British cooking/Britain's food history and reputation

[A Balic]

...............the original point I made (when I assumed we were discussing recent British gastronomy) ...........

Adam Balic's guide to Egullet survival: Rule No. 1.

1). Never make assumptions about anything when there is a Plotnicki involved.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Adam-Thank you, thank you thank you. Except you Brits (and I'm including you as part of the colonies) need to get your stories straight. First I said that there were classes in society and then Adam Lawrence said there wasn't. And now you said there was. In fact, you have just said that 85% of the people were servants. Which one is it? There also seems to be a split as to whether the food was bad or not. But I do not see how I can read your responses any other way than as an admittance of it being bad. Then there has been my argument that if the food was bad, it was a function of a "plot," the greed of the landowners combined with the readiness of the government to control both the quantity and quality of what people ate. But many people here have argued against that. But if I read your last post correctly, that is effectively what happened. This Plotnicki is indeed confused.

But I say that no matter how we get there, we always get to the same place. How come? Not only the food, all of it. Why the hell did 85% of the population stand for being household servants? I mean the quality of the food they ate was just one aspect of their getting kicked with the toe of the boot. And this is exactly Drew Smith's point if I recall correctly. He says the reason the French have good food is because they wouldn't agree to live for the exclusive benefit of the aristocracy. So a bountiful table became a symbol of the French revolution. So while it's agreed that the negative impact suffered by England during the wars was greater than that suffered by either France or Italy, that conveniently overlooks at the fact that the British decided to make their bed a certain way more than 100 years before the wars ever happened. And that their agro-systems were teetering as to quantity, but had already been destroyed as to quality before the wars ever happened. And when they did come, the bottom fell out. Is that a correct assessment?

[Wilfrid]

I think, Steve, the claim was not that classes didn't exist before the nineteenth century, but that class consciousness didn't.  I am not taking sides on whether the claim is true, but I can see the difference.

"We" the Brits, and the Aussies, and everyone else are not gong to get our stories "straight', because we are posting independent views.  But I think you were kidding.

Why did people stand for working as servants?  I just cannot fathom that sort of question.  Why do people stand for working in factories?  Why do they stand for low wages?  I just haven't got the kind of voluntarist concept of social relations which would allow me to address those questions.  Sorry.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Wilfrid- A few things. You asked which things on Tony's list were awful. Here they are.

1.  English pies and savoury puddings-steak and kidney,beef and oyster,game and rabbit pies,pork pies

3.  Fish and chips

If you don't think they are awful relative to the type of food they eat in France and Italy, not to mention Spain and Germany, there is no basis for the discussion. That is why we are having a hard time having this discussion, The entire Western world outside of England thinks they taste awful. Why are you having such a hard time believing me about it? And then this,

"Why did people stand for working as servants?  I just cannot fathom that sort of question."

What do you mean? That question is the basis of the whole issue. The French refused to so they eliminated their aristocracy and and the Americans refused to and eliminated the British. The British population didn't have to tolerate the Enclosure Laws (which seem to be at the heart of the food demise.) How come they didn't rise up against it because what they were given to eat was shit? I don't understand why you are squeemish about this point?

There has to be some corrolation between the democratic process, wealth distribution, and things like the quality of food, housing, education, etc. that are offered to the public. They have to be indicative of the quality of the process. For a democracy (England,) to have 85% of the population working as servants, when those same people have a majority which can vote in a law that bans someone from having servants, or regulates their wages etc., and that they didn't, doesn't make any sense.  And the food they ate, from how it got that way through why it stayed that way has to be a function of the same issues. And from my perspective, those were all issues that arose well before any of the wars of the 20th century ever happened.

[Andy Lynes]

1.  English pies and savoury puddings-steak and kidney,beef and oyster,game and rabbit pies,pork pies

3.  Fish and chips

The entire Western world outside of England thinks they taste awful. Why are you having such a hard time believing me about it?

Oh for fucks sake Steve, what complete and utter Bullshit.

I think it's time the US contingent stopped espousing this sort of culinery imperialism on these boards. You are even wrong in the context of eGullet alone :

http://www.egullet.com/ib3....d+chips

http://www.egullet.com/ib3....d+chips

[Steve Plotnicki]

Andy-Gee that cut and paste thing works great. Especially when you leave out the relevent bit. I said,

"If you don't think they are awful relative to the type of food they eat in France and Italy, not to mention Spain and Germany, there is no basis for the discussion."

Not that I don't think they aren't awful on their own. They indeed are. But at least if you are going to criticize me, do it for what it is I've said and don't leave the important bits out.

As for fish and chips in particular, how come none of the four countries I have mentioned have a battered and fried fish as a main course? I can only think of a friture in the Loire but that's an appetizer. Isn't it that fish and chips came about because it was a easy way to flavor cheap fish (plaice, otherwise flavorless) and that the better quality fish went elsewhere? But like I said, the reason we can't have this discussion is that people don't agree on the quality of the food in the first place.

