AH.com greatest challenge of all: Make England a 20th Cuisine Superpower

This is a great thread and I'd like to restart it.

Valdemar II makes an excellent point. One snooty French chef is quoted as saying "the best British food is only French food". There is amazing dining in London and decent restauraunts in all British cities. But most aren't British food per se, they're a byproduct of our former Empire. There is an emerging "mod-Brit" cuisine developing (spearheaded by celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsey) but much of it is fusion food and it hasn't caught on that widely yet.

There is also the issue of "Britain" vs. "England/Wales etc". Certainly, there is interesting indigenous Welsh, Scottish and Irish food but it isn't eaten that widely and I don't think it's comparable to e.g. Italian or Chinese food in terms of diversity.

So why are things like this? Well:
1) Whatever the QUALITY of our food was prior to the Industrial Revolution, it was in a sorry state when the post-war immigration took off and the British were glad of new options.
2) Britain has long working hours compared to many other European nations, so fast food is very popular here.
3) Many people do their socialising in the pub, rather than over an elaborate meal.
4) Most people are relatively open to new food, so imported culinary traditions found fans.
5) Anglifications and fusion food are popular. For example, one can buy a "mexican chilli cornish pastie" in Waterloo station. You see this a little in the rest of Europe (e.g. the German donner kebab) but one would be hard pressed to find e.g. French food that heavily incorporates Asian traditions nor Lebanese-Polish "chick pea pierogi" hybrids.

As for the long-term causes, can anybody suggest some POD's?
 
Rather than defending current English cuisine, let us discuss a reasonable timeline that would have made English cuisine better so that in the OTL people would say, "Let's eat English food," or "Let's go to an English restaurant." Imagine a world where chefs from other nations go to England to study, the way they now go to Italy, France, or the United States.

PhilKearny has exactly the right tone of the discussion here. Although it does remind me of this sketch from Goodness Gracious Me :p:

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CBsQtwIwAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dxdo79znnHl8&ei=p8A2TtCWEtO6hAfT6KmACw&usg=AFQjCNHmbGjQG7FMmVWb2xs8Ie9TB87dIA

An embryonic idea: WI the Catholic church made different laws for eating fish? In the 14th century, most people didn't use the abundant fish of the isles as well as they could - partly because of religious restrictions on when people could eat which fish.
 
As I said in my earlier post, for a truly different perception, you need to go back to the 19th century and make a fair few nudges in order to stimulate different development.

One significant long term cause for the perception of decline as well as actual decline in the 20th century was the impact of rationing in the two World Wars. Now, if this is ameliorated, we won't necessarily get something that is an eternal Edwardian summer, but certain issues of quality would be addressed.

Another issue of note is that there was not so much of a food culture that celebrates food as a sensual pleasure as there was in other countries. This has a number of cultural causes which go a long way back.

Essentially, one couldn't make English or British food into French food, as the very ethos and culture of the cuisines is rather different. However, with certain minor actions carried out in concert with one another, the current reputation of British food would be returned to its previous position.
 
French-Vietnamese cuisine is regarded as among the best haute cuisine. Right, Hendryk? Hendryk?
5) Anglifications and fusion food are popular. For example, one can buy a "mexican chilli cornish pastie" in Waterloo station. You see this a little in the rest of Europe (e.g. the German donner kebab) but one would be hard pressed to find e.g. French food that heavily incorporates Asian traditions nor Lebanese-Polish "chick pea pierogi" hybrids.
 
I think one of the biggest problems is that British cuisine perversely was abandoned by a large part of the setters of social tone. In eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain, the best food in the world was served, but it was given French names. English cuisine defined itself against French, as non-elaborate, not artificial, not overly refined. But the upper classes preferered refined, elaborate cooking, and that was perceived as French. THe same went for the many other influences that productively entered British cuisine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - they were perceived as "foreign". "English" cuisine is not actually what people in England ate, it is what people in England perceived as being essentially English. This was a rural, traditional, simple cuisine, and a lot of its more luxurious dishes depend on high quality ingredients, not complex preparation. And even then. it is nowhere near as bad as its reputation.

