British food heritage

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Tessa K
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Re: British food heritage

Post by Tessa K » Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:08 am

noggins wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 10:06 am
I mean, my magical internet warlock powers are going to force you to solely eat one european cuisine for the next 3 months. What do you pick?
Spain.

It's interesting that we as a nation rate Spanish food below French, and Portuguese even lower. Part of that is because of olden days snobbery attached to haute cuisine and posh people wanting French chefs that permeated down through society.

However, if the next three months were winter months I'd probably go British and eat exclusively British puddings (sweet and savoury) and cake. And Swedish cinnamon buns. And then be very unwell.

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Re: British food heritage

Post by bjn » Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:14 am

noggins wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 8:58 am
How about we split the difference? The root cause is early and rapid industrialisation, but modern "remedies" have sexist consequences.
Pre-industrial Revolution agrarian cultures weren't exactly utopias of sexual equality, surely the sexist consquences were built into sexist societies.

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Re: British food heritage

Post by bagpuss » Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:14 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Apr 28, 2021 5:55 pm
The sexism of food preparation is no doubt one of several factors, but the UK doesn't seem exceptional enough for it to be the main one.

Looking at this list of female workforce participation (and restricting ourselves to culturally similar places, i.e. Eurovision countries), the UK is at 57.1%.

That's lower than Switzerland (62.6%) Sweden (61.2%), Norway, Australia, Israel, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Cyprus. It's a bit higher than than Estonia (56.7%), Lithuania (56.4%), Germany (55.3%) - but not massively so.

Picking out places that have been mentioned as exemplars of recognising food heritage, Portugal is at 53.6%, Spain at 51.4% and France at 50.3%. (Italy is down below 40%, fwiw, but IIRC there are some doubts over employment figures in places with a substantial grey economy).

Could those 7 percentage points be making all the difference - including in restaurants, supermarkets and TV shows run by professionals rather than unpaid women? Seems a big claim, to be honest. There are a lot of other cultural factors that vary between the UK and other places.

The differences I've noticed between UK and PT, for instance, or more to do with cafes, restaurants and supermarkets than home cooking. Why aren't there more restaurants with a range of regional UK dishes? Why don't bakeries carry a wider range of regional specialties? Is it really just because people's mums and wives have jobs?

If so, other countries seem to do a better job of promoting their heritage despite similar or higher female employment rates, so the question still stands as to why the UK is different in that regard.
The discussion has moved on a bit but I want to just revisit this to point out that statistics today are not what is relevant to this. When I raised the point, I was looking back at the 1950s-70s as that's the period when supermarkets were on the rise and the quality and reputation of British food was sinking fast. I struggled to find statistics on a wide range of countries for that time period but I did find this (pdf warning). Figure 4 is what you need. From that, looking at the period of 1950s to 1970s, you can see that the % of Italian women working was steadily in the mid 20s, up until the late 1970s when it did start rising but still stayed well behind the UK - around 15-20 percentage point gap nearly all the time. The gap between France and the UK was smaller. In fact the proportion of French women working was higher until around 1950 but at that time in France it was falling while it started rising in the UK. Most of the period since 1950, the proportions have been similar (although with the UK always slightly higher) but for that crucial period of the 1950s-70s it was more like 10 percentage points higher - enough to make a difference, I would have thought. It would be especially interesting to see how the %s break down by age group as well, or by whether they have a family, as that might either blow my theory out of the water entirely or make it more likely.

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Re: British food heritage

Post by bagpuss » Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:33 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Apr 28, 2021 11:15 pm
I can see how a long history of urbanisation might lead to forgetting culinary history, though.

I thought people were saying "No the UK hasn't forgotten its culinary history, it's just that British women are too busy to cook."

If the argument is "British people have forgotten their culinary history, because of sexism and the way it interacts with historical materialist processes" then fine, but I don't see why it's snobbery to say so.

Or is it some other third thing?

I'd like to think that, in the future, societies will be able to have interesting culinary heritage and women's liberation simultaneously - is that achievable, and if so how?
No, I don't think anyone was saying that, were they?

Certainly, when I raised the point, it was intended as a reason for the UK forgetting its culinary history, not as an argument that we hadn't. And it was only ever part of the problem - a large part of the reason for supermarkets becoming so ubiquitous and powerful, which has definitely been a major factor in losing our heritage but not the only one.

