Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A sailor's stew made of meat, vegetables, and hardtack.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A dish made of pilot-biscuit, stewed in water with pieces of salt meat.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Naut.) A combination of meat with vegetables, bread, etc., usually stewed, sometimes baked; an olio.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun nautical A dish of meat stewed with vegetables and ship biscuit.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a stew of meat and vegetables and hardtack that is eaten by sailors

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Perhaps British dialectal (northeast England) lob, to bubble + scouse, of unknown origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From German Labskaus

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Examples

  • It was what the sailors called lobscouse, a sort of pudding made of ship biscuits, liver, and fish.

    The Land of the Long Night 1869

  • The steward presently brought along from the galley the chief ingredients of the supper, consisting of a pot of piping hot cocoa and a dish of steaming "lobscouse", to be followed, he informed me, by a jam tart.

    The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn Harry Collingwood 1886

  • But long before the cook's husky notes summoned the emigrants 'messmen to the galley, to receive their morning allowance of cocoa and their tins of "lobscouse", all hands were on deck, the emigrants gathered in the waist of the ship, leaning over the lee rail, and devouring with their eyes the beauties of the lovely island, fresh, green, and sparkling with the dews of the past night.

    Overdue The Story of a Missing Ship Harry Collingwood 1886

  • "lobscouse" which the darkey cook had dished up most appetisingly; after which the good lady retired to her cabin for the night in much more cheerful spirits.

    The Wreck of the Nancy Bell Cast Away on Kerguelen Land 1887

  • Angus ThomsonStreatley, Berkshire• Labskaus (Letters, 19 March) is only an anomalous variation of lobscouse (lapskaus in Norwegian), a sailor's stew with meat and vegetables (without meat, blindscouse) found across northern Europe but most famously associated with Liverpool, being eponymous with its natives, dialect and local dish.

    Letters: Recipe for disaster 2011

  • Dinah HickishSt Asaph, Clwyd• Re the variations of labskaus/lobscouse Letters, 22 March: Liverpool may call its stew scouse, but the word has also travelled down to Stoke, where it's called lobby.

    Letters: Budget food 2011

  • In Liverpool he instantly identifies lobscouse, a stew originally eaten by Baltic sailors and eponymous with the city, while he uncovers the historical link between Wigan and pies.

    Tonight's TV highlights 2010

  • Eating "seemans labskaus" for dinner in Hamburg -- that is, "seaman's lobscouse," a dish Jack and Stephen eat in Patrick O'Brian which of course is why I ordered it.

    The Happy List, Germany edition Cheryl 2005

  • Eating "seemans labskaus" for dinner in Hamburg -- that is, "seaman's lobscouse," a dish Jack and Stephen eat in Patrick O'Brian which of course is why I ordered it.

    Archive 2005-05-01 Cheryl 2005

  • I could live on lobscouse, or soap and bully, for a year, and thank God for getting more than I deserved.

    Springhaven Richard Doddridge 2004

Comments

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  • "He would not even stop long enough to take in fresh supplies from the bum-boats that came round the ship, observing in his decided manner 'that they were not here to blow out their kites with lobscouse, nor to choke their luffs with figgy-dowdy, but to convey the Catalan troops to Santandero without a moment's loss of time...'"

    --Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate, 287

    February 9, 2008

  • "...this was a rich man's lobscouse, a Lord Mayor's lobscouse. Orrage had been wonderfully generous with his slush, and the liquid fat stood half an inch deep over the whole surface, while the potatoes and pounded biscuit that ordinarily made up the bulk of the dish could scarcely be detected at all, being quite overpowered by the fat meat, fried onions, and powerful spices."

    --Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World, 93

    February 20, 2008

  • in Bremen and Hamburg this is labskaus or lapskaus -

    May 6, 2009

  • - which I understand is where the dish came from originally.

    May 6, 2009

  • "A Lancashire pudding using simply potato and butter was called potato pottage or lobscouse, marking the start of the potato's ascendancy in the diet of the poor."

    --Kate Colquhoun, Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking (NY: Bloomsbury, 2007), 125

    January 11, 2017

  • Citation (as lub's-course) on hard fish.

    January 13, 2022