So what might help is if more of the great chefs and great restaurtants of London embraced english nomenclatures for their innovatiove dishes, and people felt that English cuisine was not just for everyday fare, but also something you could serve on festive occasions. German cuisine only partly managed this, and Italian and Spanish were rescued by national-minded culinarists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but for English cuisine, even the best efforts of its friends were not enough. That is why we are still left with the idea that chetney, chicken tikka masala, mushroom katsup, soup Crecy or orange tarte are somehow "not English" while the worst excesses of institutional cuisine somehow quintessentially are. That's what we need to address.
 
Having grown up in the sixties I feel that we have changed massively in what we eat and also how we eat it. I can vividly remember going to a chinese restaurant as a family and we all had fish and chips, inconceivable nowadays.

As for changing it earlier, how about ISOT'ing Greg and John back to say the court of King George IV or better still when he was prince regent.

For those who don't know who Greg and John are. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfeyUGZt8nk
 
Edward VII, both as Prince of Wales and as king, was a popular and extremely social person with many interests. Assume that he during the 1870s gets the idea of "competition in cooking" and "improving of the English kitchen"?

He obviously liked food and drink, the social aspects of dinner but also was a bit of a reformer in many ways and open to new ideas. The role as "judge of chefs" would be acceptable both for him and for queen Victoria, that during the 1870s never trusted her son with anything important. The result would be, I imagine, that the general level of ambition and skill rose, that food and cooking became more important and a subject fitting for gentlemen to speak about. IOTL Edward VII could decide men's fashion all by himself - and a cooking-interested Edward VII could probably get the Court circles to get really good chefs, making foods role in public health more important etc.
 
Merely a pale imitation of the United States' cuisine, which for decades has featured such things as Deep Fried Ice Cream, along with newer culinary innovations such as deep fried Twinkies (an execrable creme filled sponge cake, almost bad enough to be English, which is then battered and fried) and deep-fried whole turkeys.

Speaking as an American, the aforementioned Twinkie is something of a national joke, said to be so full of preservatives that it will last forever. The same could be said of almost any item purchased in any US convenience store.

British cuisine is seen here as being bland and overly reliant on meat and potatoes and such; the image of some fat bloke sitting down to his pint and bangers and mash. Completely unfair, of course, but that's the image here. That is primarily the result of industrialization, as has been said.

The upper classes are a differrent matter; it was seen as unfashionable to dine on English cuisine; that's what the lesser folk did. If you were somebody you ate French, or Italian, or Viennese, or whatever.

The combination of the two insured that a distinctive English cuisine never really developed; what you got was the relatively bland lower class food (spices being too expensive for the workingman's purse, in general) with a layering of foreign foods on top.

To some extent this is true of the US as well. However, we have the advantage of being much more culturally diverse, as well as more egalitarian. Although there isn't a true American cuisine as such, there are many uniquely American dishes such as Philadelphia cheese steak sandwiches (grilled thinly sliced beef, Provolone cheese, and sauteed onions served in a submarine roll; topped with brown mustard, shredded lettuce, and sliced tomatos, it's a meal in itself. I heartily recommend it.)

What the US does have is regional cuisines; Southwest (Mexican influences dominate here), Cajun, Western (similar to Southwest, but more meats and less spices), Southern (lots of chicken, seafood, rice, and corn), New England (close to English, with the addition of local foods such as corn and turkey), and so on.

I would imagine this is true of England as well. Certainly Irish, Welsh, and Scots cuisine is different from English and each other; I would expect to see differences within England as well. Is this the case?
 
I think this doesn't mention the fact that there isn't simply one direction one needs to go in order to have good cuisine.

Sure, there is the elite, top-down French system, but that could be hard to wedge into Britain naturally.

On the other hand, we could look at Poland and Italy for contrary examples--much more bottom-up in terms of style. The best food in Poland is peasant food, and the Italians recombine a few simple ingredients in a massive number of ways to create great variety from some otherwise unremarkable bases.

