I remember an article in Acorn User talking about hard drive technology (back in the day when people bought 10MB drives) and they had a diagram to represent the distance between the head and the platter and comparing it against a speck of dust, human hair, prawn cocktail flavoured crisp etc. I remember the difference being enormous...

prawn cocktail flavoured crisp

In american words... a shrimp cocktail flavored potato chip? That sounds kinda odd.

They don't taste of prawns at all. It's vaguely like the sauce you mix it with but not quite. Not sure how to describe it.

- Trevor

Mmmmm - Skips! Just melt on your tongue.

In american words... a shrimp cocktail flavored potato chip? That sounds kinda odd.

Prawn cocktail doesn't mean the same thing in the UK as it does in the US: in the UK it's cold cooked shelled prawns in a mayonnaise flavoured (and turned pink) by tomato puree, worcester sauce, and a tiny drop of tabasco. One American I know mystified a whole table of us by ordering a prawn cocktail in a restaurant in the UK and then, when it turned up, saying "What in the h**l is that?", when it was quite obviously (to us) a prawn cocktail.

But yes, prawn cocktail flavoured crisps are kinda odd. They have a bit of a cult following. I once had to import several packets for a homesick Brit I was visiting in Philadelphia.

Peter

O.K. I'm clear that what we in the UK call a prawn, is a Shrimp in the US, I've often eaten them. But does a prawn exist in the US and where does it fit in the scale of crustaceans?

Do you mean to ask if there's something that is called a prawn in the US and, if so, is it different from a shrimp? (Like the fact that an English biscuit is an American cookie, and an American biscuit is something else altogether?)

Very few people in the US use the word prawn. In fact, probably next to none. And if they do, they mean the same thing as a shrimp.

O.K. I'm clear that what we in the UK call a prawn, is a Shrimp in the US, I've often eaten them. But does a prawn exist in the US and where does it fit in the scale of crustaceans?

Ah, it wasn't the "prawn" bit that my colleague misunderstood -- he's bilingual enough to know about the prawn/shrimp situation -- it was the "cocktail" bit. It turns out that there's a common American restaurant dish called "shrimp cocktail" where the sauce is completely different, made mainly of chilli sauce and horseradish. I can understand the disappointment of anyone trying to order this and being served with the utterly genteel English version.

Peter

In fact, that sauce is referred to simply as ``cocktail sauce'', despite the fact that I do not believe it is used in any other dish.

We use the word prawn in the US. It usually refers to a large shrimp (usually in expensive restaurants). It is also synonymous with shrimp in many Chinese restaurants around here.

I am, of course, only able to speak for the NY/NJ area. Prawn may not be in the vocabulary of the rest of the country.

As for the actual difference between a Shrimp and a Prawn, this (PDF) gives a fairly good explanation. Most of the time I refer to a Prawn as a larger Shrimp, which is not always correct. For the most part the words are synonymous. However, the shrimp that is sometimes ordered on a pizza, or popcorn shrimp (breaded, fried shrimp) are, in fact, shrimp. What was I talking about? Bah! All I know is they are good. :P

Thanks, one and all, for sorting out the international prawn/shrimp question.
I love the shrimp cocktails you get in America, juicy and tasty, I hate the average prawn cocktail that we get here and would never order one.
Munching a fresh crab sandwich as I type!

I've got a removable disk pack at home that has the unbelievable storage capacity of 5MB

First computer I ever had experience with was a Datapoint mini-computer, it used removable data packs that held 2.5MB. These packs were about 16 inches in diameter, maybe three inches thick, and weighed in the neighborhood of 10 pounds apiece.

The drive unit that used these cartridges cost about $9,000 (back in 1976) and had a service life of two to three weeks between visits from the repairman. The computer was so fast that it could sort and re-index a 1000 line text file (index on the first 10 characters) in less than two minutes.

Believe it or not, this dreadful machine was still a vast improvement over the way we had been doing things before we acquired it.

Ahhh, the Good Old Days. They really weren't, you know...

tanstaafl.