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4. Breakfast Time "Full English Breakfast" - image by Joadl; licenced under CC BY-SA 3.0 Large breakfasts have been a tradition in Britain since the 1300s. Over the centuries, they have slipped down the hierarchy from being exclusively enjoyed by the aristocratic classes, through the aspiring middle classes and finally landing on the working classes. Well, not quite finally, as we shall see. Back in the day, the aristocrats would have huge feasts for breakfast before heading out in the cold to shoot innocent mammals and birds for their amusement. Occasionally, they would shoot each other, too – not often enough, in some people’s view. The immoderate size of the morning meal served two functions. First, it set one up for a long day trekking across the windswept moors slaughtering almost anything that moved, edible or not. Secondly, it was a way of showing off one’s wealth. The more lavish the breakfast, the more elevated you must be! Ingredients would include not only the now common bacon, sausage and eggs etc., but also pheasant, lamb or calves kidneys on toast, pigs’ cheeks, collared tongue, kippers, pork pies etc. By the 19th century and the Industrial Revolution, the aristocracy was in decline. Money was now more and more in the hands of a rising middle class of industrialists and traders. They were largely a conservative bunch who adopted the ways of their perceived ‘betters’, taking over the role of preserving the traditions of the glorious past. They acquired the houses, country estates, guns and servants and continued the tradition. WWI saw the beginning of the end of big houses full of staff to pander to every whim of the owners. WWII saw the end almost completely. The large breakfast then became the property of the working classes and became more standardised. Back bacon, sausages, baked beans, fried tomatoes, mushrooms, black pudding and fried or toasted bread (sometimes both), accompanied by a pot of tea. Seldom coffee. Back bacon - Public Doman image Incidentally top tourist tip: Never refer to sausages as “bangers” unless you are referring to the dish “bangers and mash”. Saying something like “Can I have two bangers with my breakfast, please?“ will be met with howls of laughter. Not that people won’t know what you mean; but we never use the word outside the title of the specific dish, about which I will mutter later. There are, of course, many variations, especially regionally. People today talk of the full English, full Scottish or full Irish, but they are all basically the same. The Scottish breakfast often additionally includes haggis, Lorne sausage, white pudding or fruit pudding, while the Irish usually has soda bread and/or potato scones. (incidentally, in Northern Ireland, the meal is called an Ulster Fry. And often colloquially, in the rest of Britain, just called a "fry-up".) Lorne Sausage - Public Domain image These breakfasts were normally served in cafés or caffs as they are often called in London. And not only at breakfast time. You still see cafés with signs offering “all-day breakfasts”. So, although some remain, most of these places have long gone. With the decline in manufacturing in Britain since the mid-20th century, the need for the calories of the large breakfast before a hard day’s manual labour has largely gone. Also, both a growing awareness of the health issues relating to fried food yet at the same time an increase in Fast Food chains has had a huge effect on their viability as businesses. The last time I ate anything like a full breakfast was about 40 years ago in this café in North London. No, I don't remember precisely what I ate. Image by Ewan Munro; Licenced under CC BY-SA 2A Today, some of these remaining cafés still offer “full breakfasts”, but few people actually order them. Instead they will choose a “pick and mix” breakfast, selecting two or three items out of the full Monty. So, I might have bacon, sausage and egg while my friend may go for black pudding, egg and beans. Partial "full" breakfast. Black pudding, egg and beans, for some reason served with bread and butter ratherthan the uwsual fried fried or toast. I forget why. Look on YouTube and the like and you will find scores of videos entitled something like ”10 dishes you must eat in England” “England” may be replaced by “London”, “Scotland” etc. What is interesting is that these so-called influencers have their near identical lists of clichés and all end up going to the same places which they have heard about from the last person to post a video. There are some times queues of influencers! It is amusing (for all the wrong reasons) to watch these clowns attempting to eat their massive breakfasts while spouting nonsense about its history or even about exactly what they are eating. Alternatively they go to places which only really cater to tourists and serve breakfast with strange additions, but missing traditional items. Hash browns are American and chips do not belong on a “full English” and are only added by bad restaurants to fill the diners up as cheaply as possible. There are a number of these people who go to one expensive chain steak-restaurant in London, thinking it’s a typical example of the real thing. The breakfast comes with things such as roast beef marrow and pork chops in addition to the usual. And they serve home-made baked beans. Only canned Heinz beans made to the British recipe are permitted by law! They were introduced to the UK in 1886, shortly before Victoria’s death and almost immediately joined the new standard in the new Edwardian reign. These additional items are what were part of the traditional pre-Victorian breakfast but which disappeared from the dish in the early 20th century. The YouTube people don’t realise that this is atypical and explain that this is what the English working man eats every morning. Utter bilge. There is one bad-mannered idiot who goes around London totally misunderstanding everything he sees and eats, yelling at people in what he imagines to be a “London accent” and making sexist remarks to young women walking past. The cretin should be deported – from the planet! I’ll visit some more of the YouTube “top 10 type British foods” over the next few days. Some will be pleasant; many less so.