With a bottom-up style, you can use industrialization to feed a new paradigm in a "common" British cuisine. The growing middle class can start adapting new spices and styles to existing 'simple' dishes given the Imperial experience and their newfound wealth enhancing availability. Eventually this filters up and down, but there remains the stolid, delicious simplicity of national foods that can stand resilient and easily accessible.

Maybe it won't gain the reputation of finest food in the world, but could be generally recognized as food everyone can like, rather like Italian today.
 
With a bottom-up style, you can use industrialization to feed a new paradigm in a "common" British cuisine. The growing middle class can start adapting new spices and styles to existing 'simple' dishes given the Imperial experience and their newfound wealth enhancing availability. Eventually this filters up and down, but there remains the stolid, delicious simplicity of national foods that can stand resilient and easily accessible.

But that isn't an ATL at all - it is pretty much what happened. The problem of British cuisine is not its quality - it's pretty good - or its limited spread - most people in any industrialised country can't cook, and Britain is no exception. Its problem is its reputation, pure and simple.
 
The real problem is WW1 and particularly WW2. these pretty much destroyed British culinary culture and replaced it with an easy to produce (and ration) meat and 2 veg approach. short of removing the need for rationing in the 20th Century this damage isn't going to be avoided.

On the topic of whether or not the UK has a good climate for farming I'm afraid I need to point out that the British Isles represent some of the best farmland on the planet. The soil is fertile, the climate throughout most of the islands are almost perfect for growing crops (wet springs, summers with a good balance of rain and sun and mild winters). Ok, this isn't a great climate if you're not farming but if you are it's excellent.
 
The important point of the impact of rationing cannot be understated, along with the social changes wrought by the Great War that were also causes of changes in the development of cuisine.

Several have raised the idea of a class divide of French food for the upper crust and English/British grub for the lower orders. This was certainly the case, but in a somewhat more complex manner. The prevalence of French food extended not only into the British Isles but across the Atlantic and over much of Europe. There is little to no difference in a Belle Epoque menu from New York and one from Berlin. This however did not extend to a characterization of native foods being unfashionable per se, but rather that the international cuisine of the time did describe a lot of national dishes in French terms.

The urban poor of British society, as observed, were limited to a far more sparse diet that sometimes only extended to bread and dripping; this was to raise issues regarding the physical condition of troops in the Great War.

A trickle up and down approach was occuring to a certain extent prior to the Great War, with Indian foods being of some influence.

The idea of a 19th century royal benefactor to lead a movement for the development of British cuisine and more importantly fostering a wide public interest in it is an excellent one. It would probably need to be earlier than Edward, although he would make an ideal inheritor of the tradition; in my view, getting it started by a younger Albert or even better, during the Regency period (where the presence of Careme is of good potential) could lead to much greater change.

dgharis: Yes, there are fairly noticeable differences between different English regional cuisines, and these were perhaps more pronounced in the 19th century.

Distinctive English cuisine did develop and remains. It was not really bland food but rather food that lacked elaborate sauces. The 'blandness' was not so much an unfortunate flaw as an intended feature and function of what tastes were like. In this, it had a lot in common with other sturdy Northern European cuisines. Ironically, spices had been heavily embraced for a long time but their use changed and declined in some ways and in some degrees with the development of cuisine.

The impact of the cultural cringe and the embrace of Mediterranean food styles after the Second World War can also be seen at play.

Finally, the issue of language and naming can cause some undeserved scorn. Bangers and mash sounds fairly bland, but if it is actually slow roasted good pork sausages with crispy bacon, creamy mashed potato, garden peas, winter vegetables in a cheese sauce topped with lashings of brown onion gravy, then the issue of packaging and labelling is seen in a different light.
 
