Food history: everything you wanted to know | History Extra
"‘The kind of underlying idea is that Britain or the British person rich man in the street is represented by butcher. John Bull is a butcher, he eats meat, other nations can't afford to eat meat, therefore, straightaway, we're better than anyone else. Also, we eat meat, which means that we are big and strong and tall, and we can fight the French and the French, as everybody knows, live on soupe maigre, which is turnip soup and frogs’ legs because they're all poor, and they're all weedy. And every satire you see is a Frenchman, because mainly anti French propaganda, has a bandy legged Frenchman who’s sort of pigeonchested and sort of a bit effete looking and put against the doughty Englishman who beats them up and then has breakfast. So it's, it's very easy to smile and laugh, but they're really I mean, are very dangerous caricatures apart from anything else, because it all feeds into the British sense of superiority, the British sense of isolationism, you know, these things were alive and well in the 18th century, but they still affect our mentality today. And the number of people who say that their favorite meal is a steak, and it may well be, but I also think it's because of this trope that's sitting in the back of our heads about what is British. It's a bloody steak. It's about beef husbandry and about masculinity. And about, you know, yeah, it's really unrefined, not like this frou frou French stuff. I mean, gah, who needs sauces anyway, and that is is absolutely the attitude of the 18th century. And it's also a lie because the aristocracy we're all eating frou frou French sauces anyway, because why wouldn't they but then they claim they're British and they put some beef on the sideboard anyway…
Fish and Chips makes their appearance as a thing together really in about the 1860s. So fry, the lovely thing about fish and chips is that fried fish were essentially, came out of Jewish culture in the East End, because you couldn't cook on the Sabbath. So fried fish would be served. And chips seem to have made their appearance in France in the late 18th century. So the British national dish is a mixture of Jewish emigre food and French food. And Italian food if you have ketchup, or French if you have mayonnaise, and, you know, it's brilliant. And so it appeared sort of around the 1860s. Manchester claims to have been the site of the first fish and chip shop, so does London, we'll never know. And it took off really quickly because fried fish and chips was really tasty, really nutritious and really cheap. So it very quickly became a working class food. And I suppose it was really kind of the Edwardian period or around the First World War that it became very much a British national food. And it was very much recognized as such. So to the point that in the Second World War, it wasn't rationed, because it was seen as so vital, not just to the health of the nation, but to the morale of the nation...
‘Is vegetarianism and veganism, are they modern phenomenons? Or do they have an older history?’
‘They have a much older history. Early vegetarians are called Pythagoreans. Because Pythagoras was supposed to be a vegetarian, verging very much on the vegan actually, for most of their history, certainly, vegetarianism, veganism is more modern, certainly in the way that we see it today. So veganism really is a post 1960s development. Vegetarianism is in the past very much tied up with religion, and also with protest. So for some people, especially those that were religious, and especially those in monasteries or nunneries, they would give up meat and animal products, because it was seen as something that holy people should do. In fact, if you were Catholic, if you are Catholic, today, you have meat free days. So the early church right across Europe, the early Catholic Church, Wednesdays, Fridays, Sundays, quite a lot of saints’ days, about half the year, were meat free days. So medieval cuisine is a really good place to start if you're vegetarian and looking for a way into history or the history of food. Because in the medieval period, we had what were known as fast days and they were meat free. So they were meat free in a kind of like fairly, there were gray areas, so seals and otters and things like that. And beavers’ tails, and certain seabirds were not meat, because they were in the sea. So that was fine. And you could pay a fine and get out of it. So it was all sort of a little bit kind of fudgy.
But in theory, you had meat free days. So instead of milk, you would consume almond milk, there would be no butter, but you would use vegetable oils, all the things that you would see as tropes today. You know, almond milk really isn't new. And certain, a lot of those foods are really, really, really good, but you could eat fish, that's the crucial difference. So if you're a vegetarian who eats fish, all those medieval recipes are perfect for you. Porpoise, sturgeon, dolphin. Not all of it is great. And also things like jellies, you wouldn't set a jelly with gelatin derived from animals, you set it with isinglass, which is the swim bladder of sturgeon. So there are really good really very ingenious ways around eating meat. Fast forward to the 17th century and we have left the church in Rome and fast days are still kind of being kept by some people, but not very many at all. So but that point vegetarianism sort of as a movement, but not called vegetarianism yet, is very much part of society. But is seen as very cranky.