I think woodchopper's point about urbanisation is also an important one. It fits with my own family experience too (so obviously, it must be true, anecdote being the most important evidence ;) ). No-one in my family history has been a city dweller but most of my mum's side were town dwellers since around the turn of the 19th century and the men were carpenters, cabinet makers, blacksmiths - skilled trades with no connection to food or the land. My dad's side on the other hand never lived anywhere bigger than villages and the men worked on the land, ag labs or gardeners, right up to and including my grandad. The women on both sides either didn't work or were domestic servants. So the men will have been growing food and the women will have been mostly at home cooking for the family. They were poor and so the food they could grow was a large part of what they ate. Food culture has been traditionally passed down through the female line but I got diddly squat from my mum (unless you count my love of parkin, thanks to her first teaching job being in Yorkshire, or the rum butter her aunt in Cumbria used to send us every Christmas). My love of good food is almost entirely thanks to my dad - he was the better cook though only cooked on Sundays, and grew fruit & veg, did the shopping at the greengrocer for such veg as he didn't grow, made jam and occasionally chutney, passed on his love of apples fresh from the tree and Kentish cob nuts. He was also a big enthusiast for the cheaper and more obscure cuts of meat, including offal, although he hasn't quite managed to pass that on to me. I bl..dy love oxtail though, thanks to him.

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Re: British food heritage

Post by bagpuss » Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:39 am

Now here's a question for you - why has Warwickshire got no traditional foodstuffs? It's long been a source of sadness to me that the county where I grew up had no foods that anyone would connect with it. All my other family branches comes from places where you immediately think of something, at least I do. Kent, Sussex, Staffordshire, Cumberland, Scotland*, all yummy things with associations to those specific counties/areas. Warwickshire? Naff all**. But why? The urbanisation theory doesn't explain it - Warwickshire now, at least, is plenty rural, since the cities got thrown out last century. I can't imagine that any of the other theories we've advanced applies more to Warwickshire than any of the counties where some heritage is still clinging on.

Answers on a postcard, please.





*OK, that one's a bit of a cheat being a whole country but they're from the borders and the Scottish borders claim rumbledethumps
**Google presents me with a recipe for Warwickshire scones but no such thing was ever heard of by anyone in my family and the recipe appears to be just scones but with a little local honey added. I'm not sure that counts.

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Re: British food heritage

Post by Bird on a Fire » Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:55 am

bagpuss wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:33 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Apr 28, 2021 11:15 pm
I can see how a long history of urbanisation might lead to forgetting culinary history, though.

I thought people were saying "No the UK hasn't forgotten its culinary history, it's just that British women are too busy to cook."

If the argument is "British people have forgotten their culinary history, because of sexism and the way it interacts with historical materialist processes" then fine, but I don't see why it's snobbery to say so.

Or is it some other third thing?

I'd like to think that, in the future, societies will be able to have interesting culinary heritage and women's liberation simultaneously - is that achievable, and if so how?
No, I don't think anyone was saying that, were they?
You weren't, but posts like this from lpm seemed to be, unless I've misunderstood:
lpm wrote:
Wed Apr 28, 2021 3:50 pm
It's not that Brits have forgotten our food heritage or that Brits don't give a sh.t about our food heritage. It's that something has to give. The unpaid shopping/preparing/cooking burden on women who also work full time outside or inside the home simply means choices have to be made. And the choice made by most of the population was to feed the family on mediocre but cheap and highly convenient food, being grateful that the kids eat cheap supermarket carrots and can't even notice a difference between watery bacon and heritage bacon.

The way to rebuild British food heritage isn't better education in schools or a British festival of food, it's to end the sexist division of unpaid labour. Until that happens it's not great to be telling people to spend a bit more time on the family's food because the word "people" is stand in for the word "women".
As you say, it seems more likely to me that Brits have forgotten culinary heritage, for exactly that reason - time-stressed women over many generations needing cheap convenient food for their families.

But that can change. People these days ought to be less time- and money-stressed (though many people still are, of course), and many societal changes might promote a resurgence of interest in local food: the more equitable division of domestic labour, people marrying and having kids later or not at all (so more men have to fend for themselves anyway), rising nationalism, an interest in reducing food miles and adopting locally-adapted varieties for environmental reasons, etc.

I don't think EPD was intending "we have forgotten our heritage" as an attack on anybody. I think it is pretty clear that the UK is a bit different from other culturally-similar places at similar latitudes. Convincing historical explanations have been given.