[Wilfrid]

Yeah, what Andy said.

Plus: I know a lot of people believe the myth you are espousing about British food.  I have to assume you have never eaten, for example, a good British-made game pie.  Fair enough.  Why you won't believe there are such things, I don't know.  Starts to look like blind prejudice.  I hadn't eaten a good knish before yesterday, but that didn't mean there weren't any.

If you think there were no servants in France or America, following their respective revolutions, you are so bizarrely wrong that I hardly know what to say.  I shouldn't need to research this stuff for you.  Just pick up some French and English novels about upper class life in the first half of the twentieth century - a few detective stories should suffice - and meet some French and American butlers, cooks and housemaids.

(Let me note that I didn't sign up to A. Balic's 85% of population in service claim.  Balic is generally right about everything, of course, but it seems on the face of it implausible.  If my math is right, it gives each member of the top 15% some sixty servants.  A husband and wife would have, on average, one hundred and twenty servants between them.)

Finally, your grasp of the history of universal suffrage in Britain is about as sound as your grasp of British history in general.  Those in service - 85% or whatever - did not all have a vote long before the twentieth century.  The campaign for fair wages began in industry, as one might expect if one thought about it, with the development of the power of trades unions from the late nineteenth century onward.  Domestic servants would have faced many difficulties in organising unions, like for example immediate homelessness.  

Oh, but, how did they stand for it?  :wow:  :wow:  :wow:

P.S.  Just catching up with you, Steve.  I have eaten fried, battered or breadcrumbed fish, time and again in France, Germany, Spain and Italy.  Fritto misto, bunuelos de bacalao, goujons de morue, excellent fried fish at the little restaurants overlooking the lakes in Hamburg.  I could go on (in fact, I can't, I should be doing something else...).  In case there's any doubt, they also serve chips in those countries.

[Andy Lynes]

Andy-Gee that cut and paste thing works great. Especially when you leave out the relevent bit.

Steve, your entire original post is on the same page for all to see, and what I quoted doesn't change the meaning one little bit. What you said is what you said. This is a reductionist view to say the very least.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Okay you brought up a new topic so I'm going to start a new thread on ethnic and peasant food and how they compare from country to country. Let's kill this thread because we are never going to agree on wether steak and kidney pie tastes good or not (it doesn't) . But we can compare what peasants ate across the board and see who lived better.

But I assume that a game pie is like a Chicken Pot Pie only with scraps of game instead of chicken. Meat, gravy thickened with flour or corn starch and cubes of vegetables that are all baked in the pie and soften as a result. Pie crust on top. Is that it or am I missing something? Or do they put a whole dder under pastry?

[Wilfrid]

You're going to tell us next you don't like haggis.  Is it your contention they don't make game pies in France, just like they don't serve fish and chips?

Anyway, good luck with the new thread (and I am reaching for my copy of Elisabeth Luard's European Peasant Cookery already - but if you can give us a clue which century you're in, that's always a help.  

[Andy Lynes]

Let's kill this thread because we are never going to agree on wether steak and kidney pie tastes good or not (it doesn't)

That wasn't your proposition, it was that "The entire Western world outside of England thinks they taste awful." and the reason you would like to kill this thread is that it is a completely idiotic and unsupportable statement.  

But thats OK, we'll just pop along to the new thread and wait for the next one to arrive. Gee, this is fun (what, no smilie?).

[Steve Plotnicki]

Wilfrid-You're right about a Frito Misto. But I haven't seen any battered Goujons, though I'm not saying somebody doesn't batter them. But you haven't answered my game pie question.

Andy-There is no reductionism involved. My paragraph is exactly what I wrote. And the last sentence needs the rest of the paragraph as context. You can't just eliminate it to change the context of it all. As for the statement, I will gladly stand behind it but we aren't in agreement about the basic premise. When I say why is it crap? In order to have a discussion we have to first agree that it is crap. So let's change the topic so we can explore for example, whether things cooked with suet taste as good as things cooked with goose fat or other cooking fuels. We'll just have to prove it's crap the hard way. Ingredient by ingredient.

[Tonyfinch]

Steve,fritto misto  in Italy,pescado con patates frites,or freidura(mixed fried fish) in Spain,not to mention tempura in Japan. Fish fried in batter can be found everywhere.

[Andy Lynes]

Steve - when I said that your arguement was reductionist, I meant that you had reduced the entire spectrum of British cooking to a few items and then branded them all as awful.

You can't really say that there is a material difference in saying something is awful in comparison to something else and saying that it is awful. It either is or it isn't. The smell of shit is not awful compared to roses, it's just awful.

