One of the glories of Hampton Court Palace is the Tudor Kitchens. At over fifty thousand square feet they are the largest, mostly complete survival of 16th century kitchens anywhere. For nearly thirty years the Historic Kitchens Team have conducted “experimental archaeology” there, cooking food from the 16th century in the original kitchens, in authentic clothing. Using evidence from books and pictures they try to recreate just how our ancestors cooked five centuries ago.
Before striking out on my own as a tour guide, working with the team was one of the things I really enjoyed. They are hugely knowledgeable and skilled interpreters, as well as good company. Here’s a picture of myself with the team back 2009. I’m the one on the left in red and blue, taking a cheeky break from being a Tudor Yeoman of the Guard.
People are often surprised just how far some ingredients would come. Henry VIII was eating dishes spiced with products from as far away as modern-day Indonesia. Of course, New World produce was unknown until the voyages of Columbus, Cabot, Vespucci etc. Things could take some while to filter through as well. The potato did not reach England until late into Elizabeth I’s reign. The Spanish court even managed to keep chocolate a secret for a century!
The guys used to enjoy asking Indian guests what Indians used to use before the introduction of chili peppers and potatoes by the Portuguese in the 16th century. Few of our Indian guests had ever realised that two such staples of Indian cookery were simply unknown there before they were brought over from the New World.
They would do this, not just because it was fun to see the reactions, but to help people understand just how long the quite distant interchange and adaption of different food between cultures has been going on for.
This interchange of foods has become yet another battle ground in the culture wars. Appropriating foods with origins in other cultures is now being ranked alongside the horrifying crime of wearing a kimono or a sombrero and serape on Halloween.
This edible expression of kulturkampf dovetails nicely with the use of the origins of certain iconic foods to undermine national identities.
Here in the UK, we’ve become fairly used to toxic lefties coming up with pieces saying “Well, X came originally from Y, it’s not really British, is it?”.
As is so often the case, the Commissars of Cultural Correctness take historical mole hills and making them into weaponised woke mountains. The history of food is the history of cultural exchange, and many “national” dishes have their origins elsewhere, this does not lessen their cultural meaning for the nation in question.
One example that the lefties have had fun with recently is fish & chips. The chip shop, or chippy, is certainly a big part of British working-class food culture and one of the things visitors, especially from the States, want to try. Fish & Chips is undoubtedly an icon of Britain.
However, the chippy’s two staple dishes, deep fried battered fish, and deep-fried chipped potatoes (fries), were not invented here. The first use of “chip” for sliced fried potato in Britain appears in Dickens, in A Tale of Two Cities, 1859. Chips came to Britain from the continent. It’s usually stated that they came from Belgium, however, even Belgian food historians admit that what the British call chips originated in France. French or Belgian, either way, they’re not originally British.
Likewise, battered fried fish was first introduced by Sephardi Jews who came to England, mostly from Portugal, in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Fish and chips seem to have been first brought together when an Ashkenazi Jewish immigrant from eastern Europe, Joseph Malin, opened a fish & chip shop in Bow, east London in 1860.
It was a classic example of right place right time. Trawlers operating in fleets were able to catch more fish, making it more affordable. In Grimsby, on England’s North Sea coast, the first modern fishing port had opened in 1854. The addition of first steam, then diesel engines made them even more efficient. Trains and early refrigeration made it possible to then get the fish swiftly and still fresh to all of Britain’s cities.
Very soon fish & chip shops were everywhere in Britain’s cities, 25,000 by 1910. In The Road to Wigan Pier Orwell cites fish and chips as one of the home comforts of the urban working class. During the First World War the government tried to get the Fish Friers Association to get its members to switch from animal fat to vegetable fat to free up the former for use in munitions. The FFA responded with a report stating that that the deleterious effect on the moral and physical condition of British youth would far outweigh the number of extra projectiles that could be made. It also stated that no civilisation that cooked with animal fat had ever been defeated by one that cooked with vegetable fat!
