text: The other item on the meat menu was Guinness and Cider Spiced Beef. This is where I am going to linger for a while. You notice it is called spiced beef and not corned beef. To Americans, this is our corned beef. To the Irish, corned beef is only made with salt and no spices. The word corn originally comes from the “corns” or salt grains, used to cure the meat. It has nothing to do with the grain (that was probably so called because corn means grain and the name stuck for the Indian maize). I know this because of a wonderful lecture I attended given my Mr. Og Gallagher (the chef for our feast) and Mairtin Mac Con Iomaire from the Dublin Institute of Technology. Boy can they tell a story! In it they explored the history of the much-maligned corned beef, and a fascinating history it is… most of it has nothing to do with St. Patrick’s Day!