For me the more interesting questions are:
(1) Do we care? What would the benefits be of regaining an interest in, and valuing, regional culinary heritage?
and (2) How could we change this?
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Re: British food heritage

Post by Tessa K » Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:56 am

bagpuss wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:39 am
Now here's a question for you - why has Warwickshire got no traditional foodstuffs? It's long been a source of sadness to me that the county where I grew up had no foods that anyone would connect with it. All my other family branches comes from places where you immediately think of something, at least I do. Kent, Sussex, Staffordshire, Cumberland, Scotland*, all yummy things with associations to those specific counties/areas. Warwickshire? Naff all**. But why? The urbanisation theory doesn't explain it - Warwickshire now, at least, is plenty rural, since the cities got thrown out last century. I can't imagine that any of the other theories we've advanced applies more to Warwickshire than any of the counties where some heritage is still clinging on.

Answers on a postcard, please.
You'll probably find some here

https://www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/cont ... ecipe-book

Then there are Coventry god cakes which look delightful

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_ ... h%20sugar.

And Warwickshire Stew

http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/warwick ... mushrooms.

And probably a local cider made from local varieties of apple.

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Re: British food heritage

Post by Bird on a Fire » Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:04 pm

On (2), I suspect (as is generally the case) that educating kids will be part of any solution.

Since we're doing anecdotes, here's mine. I was raised by a single mum in a low-income family, after my dad died when I was 5.

As a result of this, from a very early age I and my younger sister were involved in food prep - not just setting the table and doing the dishwasher, but preparing meals. Certainly by the time I was 8 my mum could have a night or two off a week where I would take charge of putting some stuff from the fridge onto the table, microwaving leftovers, etc. When I was a little older (say, 10), my mum could go to work some evenings and leave us to do our own dinners. Ditto lunches during school holidays.

Most of it was nothing fancy - a lot of ready meals, tubs of coleslaw and sandwiches. We shopped in the supermarket after school. But it did mean by the time I was a teenager I could handle doing a week of food prep, or a week of supermarket shopping if my mum was ill. When I started uni I was able to teach various people, of both sexes, how to do stuff like boil pasta, use an oven timer, or chop up a bell pepper, that they'd never learned at home with both parents.

So in my particular case, being in a time- and money-stressed home with a single, grieving woman actually resulted in my taking an interest in food from a young age. I'm sure that's not typical, but it suggests there are options. The basics of meal planning, nutrition and practical kitchen skills would be a useful thing to teach in schools, for instance.
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Re: British food heritage

Post by Tessa K » Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:10 pm

For people trying to cut down on meat/fish there aren't a lot of traditional British foods, especially if you're trying vegan meals. Various types of Asian food are best for that as well as eg Italian peasant food (pasta with veg-based sauces).

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Re: British food heritage

Post by Bird on a Fire » Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:23 pm

Tessa K wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:10 pm
For people trying to cut down on meat/fish there aren't a lot of traditional British foods, especially if you're trying vegan meals. Various types of Asian food are best for that as well as eg Italian peasant food (pasta with veg-based sauces).
This is true, although the easy convenient thing to do is to swap the meat for something else. For instance, I love a full English Breakfast (one of Britain's world-class meals that thankfully hasn't been forgotten!) but you have to swap out the bacon and sausages for, say, veggie sausages (poncey places often have grilled Halloumi, which is also nice but not British. Surely the UK has a squeaky grillable cheese?!). All that stuff like bangers and mash, shepherds/cottage pie, toad in the hole, roast dinners etc., are easily doable with substitutions. IMHO the trimmings are the best bits of a roast anyway.

But yes, there must be a lot of traditional British peasant food which didn't centre meat so strongly - various stews and casseroles, for instance - that are overdue a comeback and veggification.
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Re: British food heritage

Post by lpm » Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:47 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:04 pm
On (2), I suspect (as is generally the case) that educating kids will be part of any solution.

Since we're doing anecdotes, here's mine. I was raised by a single mum in a low-income family, after my dad died when I was 5.

As a result of this, from a very early age I and my younger sister were involved in food prep - not just setting the table and doing the dishwasher, but preparing meals. Certainly by the time I was 8 my mum could have a night or two off a week where I would take charge of putting some stuff from the fridge onto the table, microwaving leftovers, etc. When I was a little older (say, 10), my mum could go to work some evenings and leave us to do our own dinners. Ditto lunches during school holidays.

Most of it was nothing fancy - a lot of ready meals, tubs of coleslaw and sandwiches. We shopped in the supermarket after school. But it did mean by the time I was a teenager I could handle doing a week of food prep, or a week of supermarket shopping if my mum was ill. When I started uni I was able to teach various people, of both sexes, how to do stuff like boil pasta, use an oven timer, or chop up a bell pepper, that they'd never learned at home with both parents.

