Pat, I always thought your explanation was the correct one. I never had it growing up. My Irish Grandmother came over in 1905 and she never made it but she served plain boiled potatoes for lunch every day. My half Italian husband is the one who introduced me to it! His Irish comes from his mother who grew up on a remote island off Newfoundland. They only had a milk cow so any beef had to come over from the mainland by boat. They had no electricity so it had to be salted. We've had plenty of testimony here that no one in Ireland ever heard of it and the source for the other version is only the intro to a Meat Preparation Fact Sheet, not any food history research report, so I think someone is talking through their hat and it ain't us. Margaret