Excellent article, and interesting to compare with my experience as a Brit living in the US (Seattle) for a dozen years. In the US, Britishness (and perhaps especially Englishness) is still considered highly desirable, and so living there is not laced with the kind of middle-class angst about disappearing into the woodwork that you so eloquently describe. In food terms this meant that we were able to delight our American friends with some British foods (Pimm's; sponge cakes; crumpets; shepherd's pie; bread sauce) that made them feel both adventurous and sophisticated. Other British staples, however (kidneys; brown sauce; marmite), remained a hard sell.
Thanks for the article, it was fun to read and quite interesting!
"Just surviving the war dealt an absolutely devastating body blow to English cuisine that has taken generations to recover from (if it has recovered at all); what emerged in the meantime was a whole market of highly processed, sugary and salty goods with which people could cheaply add to their basic cooking." This is an interesting observation, because as a continental European I had always wondered about this. On the other hands, large parts of Europe were even stronger affected by the war (my home town was 90% destroyed for example) and our food has recovered, so while the two world wars can certainly be part of the equation, there must be another factor (or factors) in play here.
It's a very good question and one I'm not sure I have the answer to, but it may have been the reliance on other countries for our food which came back to bite us when the empire started to dissolve post-war.
Maybe it's to do with other European countries being a bit warmer and thus being able to grow food for a longer period of the year. England couldn't. As an Australian I've noticed a difference in food culture to a fair swathe of Europe - here we take for granted an array of seasonal abundance because it's such a large country, and so you can grow just about everything here (with the exception of things like raspberries, which have a punishingly short growing season in the hot, dry Australian climes and so are usually expensive.) But mangoes? Pineapples? Strawberries, which just about never go out of season cause you can grow them from the tropical areas of the country and head down as the weather gets warmer? Even green vegetables like beans? I went to a Hungarian supermarket and could only find capsicums and cabbage. In summer. In Finland, they didn't seem to have any green beans. The kind of basic vegetables that I would have taken for granted in Australia just weren't available in European supermarkets at the levels I would have expected. Yes, there are fresh food markets and when I was able to, I did visit them, but I was reminded of how lucky we are when it comes to not having to import most of our food.
Calls to mind a camping trip to France many years ago. One evening I was washing our dishes in one of the communal sinks when an Englishman came to the neighbouring sink and plonked his dishes into the water. Up to the surface floated a dozen or so Oxo cubes with which he had intended to flavour his evening meals. He was horrified and felt his holiday was ruined!
Excellent article, and interesting to compare with my experience as a Brit living in the US (Seattle) for a dozen years. In the US, Britishness (and perhaps especially Englishness) is still considered highly desirable, and so living there is not laced with the kind of middle-class angst about disappearing into the woodwork that you so eloquently describe. In food terms this meant that we were able to delight our American friends with some British foods (Pimm's; sponge cakes; crumpets; shepherd's pie; bread sauce) that made them feel both adventurous and sophisticated. Other British staples, however (kidneys; brown sauce; marmite), remained a hard sell.
Thanks for the article, it was fun to read and quite interesting!
"Just surviving the war dealt an absolutely devastating body blow to English cuisine that has taken generations to recover from (if it has recovered at all); what emerged in the meantime was a whole market of highly processed, sugary and salty goods with which people could cheaply add to their basic cooking." This is an interesting observation, because as a continental European I had always wondered about this. On the other hands, large parts of Europe were even stronger affected by the war (my home town was 90% destroyed for example) and our food has recovered, so while the two world wars can certainly be part of the equation, there must be another factor (or factors) in play here.
It's a very good question and one I'm not sure I have the answer to, but it may have been the reliance on other countries for our food which came back to bite us when the empire started to dissolve post-war.
Maybe it's to do with other European countries being a bit warmer and thus being able to grow food for a longer period of the year. England couldn't. As an Australian I've noticed a difference in food culture to a fair swathe of Europe - here we take for granted an array of seasonal abundance because it's such a large country, and so you can grow just about everything here (with the exception of things like raspberries, which have a punishingly short growing season in the hot, dry Australian climes and so are usually expensive.) But mangoes? Pineapples? Strawberries, which just about never go out of season cause you can grow them from the tropical areas of the country and head down as the weather gets warmer? Even green vegetables like beans? I went to a Hungarian supermarket and could only find capsicums and cabbage. In summer. In Finland, they didn't seem to have any green beans. The kind of basic vegetables that I would have taken for granted in Australia just weren't available in European supermarkets at the levels I would have expected. Yes, there are fresh food markets and when I was able to, I did visit them, but I was reminded of how lucky we are when it comes to not having to import most of our food.
Calls to mind a camping trip to France many years ago. One evening I was washing our dishes in one of the communal sinks when an Englishman came to the neighbouring sink and plonked his dishes into the water. Up to the surface floated a dozen or so Oxo cubes with which he had intended to flavour his evening meals. He was horrified and felt his holiday was ruined!
Confusing England and ‘Britain’ yet again
England is not Britain it is a separate country as is Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland
No confusion here - the decision to primarily use English in this particular case rather than British was deliberate, despite the shared food culture.
Do you really think the person who spent the time to write this whole essay about Englishness had not considered what he meant by Englishness?