim from this article. By the way, I have searched in vain for an explanation of the naming of this pastry, and I can only guess that it refers to its weight and hardness: H. E. Bates in a short story called The Bedfordshire Clanger describes it as "Sort o' pudden. Suet. Hard as a hog's back." --Heron (talk) 16:32, 26 May 2014 (UTC)


 * It probably comes from Midland dialect "clungy" or "clangy", meaning dense (refs provided). All pre 1970s references describe this as a boiled suet and meat dumpling or pudding, often with liver, so it would have been very stodgy, or clangy.Svejk74 (talk) 19:48, 15 February 2018 (UTC)