Indeed. Potato crisps and pickled onions were as far as most went. Maybe a stale ham sandwich if it was more upmarket. Today it's the opposite. Trying to find a traditional "local" is difficult. They have all turned to gastro-pubs or think they have. There are some with great food but when I was back in Britain in 2019, I struggled to find what I remember as a great pub! COVID has also ravaged the pub trade; the survivors have just re-opened after a third lengthy lockdown, but many didn't make it through.

宫保鸡丁味 (gōng bǎo jī dīng wèi) is what you may call "Kung-po chicken" flavour. "Gongbao jiding" is the Mandarin name; "kung-po" is Cantonese which they don't speak in Sichuan, home of the dish. Anyway, now they are potato chips. It's the end of civilisation, I tell you! You will be shocked to learn they taste nothing like gongbao or kung-po!

While I do agree that industrial revolution had a large impact, for the reasons you give, I still think that WWII in particular had a much larger impact. A whole generation growing up on extremely limited supplies and never learning to cook or taste decent food had a devastating effect. The majority of men spent around six years on army rations on the battlefield. The military were exempt from rationing, but I imagine they weren't exactly enjoying haut cuisine.

Just took delivery of a rosemary and thyme plants. They need repotting and a bit of fresh air and sunlight. It took three days to ship them inside a cardboard box. These are not easy to find here - Chinese food doesn't use them.

The first time I ever recall eating in a restaurant was in Britain in the 50s. It was Chinese - allegedly, but there was also an Italian of sorts which I never frequented. This was in small town Scotland. There were very few Thai restaurants the last time I lived in London. That was in the early 90s. Now they are everywhere.

There have long only been two kinds of British restaurants in Britain. There are some restaurants selling excellent, high quality British food at less excellent high prices, while at the opposite end of the spectrum are cafés (more like American diners) which are cheap, cheerful and often low quality. British people, when dining out, don't generally want British food. We eat that at home. It is more seen as an opportunity to eat something different. BBC Radio London not long ago did a survey of what nations' foods were available in restaurants in the city. I forget the exact number they found, but it was, I seem to remember, 80-something. Chinese, Indian, Italian and Thai are the top four favourites.

Here is a recipe for the Woolton Pie mentioned by one woman in the video on WWII rationing which I posted above.

It's rather early for mangosteens. They don't normally come into season until July.

I don't go looking for these! They just turn up.

https://spartacus-educational.com/ED1946.htm In fact, although schools had been empowered (but not required) to issue free milk in 1921, the universal standard free 1/3 pint wasn't introduced until 1946 under the 1946 School Milk Act. It lasted until 1968 when it ended in secondary schools then 1971 in all schools. To this day the then Secretary of State for Education and Science, Margaret Thatcher, later Prime Minister, is known widely as "Thatcher, the Milk Snatcher"!

Arrgh! I'd just about managed to purge (or at least suppress) all thoughts of cod liver oil from my memory. Now it has come flooding back! My grandparents ran a local tobacconist / newsagent shop and were often presented with rabbits and other game in the hope of receiving a bit of extra tobacco in return. I'm told they never went along with the illegal bartering but I'm not sure I believe it. I was also put off milk for life after the free one-third of a pint of milk at school. It used to sit outside the canteen all morning. In winter it was often frozen solid; in summer horribly warm.

