It all began with the question, what is lobscouse?

The first known use of the term "lobscouse" is dated 1706, according to Webster's dictionary.

Like spotted dog, a pudding dear to Captain Jack, lobscouse took a while to reconstitute.

The recipe was brought by the canal barges to Stoke-on-Trent where it is called "lobby", the shortened version of "lobscouse".

'Mr Martin,' said Jack, after the chaplain had said grace, 'it occurred to me that perhaps you might not yet have seen lobscouse.

Nineteenth century sailors made lobscouse by boiling salted meat, onions and pepper, with ship's biscuit used to thicken the dish.

The word comes from lobscouse a stew commonly eaten by sailors throughout Northern Europe, which became popular in sea ports such as Liverpool.

Stephen dined that day in the gunroom but he supped in the cabin, the two of them eating lobscouse with hearty appetite. '

In Britain the same dish is called "Scouse" (from the word "lobscouse"), and is particularly associated with the port city of Liverpool.

Another possibility is the English "lobscouse" from lobs course, a meal ("course") served for the lowest class ("lob"), a term dating from the 18th century.

THE book "Lobscouse and Spotted Dog" (W. W. Norton) is not your mother's cookbook.

Los Angeles Times, Lobscouse Need Of Puny Infant, July 29, 1923, Page III31.

'Well, sir,' said Killick, 'Joe Plaice says he would venture upon a lobscouse, and Jemmy Ducks believes he could manage a goose-pie.'

Alas, when Jack was young he was also poor, often penniless; and this was a rich man's lobscouse, a Lord Mavor's lobscouse.

As to the cooking, it's lobscouse and salmagundy six days in the week; but he can bring his own cook aboard with him if he thinks our galley too rough for his taste."

The results were chronicled in "Lobscouse and Spotted Dog: Which It's a Gastronomic Companion to the Aubrey/Maturin Novels" (Norton, 1997).

A cookbook, called "Lobscouse and Spotted Dog," appeared, filled with recipes of the dishes, including rats, eaten aboard the H.M.S. Surprise and other ships Aubrey commands.

The occasion is the publication of "Lobscouse and Spotted Dog" by Anne Chotzinoff Grossman and Lisa Grossman Thomas (W. W. Norton, $29.95).

The word "scouse" is a shortened form of "lobscouse", derived from the Norwegian lapskaus and Danish labskovs (or the Low German Labskaus), a word for a meat stew commonly eaten by sailors.

There are a few difficult passages, but for those spending the summer going one-on-one with Thomas Pynchon, unabridged dictionary at the ready, Prichard's prose will seem like a piece of cake - or, rather, a dish of lobscouse.

The cause was lung cancer, said Lisa Grossman Thomas, her daughter and co-author of "Lobscouse and Spotted Dog," a companion book to Mr. O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series of 18 nautical novels set during the Napoleonic Wars.

What is it about the siren call of the sea that makes readers want to thumb through a "cookery book" like "Lobscouse & Spotted Dog" (Norton, 1998) for recipes for sweetbreads in malmsey, spotted dog (an eggy custard tinged with rosewater) and other 18th-century galley fare?

The two seamen were still there, looking pale by now, at four bells in the afternoon watch, when at the first stroke the officers, headed by Pullings, walked into the cabin, while in the galley Killick and the stout black boy who helped him clapped on to the tray bearing the massive lobscouse.