Scouse is a type of stew typically made from chunks of meat (usually beef or lamb) with potatoes, carrots, and onion.

The word "scouse" comes from lobscouse, a stew commonly eaten by sailors throughout northern Europe in the past, and surviving in different forms there today.

Guardian food writer Felicity Cloake describes scouse as being similar to Irish stew or Lancashire hotpot, though generally using beef rather than lamb as the meat.

[3][n 1] Although some argue that anything other than beef, potatoes, carrots, onion is not scouse, others point out that, as a thrift dish, it will contain "whatever veg you had... and...the cheapest cuts of meat".

[10] In the poorest areas of Liverpool, when funds ran too low for the purchase of even the cheapest cuts of meat, "blind scouse" would be made, using only vegetables.

[11] The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) states that "scouse" is a shortened form of "lobscouse"[12] a sailors dish from the 18th century.

Contrariwise, Crowley points out that lobscouse (as "lobs course") is mentioned by Smollett in 1750, while Friedrich Kluge dates its first appearance in German in 1878, and concludes the usage spread from Britain to northern Europe rather than vice versa.

[14] Similar dishes are traditional in countries around the North Sea, such as Norway (lapskaus), Sweden (lapskojs), Finland (lapskoussi), Denmark, (skipperlabskovs), and northern Germany (Labskaus),[13] though these differ from the original lobscouse and from each other.

[20] The similarities with labs kauss in Latvian and labas kaušas in Lithuanian is called gobbledygook (Kauderwelsch) of the mind in Der Spiegel by Petra Foede.

[31] In North Wales the full form is retained as "lobsgows" (Welsh: lapsgóws)[32][33] A version of scouse has been known on the Atlantic coast of Canada in Newfoundland and Labrador, from at least 1792.