So, despite the origins of the dishes being far from British, the chippy is very much a part of British history and culture.
That said, one small sad side note, there are now fewer than 10,000 chip shops, and in most big cities they are usually run by folk from different cultures who almost always fry with vegetable fat. It can be hard to get really good fish and chips away from the coast these days, one of the best places being the lovely Yorkshire port of Whitby, well worth a visit if you’re ever in England.
Fish an’ chips is not the only food that is emblematic of one country, despite originating in another.
Pasta came to Italy from the southern and eastern Mediterranean via early medieval Italian merchants. The story of Marco Polo bringing it from China appears to be a romantic 19th invention. A dish called itrium, made from boiled dough, is mentioned in the 4th century Jerusalem Talmud, and similar dishes were known in North Africa. It is nevertheless a fact that by the 13th century pasta was a major part of southern Italian cuisine and that the Italians have developed a huge variety of pasta shapes and sauces. Pasta is an intrinsic part of Italian cuisine, and food is a very important part of Italian culture. Whatever its distant origins, it is ludicrous to say, “pasta isn’t Italian”.
Similarly, the hamburger’s origins are obscure and begin outside the US. The meat patty seems to have developed from dishes brought over by German and Scandinavian immigrants in the 19th century. In northern Germany and Denmark, a very popular dish is Frikadeller, minced meat formed into flattened patties and fried. The hamburg steak was the late 19th century US restaurant version of this dish, and there are other proto-burgers in 19th century America. As early as 1758 the English cookery writer Hannah Glasse, wrote of “Hamburgh Sausage” which was “roasted with toasted bread under it”.
The invention of the classic beef patty in a toasted bun with various accompaniments is claimed to be the work of at least six different people.
Understandably, residents of Hamburg, NY, say the Hamburger was invented there by the Menches brothers in the 1880s.
The Texan historian Frank X Tolbert gives credit to Fletcher Davis of Athens, Texas. He claims Fletcher sold hamburgers at his restaurant from the 1880s and then brought them to the Word’s Fair in 1904.
As the estimable Mr Steve Green often says, perhaps we should embrace the healing power of AND.
The hamburger as we know it certainly was first popularised at the 1904 World’s Fair in St Louis. It is entirely possible that more than one small stall holder was selling a version of a hamburg steak in a bun. Like fish and chips, once the idea caught on it spread swiftly. By the 1930s the hamburger was firmly established. What we know as the hamburger today was certainly developed in America, by Americans and is an edible symbol of America, literally iconic. Right is a 1920s White Castle advert.
Not long ago I saw piece trying to rob John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich of his title as inventor of the sandwich. The 18th century English nobleman asked for meat between two pieces of bread to enable him to eat without getting his hands greasy while either playing cards or working at his desk (stories vary). Soon his friends were ordering “What Sandwich had.” And the name stuck.
The piece claimed he didn’t really invent it because the Chinse had a sandwich like dish centuries before. Well whoop di do. Using bread to eat with is nothing new, but the sandwich as we know it developed from that dish ordered by the Earl of Sandwich, which is why it’s called a sandwich!*
There are any number of examples, yet it seems it’s always the western, especially English-speaking country, that is singled out for cultural devaluation and re-education. I’ve yet to see a piece about vindaloo curry not being “really Indian” because it comes from the Portuguese vinha d’ahlos (wine and garlic), or that salt cod and ackee isn’t “really Jamaican” because salt-cod is a legacy of colonial times when rum was traded for salted cod from the Newfoundland fishing grounds. Always it’s the drip, drip, drip of Western cultural erosion.
As always, I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but I thought you might enjoy this little food fight.
*This is like saying the Wright brothers didn’t invent the aircraft because John Stringfellow, of Chard in Somerset, built a model aircraft with and engine in 1848. Or that the Chinese invented football because they had a game vaguely like football. The fact is that all planes exist because of the Wright Brothers, and football in its Rugby, American and Soccer versions descend from the games played in English schools which were formalised and spread in the 19th century.