Yes, I know America had rationing too, as did other countries, but nowhere near to the same degree. The list of foods which were rationed in the US is much shorter. Virtually all food was rationed in Britain. Only vegetables, fruit, fish and bread went unrationed in Britain. In fact, the US was exporting food aid to Britain throughout. Britain had nothing to export! Also Britain was in the war longer and rationing lasted longer.

香辣小龙虾 (xiāng là xiǎo lóng xiā) - Spicy Crayfish / Crawfish. Many, many were eaten. Much, much beer helped wash them down.

Fried rice doesn't need eggs. Many fried rice classics here have no eggs.

3. Original Sin So how did this misplaced, undeserved reputation of British food arise? There are suggestions that it began in the Victorian era, when a strict religious and moral regime warned against the dangers of actually enjoying anything! It is a controversial theory, however. Although food was not consumed with the gusto of say the 18th century, the appetite for good food was never totally subdued. Rather, the two world wars are really to blame. WWI led to rationing being introduced and this was repeated to even more strict and devastating effect in WWII. As an island nation, Britain, which imported around two-thirds of its food, found itself very short of supplies as the enemy were torpedoing supply ships. As a result, people had to make do with what they could get. They did remarkably well, so much so that many medical and nutritional experts believe people were generally more healthy then, than now. On the 8th of January, 1940, bacon, ham, sugar and butter were put on ration, to be soon followed by meat, cheese, margarine, eggs, milk, tea, breakfast cereals, rice and biscuits (cookies). Vegetarians (there were very few of those) could trade their meat allowance for extra cheese. Vegans hadn't been invented yet! By 1942, almost all food was rationed except vegetables, fruit, fish and bread. (Clothing, shoes, soap and fuel were also rationed.) It should also be noted that although vegetables, fruit, fish and bread were never rationed, the supply was still limited and unreliable. Fish was expensive, too, as the fishermen demanded high returns for what was more dangerous work than usual. Bread and potatoes were rationed, but after the war, in 1946 -1948 and 1947 respectively, due to bad harvests caused by poor weather. Public Domain image And when I say rationed I mean rationed! Everyone man, woman and child was issued with a ration book with tickets which had to be given up at the stores, with which you had to register, in exchange for not very much at all. You had to register with different stores for different foodstuffs – a butcher, a baker, a general grocer etc. There were very few supermarkets, then. The palaver of checking and processing the ration regulations meant that service was slow, leading to long queues at most shops. British grocer cancelling tickets in ration book - Public Domain Image Prices were set by government to prevent profiteering. However, black market foodstuffs were traded by what were called ‘spivs’, but penalties were severe if they were caught (many were – usually reported by citizens who saw them as traitors to the war effort.) To call someone a ‘spiv’ is still a strong insult in Britain. Public Domain A typical ration for an adult was 4 oz of bacon or ham, other meat to the value of one shilling and two pence (which could buy you approximately two chops or equivalent), 2 oz of butter, 2 oz of cheese, 4 oz margarine, 4 oz cooking fat (lard), 3 pints of milk, 8 oz sugar, 2 oz of tea, 1 fresh egg (plus varying amounts of dried egg, when available. This much-hated egg substitute was imported from the USA on ships which were often the target of blockades by the Germans). Note that this was the ration for an adult for ONE WEEK, although it was supplemented by 12 oz of sweets (candies) every 4 weeks and 1 pound of jam (usually made from marrows) every 2 months. Sausages were unrationed, but were usually made with the dregs of the butchers’ tables (and floors) and were highly prone to exploding The term ‘bangers’ was coined during WWI, but was revived by WWII. Game meats such as rabbit and pigeon was also off the ration, but only really available to rural people. In order to alleviate the shortages of vegetables, all parks, sports grounds, village squares and any other plots of vacant land were converted into gardens and a "Dig For Victory" campaign was launched to encourage people to grow their own food. Fruits such as bananas and lemons were imported pre-war, so they disappeared for the duration of the war and beyond. My cousin first tasted bananas and ice cream in a British hospital in the late-50s. He thought the bananas were a joke and asked that the ice-cream be heated up as some idiot had served it stone cold! Some imported spices were difficult to find during the war. Herbs less so. (Lucky that British food “never uses herbs and spices”, wasn’t it?) This rationing meant that a whole generation of British women just never learned to cook. Mothers weren’t going to let their daughters experiment in the kitchen; one mistake and the family did not eat that day. You couldn’t run out and buy something else. (Note: Assuming only women and girls would be cooking is not me being sexist. That’s how it was then. The men were nearly all away fighting and anyway, in those days cooking was considered “women’s work” by the vast majority.) The British government’s Ministry of Food, issued a series of pamphlets telling people how to get the most from their limited supplies – some of them make grim reading today. Radio broadcasts backed these pamphlets up. All rationing ended on the 4th of July 1954, nine years after the end of the war, although shortages continued for some time after. In the 1960s, with a booming economy and the advent of cheaper travel, people started holidaying in Europe, particularly France, Spain and Italy. This brought them into contact with different foods again and the cuisine began to recover, aided hugely by writers such as Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson. By the 1970s, British cuisine was well on the way to recovery. So this unfair, dishonest demonisation of British food actually only refers to a brief moment in the country’s long history, roughly 70 to 80 years ago. And the temporary decline in food standards was no fault of the British. There was very little disparagement of British food prior to WWI, as people ate well. What little there was can usually be attributed to simple propaganda. Napoleon was said to have dismissively called the British a nation of beef-eaters, yet according to a contemporary document, while in exile on St. Helena, every day his household and he got through 23 kilos of beef and veal, plus 23 kilos of mutton or pork plus a roasting pig, 31 kilos of bread, 42 eggs and 15 bottles of milk, two turkeys, four ducks, two geese, 12 pigeons and nine other fowl, all. Washed down with fifty bottles of wine, malt liquor, rum and cognac. Nothing there that Britain wasn't consuming, too. Heston Blumenthal’s 2-Michelin-starred London restaurant, Dinner with Heston only serves British food from pre-war recipes. The current on-line menu lists dishes from between 1390 and 1850. Pre-COVID, there was a rich vibrant food scene in the UK, the equivalent of any, and with restrictions beginning to be lifted, that will probably return very soon. But some people prefer the lazy stereotytpes, even when the evidence is staring them in the face. Finally let me deal with one comment. The worst cook I know was my late mother. She was French, but moved to Britain as a nine-year-old refugee at the start of the war, so never learned to cook or even eat good food. The idea that French people are all somehow genetically great cooks and gourmets is just another nonsensical myth. I’ve been served some inedible garbage in French restaurants in France. Sure, the top end is great and often, small places can surprise you with wonderful food, but that is just as true in Britain, if not more so! Here is an interesting oral history video with British people remembering what it was like to live under rationing in the war.