So in my particular case, being in a time- and money-stressed home with a single, grieving woman actually resulted in my taking an interest in food from a young age. I'm sure that's not typical, but it suggests there are options. The basics of meal planning, nutrition and practical kitchen skills would be a useful thing to teach in schools, for instance.
Yes, interesting post, but doesn't this show how valuing food heritage is something that promptly gets sidelined under time/money stress? Your post is full of words like microwave, ready meals, tubs, sandwiches, supermarket, pasta... A world of convenience and easy answers, nothing like the vision of seeking out proper bacon from proper bacon butchers and getting carrots that are better than the 60p bag at Tesco and stewing the hotpot for several hours.

Now as an adult you have the skills and experience to get more into food and have an exploratory culinary life. But another person with the same experience might have no interest in food and just carry on making a bacon butty with watery Tesco bacon and sliced bread. They are quite happy with a vegetarian pasta dish that is actually boiling some pasta from the cupboard and chucking in a jar of Dolmio sauce. And the Indian food they want is whatever arrives to the door on a moped.

I'm not sure anyone's addressed the interesting question of (1) Do we care? Why bother with British heritage when we've got the world heritages to pick and choose from? I think the question has been blurred in this thread with the desire to get away from low-quality high-convenience industrialised foods from the big British supermarket chains. But why? Health & obesity issues? Hippy vision of disrupting capitalism? Sustainability problems with industrial food?
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Re: British food heritage

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:53 pm

On the point of Warwickshire, there's the brilliantly named Warwickshire Drooper Plum which might be worth looking up.
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Re: British food heritage

Post by bagpuss » Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:59 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:55 am
bagpuss wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:33 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Apr 28, 2021 11:15 pm
I can see how a long history of urbanisation might lead to forgetting culinary history, though.

I thought people were saying "No the UK hasn't forgotten its culinary history, it's just that British women are too busy to cook."

If the argument is "British people have forgotten their culinary history, because of sexism and the way it interacts with historical materialist processes" then fine, but I don't see why it's snobbery to say so.

Or is it some other third thing?

I'd like to think that, in the future, societies will be able to have interesting culinary heritage and women's liberation simultaneously - is that achievable, and if so how?
No, I don't think anyone was saying that, were they?
You weren't, but posts like this from lpm seemed to be, unless I've misunderstood:
lpm wrote:
Wed Apr 28, 2021 3:50 pm
It's not that Brits have forgotten our food heritage or that Brits don't give a sh.t about our food heritage. It's that something has to give. The unpaid shopping/preparing/cooking burden on women who also work full time outside or inside the home simply means choices have to be made. And the choice made by most of the population was to feed the family on mediocre but cheap and highly convenient food, being grateful that the kids eat cheap supermarket carrots and can't even notice a difference between watery bacon and heritage bacon.

The way to rebuild British food heritage isn't better education in schools or a British festival of food, it's to end the sexist division of unpaid labour. Until that happens it's not great to be telling people to spend a bit more time on the family's food because the word "people" is stand in for the word "women".
Fair point - I missed that first sentence in lpm's post.

Bird on a Fire wrote:
As you say, it seems more likely to me that Brits have forgotten culinary heritage, for exactly that reason - time-stressed women over many generations needing cheap convenient food for their families.

But that can change. People these days ought to be less time- and money-stressed (though many people still are, of course), and many societal changes might promote a resurgence of interest in local food: the more equitable division of domestic labour, people marrying and having kids later or not at all (so more men have to fend for themselves anyway), rising nationalism, an interest in reducing food miles and adopting locally-adapted varieties for environmental reasons, etc.

I don't think EPD was intending "we have forgotten our heritage" as an attack on anybody. I think it is pretty clear that the UK is a bit different from other culturally-similar places at similar latitudes. Convincing historical explanations have been given.

For me the more interesting questions are:
(1) Do we care? What would the benefits be of regaining an interest in, and valuing, regional culinary heritage?
and (2) How could we change this?

I'm not sure where these less time-stressed people are - everything I've heard suggests that people are much more time-stressed now than they were 30 or 40 years ago. If food wasn't something I care about, I certainly wouldn't find any time to faff around with it. And I certainly wouldn't be wanting to schlep from shop to shop in search of all the best ingredients every week. I make the effort to buy better quality stuff from the (online) supermarket on a weekly basis and try to support our local specialist food suppliers occasionally, but that's all I'm likely to do - and that's someone who cares about food.