This guy called Thomas Tryon who writes a lot of vegetarian books, and he's very much tied up with religion and about protest as well. In the 19th century, vegetarianism becomes associated with working class protest, because it is seen that if you give up meat, then you are stepping outside the norms of society. And it's a really good way to do it. But the late 19th century, it's associated with suffrage, because if you are a woman, and you decide you're not going to eat meat, again, you're stepping outside this kind of bloody masculine patriarchal society and early vegetarian restaurants very much associated with women. There, and that's also when the Vegetarian Society is founded. The modern movement, as in concerned about animal welfare has its roots in the 19th century. So up to that point, you're doing it because of healthcare, you're doing it because of belief.
But the middle of the 19th century, people are saying, look, we don't treat animals well. You know, we cram our chickens, we, we whip animals to death, we are treating them so badly. A civilized society should not eat meat, and that's where you get the root of the modern vegetarian movement come from. So it does have a really long history. I think one of the really important things to remember though, is that the majority of people for the majority of the past were vegetarian because they didn't have choice.
So when it comes to modern vegetarianism, and even more so modern veganism, you cannot have that movement until everybody can afford meat. Because there is no point in protesting if you're, if no one's gonna notice. And that's very much true of veganism, it's very much a movement that can really only exist in a wealthy Western society. Yes, there are exceptions. Of course there are, there are lots of exceptions of again, it's religious groups, mainly who are thinking, obviously, of Buddhism and things like that. But in terms of a mainstream movement, or anything, even approaching the mainstream, you can't do that until you can protest. So when you look at the 19th century, the idea that you would give up meat when most people could only afford a couple of pieces of bacon a week, if that, would be ludicrous’...
‘What about the emergence of fast food? Where do you see that trend beginning?’
‘At least the Roman period, where you've got people selling lamb chops out of trays to people on the street. If you've got humans, they're gonna want to eat fast. So really, I mean, street food, fast food goes back and enormously long way. And modern stuff, the kind of, you know, burgers and baps really is 1920s onwards, but in terms of a fast thing, I mean, you used to get baked potato, a man selling baked potato to people in queues for the theater, and apparently was a really good if you're a woman, and you are a bit chilly, you could put a baked potato inside your mouth and it would keep you really, really warm’...
‘Why do you think that Western culture developed knives and forks and Eastern cultures developed chopsticks?’
‘Well, they sort of come from the same root. So if you think of the fork and the chopsticks as the equivalent, then that's, it sort of makes more sense. So the earliest cultures, the earliest eating tools that have been found in archaeological sites and so on and so forth have been spoons, or proto spoons. Something to convey a sloppy mess from the slop to your mouth. Obviously, you can drink from a bowl, but sometimes you want something else. So spoons are the big one. And knives obviously existed for a long time, because how else are you going to butcher your woolly mammoth carcass, whatever it is... your proto deer carcass. But knives. So knives and spoons coexisted for ages in all cultures, pretty much. And then you start slowly to get kind of it, it branches outwards. So Asian culture develops chopsticks, because they're really useful. And there are two kind of main reasons that seem to be, I'm not an expert on Asian culture, I should point out and not on chopstick use either.
But the main reasons that are usually quoted for the development of chopsticks are, first of all, that there were a couple of 100 years where food was very scarce. So cooking techniques changed, especially in China to be pre chopped up and pre proportioned, really. So when you got your dinner, it was lots of little pieces that needed to be conveyed to the mouth. And chopsticks, which were already being used to cook with, were very, very useful for doing that, because you could convey small amounts of food to your mouth and sort of elongate the meal. The other thing was that Confucius, who obviously was incredibly important in Chinese culture, said that knives at the table, were really not what you should be, it's not a mark of civilization to have a weapon that can kill you at the dining table...
In Western Europe, we were using the spoon and the knife, eating knives were pointy. We know that knives and spoons were being carried by people as well. So you had your own personal cutlery which you would carry with you. One of the reasons we know it is because virtually every village in Britain claims to be the home of football. And the reason they claim it is because somebody died playing football by falling on their eating knife. Now, loads of villages claim to be the home of football based on this. And it's always the same story. But for me, the main take out is: why on earth are you carrying your knife with you and then playing a really violent game with it? I mean, surely you take it off, right? It just goes to show that, you know, people have been really silly throughout history. So we have knives and spoons for a very long time. And then we start to get the fork. And the fork originates as a thing to eat sticky sweet meats with at posh tables. So if you've got plums in brandy, they're quite difficult to eat with a spoon. And they're really difficult to eat with a knife, because you're gonna risk cutting your tongue off. So the fork developed really, it was a dessert thing just for the dessert table...
A lot of modern kitchen chefs are starting to use chopsticks to stir and to pick things up and turn things more than tongs because you can get a lot of control with chopsticks. And we used to have pudding sticks and things like that. So there's a lot of similarities’"
National identity and thinking you're better than another country is "dangerous"