You think that British food is awful and you would have us believe that when you make that statement ,you speak for the entire Western world. It's that sort of arrogance that really gets peoples back up and what I meant when I referred to Culinary Imperialism.

[Wilfrid]

I just lost a post somewhere, so here's a brief version:

There's no point giving you a recipe for game pie, Steve, or for any other British dishes, is there?  Your mind's made up, and that's it.  I wish you would sometimes withdraw remarks that are obviously, wildly mistaken, such as the claim that the French and Americans have refused to work as servants.  There has to be a bit of a gesture in the direction of intellectual honesty, surely.

Oh, yeah, and what Andy said.  Me too.  Steve, you have to admit that you have given not just British food, but the British people in general a pretty hard time over the last few days.  I think we've been pretty nice about it, and I for one have been quite amused by your take on British history.  But I don't find the idea of offering you British cuisine ingredient by ingredient so you can tell me it's shit all that appealing.  Thanks very much.

[Lord Michael Lewis]

Let's kill this thread because we are never going to agree on wether (sic) steak and kidney pie tastes good or not (it doesn't) .

Plotinki, If you can't recognize the culinary and technical merits of a good Steak and Kidney Pie you shouldn't be wasting your own and other people's time here. We all have likes and dislikes but you are dogmatically employing any tactic to rubbish a national cuisine and I find this offensive and inappropriate.

Fried and battered seafood can be found all over Europe including France and is an excellent mode of preparation. The batter protects the fish and absorbs any juices that might otherwise leech out, it is also extremely quick and this also favours the delicate nature of seafood. Comments like this only serve to reinforce the overall impression that you don't know what you're talking about.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Gee guys. You are all taking this too personally. I have given you my honest opinion and I am trying to be objective about it. If we were discussing what we eat in the States, I would have no problem tearing it apart to expose how shitty the food is there. I wonder why many of you can't look at how poor your cuisine is in the same way? But like I've been saying, let's not argue about it. Let's let others decide. Since you think I am biased, I've given you all the chance to show me how much others like the cuisine. Just go over to the new post and spit it out. The examples I mean, not the haggis.

[Andy Lynes]

Gee guys. You are all taking this too personally.

The reason for that is not what you are arguing, but the manner in which you argue it. It would appear that you are simply taking pleasure in winding people up, which is quite acceptable if all involved are having fun, but that is evidently not the case here.

[Tonyfinch]

Yes it is Andy,of course it is.You must have had a momentary sense of humour failure.No-one's taking any of this  stuff TOO seriously are they....?

[Andy Lynes]

Tony - You are correct, I am not taking this too seriously but also that I have had a momentary sense of humour failure in the face of relentless American imperialism, which is also apparently humourless.

[A Balic]

Steve - many things teach you I will, but you must let the rage flow out of you [cuts to scene with Plotnicki fighting dark Wilfrid like character. Plotnicki kills Wilfrid and takes off mask only to see his own face!].

Wilfrid - the statistics are are from a real source but what does that mean, right? The offical census from 1851 gives about 50% of the population over the age of ten working in the fields or as servants. Obviously these figures would be higher before the industrial revolution of the 18th C.

More later, I have this work crap to do.

[Andy Lynes]

Thats three times I've used the word "Imperialism" (make that four times) in this thread already. I need to get a thesaurus in order to be more creative in my mud slinging.

[Wilfrid]

Adam:  in the field or as servants?  I thought I read 85% "in service".  My math was, I think, wrong, but my point was that from the remaining 15% you had to extract all those working in industry, in retail, or in any other profession (and, I thought, in agriculture too), who didn't employ servants.  You would then have the remaining sub-set of the 15% employing 85% of the population, which I still think would mean hundreds of servants per household.  So don't believe it.

If anyone thought I was having a sense of humour failure on these topics, not at all.  I hoot with laughter at most of Steve's posts.  I do think the "your food is crap/shit" tone is not Steve at his best, but I am not chewing the furniture.

[Jinmyo]

This has all been much more fun even than the "Craft is Dull" thread in the NY board. On Saturday, I think it was, I had to get away from the computer and stumble about chortling and choking.

[A Balic]

Adam:  in the field or as servants?  I thought I read 85% "in service".  My math was, I think, wrong, but my point was that from the remaining 15% you had to extract all those working in industry, in retail, or in any other profession (and, I thought, in agriculture too), who didn't employ servants.  You would then have the remaining sub-set of the 15% employing 85% of the population, which I still think would mean hundreds of servants per household.  So don't believe it.

If anyone thought I was having a sense of humour failure on these topics, not at all.  I hoot with laughter at most of Steve's posts.  I do think the "your food is crap/shit" tone is not Steve at his best, but I am not chewing the furniture.

Wilfrid - sorry, I was using statistics from the wrong century. What can I say? It was early and I was shaking with rage over Plotnicki's attack on Steak 'n' Kidney pudding. The heathen.