Those are the only two ingredients in Delia Smith's 1987 recipe. Possibly because of the scarcity of beef during food rationing in and after the Second World War, by the latter half of the 20th century the basic ingredients were widely considered to be cooked and mashed (or coarsely crushed) potato and chopped cooked cabbage. In 1791 another London paper recorded the quarterly meeting of the Bubble and Squeak Society at Smithfield. A correspondent in The Public Advertiser two years later reported making 'a very hearty Meal on fryed Beef and Cabbage though I could not have touched it had my Wife recommended it to me under the fashionable Appellation of Bubble and Squeak'. The first recorded use of the name listed in the OED dates from 1762 The St James's Chronicle, recording the dishes served at a banquet, included 'Bubble and Squeak, garnish'd with Eddowes Cow Bumbo, and Tongue'. The name of the dish, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), alludes to the sounds made by the ingredients when being fried.

The dish has been known since at least the 18th century, and in its early versions it contained cooked beef by the mid-20th century the two vegetables had become the principal ingredients. The food writer Howard Hillman classes it as one of the 'great peasant dishes of the world'. Bubble and squeak is a British dish made from cooked potatoes and cabbage, mixed together and fried.

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