My friend J and I had a late birthday dinner (but an early dinner time-of-day-wise) for me today. My birthday was actually two weeks ago, but celebrations were delayed due to a family bereavement. Lunch was partaken of in a mainly Cantonese restaurant on the 73rd floor of the city's tallest building. Great views normally, but it poured monsoon-like all through the meal. 铁板黑椒牛仔骨 (tiě bǎn hēi jiāo niú zǎi gǔ) - Iron Plate Black Pepper Cowboy Beef Ribs. 高山菌黄牛舌 (gāo shān jūn huáng niú shé) - Mountain Mushroom Beef Tongue 水东芥菜 (shuǐ dōng jiè cài) - Cantonese Mustard Leaf Soup 铁板海鲜炒饭 (tiě bǎn hǎi xiān chǎo fàn) - Iron Plate Seafood Fried Rice Then we went shopping and I ended up accidentally buying a new cell phone! Now spending the evening, trying to work out all its functions.

I know! But if I had some marsala, I might try it! Actually, I've never eaten Chicken Tikka Masala. They will probably cancel my British passport if they find out!

Masala. Marsala is a Sicilian fortified wine. Maybe you are on to something!

I didn't say YOU were a troll. You did say or imply that Britain's use of Indian spices or Britain's adoption of Indian cuisine is "cultural appropriation". Or is only citing it "appropriation"? I disagree. I repeat my question. By whom and from whom?

Certainly not! I seldom even look at the likes. What I expect is for people to read what I do write and not comment negatively on things I haven't even mentioned.

I just think that the trolls want it both ways. 1) British food never uses herbs or spices. 2) All the herbs and spices British food uses were "appropriated". I have a question. Who were they appropriated by and from whom?