John Whiting

It's worth mentioning that any bread product heated in the microwave will be toughened to inedibility.

Window dressing is what is used to get you to enter the store. Once you're inside, they can get down to the business of selling you what is most profitable. If you were to measure the shelf space given to various products, it would show you that their biggest profits lie in mediocrity. Is that what the public demands? They helped to make it that way. However . . . The aim of this thread was apparently to demonstrate that there is more to British cuisine than what merely echoes the rest of the "developed" world. Those of us who live in the UK will already have discovered this; those who are about to visit will have been alerted to explore beyond the nearest fast food outlet or supermarket.

Supermarkets both form and follow public opinion. When there is a demand for quality, they will supply it, so long as it lasts. But their biggest profit lies in rapid turnover of uniform products, and their advertising is concentrated on appealing to their customers' laziness, indifference or preoccupation -- buy this because it's cheap, it requires no work, it presents no challenge, and all your friends are eating it. Organic? Locally grown? "Taste the difference"? Window dressing.

One truly amazing book is the late Maggie Black's A Heritage of British Cooking, containing recipes from the Stuart through the Victorian eras. As well as its copious contemporary illusrations, it's noteworthy for the fact that each recipe is given in a facimile of its source, together with historical and bibliographical information, and a re-writing to make it comprehensible to the modern cook. I'm particularly grateful to her for the recipe for tansy pudding with almonds. This neglected herb grows ferociously in our garden and I love its strong medicinal flavor; I often add it to an omelette (providing I'm the only one eating it).

For years Mary and I have stayed and often eaten at French B&Bs. The accommodation offered is always, by English standards, a bargain at the price. This is because, by law, they must be inspected and the price to be charged is fixed by the inspector relative to the amenities offered. Compared to those in Britain, they are incredibly cheap, inasmuch as the quoted price is for the room, not per person. The most reliable, informative and generally useful guide in English is that published by Alastair Sawday. We started using his French B&B guide several years ago when it first came out, and found the tastes of his inspectors compatible with our own.

In part because the food that was in vogue at time wasn't looking to English food for inspiration, but in general more to the French style. I quick look at most mid-late 19th century cook books shows a large amount of Frenchified names, even if the dishes are not. Food historian Rachel Lauden writes:

I used the world "exponentially" carelessly, much as the world "decimated" is usually thrown around. My apologies. ASDA (and others) are making use of legal loopholes which allow them to reallocate interior space so as to double shopping and display area. WalMart, through ASDA, has only just begun. Tesco and ASDA between them are redefining supermarkets so as to make the food segment increasingly marginal and increasingly industrialized.This is getting off topic, but I suggest that in a few years it will be central to any discussion of British cuisine.

That's a bit like suggesting that Hitler wasn't responsible for WWII, it was the technological revolution which enabled the Blitzkrieg. WalMart has not just ridden the crest of the wave, it has manned the wind machine which makes the wave crest ever higher. As the world's largest corporation, expanding exponentially, it's not merely a passenger. EDIT: Let me quickly add, before someone makes a logical leap, that I'm not implying that you would indeed make such an excuse for Hitler. It's merely an analogy. WalMart has made ingenious use of ICT for its own purposes.

What it comes down to is that, as a random member of the public, you are more able to eat real food but, following the path of least resistence, less likely to do so.

It's often said that in London today it's possible to buy a greater variety of foods, both ingredients and already prepared, than in any other city. And where meats and cheeses are concerned, the quality is equal to the quantity.

No offense taken. I declared my interest merely to discredit my own opinions.

Herb Caen's immortal reply: "Do you mind if I call you Waiter?"

Primary sources? Hmmmm. Hartley is certainly very engaging, but not particularly accurate (it's been a few years, so I can't produce chapter and verse, but I do remember her explanation of raised pies being wildly off-base). And if memory serves she has a propensity for inventing terms and presenting them as quaint old traditions. I enjoy her, but I don't really trust her. She is certainly primary inasmuch as she was one of the first food writers of her generation to call attention once more to England's largely neglected and corrupted native cuisine. Explorers don't usually draw the definitive maps.

Do those who buy regularly in both France and America feel there is any difference in this respect?

So have I. I was really talking about the starry firmament, not the prosaic fork-and-spoon [sic] establishments. And the red bibs have been useful; I look forward to the down-market regional guides that are promised.

Steven, I'm sure you have Elizabeth David's and MFK Fisher's comments on being a woman eating alone.

How far can a book go when it is intended for the intelligent general reader, not written as a doctoral dissertation? It has a 13-page index (in fine print), fifteen pages of notes, a ten-page glossary, and a five-page "select bibliography". Strong opinions? Indeed. I don't agree with all of them, but there's not one which didn't challenge me to think about the subject in a new light. In other words, I like the quality of his mind, and that's the principal thing I demand of an author. I should declare the fact that he's a valued personal friend. Fortunately I'm not an influential critic whose integrity would thus be open to attack.

Heh! Heh! Heh! I can remember Howard Johnson's first franchised restaurant in Orleans on Cape Cod. From shortly after it opened in 1935, we always stopped there for clam chowder when we drove from Provincetown to Boston. And one of those amazing 28 flavors of ice cream. Their orange, blue and white color scheme and art deco architecture were there from the beginning.

Phillipa Pullar's Consuming Passions is appropriately titled, giving especially detailed attention to English food's erotic associations. Her other magnum opus was a biography of the Victorian rake Frank Harris; she later discovered yoga and New Age mysticism and disappeared from the literary scene. Colin Spencer is a food historian and cook of many years experience. He wrote the Guardian's recipe column years ago when Christopher Driver was its food editor. As an undogmatic and frquently lapsing vegetarian, he has written a number of vegetarian cookbooks and a history of vegetarianism as detailed and entertaining as his British Food. (Yes, Adam, of course you're right; my apologies.) The latter grew out of research for a Guild of Food Writers' annual lecture in which he traced the effect of the enclosures on British cuisine:

If you're really interested in what English food once was, how it got to where it is, and the prognosis for the future, there's no better source than Colin Sencer's monumental history for Roman times to the present, English Food. It has the added attraction of being civilized, entertaining, literate and historically informed. For a catalog of traditional foods, there's the encyclopaedic Traditional Foods of Britain by Laura Mason. For recipes, White and Hartley, already mentioned, are primary sources, plus Jane Grigson's English Food. For ancient recipes made usable without being corrupted, Maxime McKendry's Seven Hundred Years of English Cooking is a treasurehouse.

One of our favorites.

Robert points to exactly that growing commercialization of upper echelon "excellence" which makes me seek out those bistros that are so far down the scale that they do not aspire to such heights. Some are merely mediocre, but others are in the hands of inner-directed chefs.

The fact that the American ban followed the European ban within a few hours is just one of life's amazing coincidences.

I've tried to post the URL of the NYT article in the parallel thread running in Food Media and News, but it doesn't seem to be generally accessible because I'm a Times News Tracker subscriber.

The NYT article is more detailed and sophisticated. Surely it can be accessed without subscription.