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Regarding elaborate sauces:
we did make them we just didn't pour them all over the meat;
rather we supplied a few varieties to be added to the meal as the eater desired - the billion varieties of Mustard, Horseradish Sauce, Mint Sauce, Jams & Marmalades (precursers to Chutneys)
 
To be fair British cuisine is slowly on its way to becoming more well know and better recognised abroad. The gastropub movement whose origins are pretty recent is an illustration of this. Some of the typicaly food this includes is very much "fusion cuisine" but most of it is not and if you search well you can find really good examples of proper British cuisine served in good pubs.

I would also like to point out that British restaurants do exist in London, they are hard to find but they do exist and a lot of them can trace back their histories to the 19th century. Porters in London near Covent Garden is one, I have been there and all the food is pure British stuff. Simpsons in the Strand is another one and there are a few others as well.

Having one of them expanding beyond its London base including abroad (starting in Paris of course), would probably have a significant effect. True it would be mass market food, but most of what is today seen as typical French food is now a mass market item in France anyway.

So in a nutshell, an earlier gastropub movement coupled with an agressive "push" of British cuisine abroad could do the trick.
 
An indian-british cuisine like american chinese could be worthy of being an export....

And not as much Anglican and Protestant food-based puritanism maybe help. ;)
 
A change to the notion of 'Anglican/Protestant food puritanism', whilst interesting and to some extent valid, does require a level of social and cultural change that would bring with it very serious butterflies. Possibly the best opportunity for such a divergence would be in the late 17th and early 18th century, but the society that emerges from such an early PoD is a very different one indeed.

British Indian cuisine did and does exist but wasn't a mass factor until the waves of postwar migration to the British Isles from the subcontinent. Prior to then, there is not the same level or purpose of migration to Britain as there was with Chinese to America. As such, a certain level of domestic penetration and adaption is perhaps the best that can be hoped for, as in @.

Rules, Simpson's and the like were not necessarily restaurants that sought to expand at any period, being individual unique enterprises. The thought is a good one, but it would need a different approach - a proto Cesar Ritz in partnership with a noteworthy British chef. Even then, though, the cuisine would be the sophisticated Continental style of the time rather than a purely British approach. To do otherwise is simply not going to be viable in 19th century Paris, given the competition.

Secondly, what is the motivation for an aggressive 'push' abroad? It doesn't really gel with the British character or image of its place in the world at the time.

Rather than gastropubs, (never liked the word - sounds like a Soviet snail) an embrace of a restaurant culture could spread out from the capital very slowly during the mid 19th century; this does come up against the issue of the central role of London in British middle and upper class society at the time, what with the season and all.

The British Restaurants of the Second World War present a potential means of getting good quality food to the masses postwar, but that runs smack bang into the charming red brick wall of austerity, continued rationing and the advances in food production that followed the war.

It is very tempting to attempt to reverse engineer developments from the present day, or from other countries and cultures. However, the lessons and methods that worked in other cases cannot necessarily be applied to Britain in the 20th century, or even the 19th. There are many reasons why Britain cannot be France and vice versa, or why it cannot be America.

With a few changes in the 20th century, British food can quite easily be regarded on a par with Belgian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish or German food, rather than the current state of affairs. With changes in the 19th century, plenty more can be done. However, I don't believe it is necessarily possible that it could dominate the world or be regarded in the same genteel esteem as French cuisine.
 
Reminds me of a joke I heard a long time ago.

Q: What are the three shortest books in Europe?

A: German Humor. Italian War Heroes. English Cuisine.
 

celt

Banned
Nothing beats a British sunday roast dinner,whatever you lot think with all your fancy sounding food:p
 
PhilKearny has exactly the right tone of the discussion here. Although it does remind me of this sketch from Goodness Gracious Me :p:

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&so...6KmACw&usg=AFQjCNHmbGjQG7FMmVWb2xs8Ie9TB87dIA

An embryonic idea: WI the Catholic church made different laws for eating fish? In the 14th century, most people didn't use the abundant fish of the isles as well as they could - partly because of religious restrictions on when people could eat which fish.
That wouldn't make sense, though - one could eat fish every day of the week if one wished. On Fridays, you had to (or have to, since it's England we're talking about) abstain from meat, and we all know fish was a popular option.
 
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