Ploughman's lunch many pubs served little else: in 1932 Martin Armstrong described stopping at village inns for a lunch of bread, cheese and beer, noting that "On these occasions in country inns when bread, cheese and beer seem so extraordinarily good, the alternative is generally nothing; and compared with nothing bread, cheese, and beer are beyond compare". By the 1950s the meal was certainly being referred to by forms of the name later used to promote it. In 1956, author Adrian Bell reported: "There's a pub quite close to where I live where ... all you need say is, 'Ploughboy's Lunch, Harry,
Monkey bread only in butter. "Monkey bread" soon became the more common name for this Hungarian Jewish dessert. Recipes for the bread first appeared in American women's magazines and community cookbooks in the 1950s, but the dish is still virtually unknown outside the United States. The bread is made with pieces of sweet yeast dough (often frozen), which are baked in a cake pan at high heat after first being individually covered in melted butter, cinnamon, sugar, and chopped pecans. It is traditionally served hot so that the baked segments can be easily torn away with the fingers and eaten by hand.