My Dad came from the poor side of town in the northeast of England and even now takes a certain pleasure in regailing us with stories of the economical crap they used to somehow consume.
Sheep's head stew with eyeballs floating around on top (yuk!) was common in their household (and glad they were to be first in the queue too, it seemed), along with some of the other things already mentioned here like tripe, dripping on bread and pease pudding etc. Most of this plop had disappeared off the menu (his menu - we never ate any of this god-awful guff
) by the time we came to Oz in 1982. But until that time he was still bringing home the odd plate of tripe. I tried it once and it was instantly obvious why it was called tripe - gag, wretch, - it was absolute tripe.
Actually, pretty much the worst thing I've ever eaten personally was something that I've yet to identify. I used to be a ship's officer back in early days, and on one ship the Korean crew, gentlemen that they were invited us down to their rec room for an hour of convivial chat and a get together one Christmas Day. Because of my shift timing, by the time I got down there, pretty much all the other officers were already there and had already done what I was called upon to do now!!
I was first informed that I had to sing a song - cos I'm really good at that - NOT. But first I was to sample their hospitality in the form of this particulat food concoction. It looked raw and it looked horrible whatever it was, and the skipper quietly said to me that it tasted absolutely abysmal, but to eat it respectfully as they would be most hurt if I didn't.
Well, I bravely put this stuff into my mouth all at once - it was quite a large lump and dipped in some equally horrible looking sauce, and I instantly realised that I would rather have my tongue beaten paper thin with a meat tenderiser than suffer this. Boy was it awful. And worse, it wouldn't go down. Try as I might, it sort of half went down and then came back up again - several times. I signalled for a beer and tried to wash it down like that. By now, all the fellow officers were peeing themselves laughing but the crew were looking more than a bit either concerned or offended - I couldn't tell which. Trying desparately to do the right thing, I tried a couple more times to wash it down with a swig of beer and eventually it went down. At this point, the officers were just about having hernias, and the crew had begun to see the funny side of things too and offered a great big round of applause.
After that, the singing seemed a walk in the park
Oh - happy days
Cheers,