As for your questions:
(1) I think an increasing number of people do care. It doesn't have to be specifically regional either. With Brexit and COVID, our small food suppliers need our support more than ever although that's only a benefit if you think they should be kept in business, I suppose. I'm generally of the opinion that the more we understand about nutrition, the better for our health and I think that should go hand in hand with understanding where our food has come from. A greater interest in and knowledge of food should improve our eating habits. Also, and I'm making something of an assumption here, smaller scale production seems likely to be better for our planet and the environment. For those people who can afford to eat more than they should, buying and consuming smaller amounts of better quality food - especially meat and other animal products - is better for both the environment and the people. Regaining some of our food heritage is probably not necessary for those things to happen but it's a good way of doing it and one that's likely to capture people's interest.

(2) f.ck knows. It is happening a bit - small scale producers are banding together and working together to get the message out there. We have a shop in my small town that specialises in British cheeses and they've done an amazing job of working with their suppliers over the last year or so to keep things going and get the message out about how good this stuff is. Farmers' markets are still really popular and there's a company near me called ten mile menu who only started up a few years ago and are going from strength to strength - COVID actually gave them a huge boost as they deliver. But all of that only addresses some part of it - the local food producers, etc, not the dishes and recipes and cooking side of things.

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Re: British food heritage

Post by bagpuss » Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:02 pm

Tessa K wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:56 am
bagpuss wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:39 am
Now here's a question for you - why has Warwickshire got no traditional foodstuffs? It's long been a source of sadness to me that the county where I grew up had no foods that anyone would connect with it. All my other family branches comes from places where you immediately think of something, at least I do. Kent, Sussex, Staffordshire, Cumberland, Scotland*, all yummy things with associations to those specific counties/areas. Warwickshire? Naff all**. But why? The urbanisation theory doesn't explain it - Warwickshire now, at least, is plenty rural, since the cities got thrown out last century. I can't imagine that any of the other theories we've advanced applies more to Warwickshire than any of the counties where some heritage is still clinging on.

Answers on a postcard, please.
You'll probably find some here

https://www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/cont ... ecipe-book

Then there are Coventry god cakes which look delightful

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_ ... h%20sugar.

And Warwickshire Stew

http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/warwick ... mushrooms.

And probably a local cider made from local varieties of apple.
Interesting, thank you. But be honest, you'd never heard of any of these things before you googled for them, had you?

I certainly hadn't, as a Warwickshire lass, daughter, granddaughter, gt granddaughter and probably many more greats granddaughter of Warwickshire lasses before me. I wasn't saying so much that Warwickshire never had any foods associated with it but that it doesn't any more, whereas Staffordshire oatcakes, Cumberland sausages, Kentish hops and cobnuts and apples and... are all things that anyone with a small amount of interest in British food will have heard of.

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Re: British food heritage

Post by bagpuss » Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:04 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:53 pm
On the point of Warwickshire, there's the brilliantly named Warwickshire Drooper Plum which might be worth looking up.
Also most interesting, thank you. I wonder if one can purchase trees of said fruit - I think I might have to make it my mission to attempt to import the Warwickshire Drooper Plum into Buckinghamshire, assuming it could cope with the chalky clay soil.

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Re: British food heritage

Post by Cardinal Fang » Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:04 pm

Sibling is vegetarian and makes an amazing vegetarian toad-in-the-hole. The key (according to her) is some english mustard powder in the batter mix, and taking the time to make a proper onion gravy. Also using a solid fat (if you were "meaty" beef dripping is the bomb, but solid vegetarian fat if you're not) and getting it as hot as you dare in the pan before adding the batter to make the Yorkshire pud bit of the toad-in-the-hole, so it's really crispy. Olive oil or whatever just doesn't give the same effect
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Re: British food heritage

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:11 pm

bagpuss wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:04 pm
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:53 pm
On the point of Warwickshire, there's the brilliantly named Warwickshire Drooper Plum which might be worth looking up.
Also most interesting, thank you. I wonder if one can purchase trees of said fruit - I think I might have to make it my mission to attempt to import the Warwickshire Drooper Plum into Buckinghamshire, assuming it could cope with the chalky clay soil.
Apparently so - you'l have to wait until winter time but it needn't be too long before you have your very own set of drooping, heavy Warwickshire plums
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Re: British food heritage

Post by bagpuss » Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:14 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:11 pm
bagpuss wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:04 pm
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:53 pm
On the point of Warwickshire, there's the brilliantly named Warwickshire Drooper Plum which might be worth looking up.
Also most interesting, thank you. I wonder if one can purchase trees of said fruit - I think I might have to make it my mission to attempt to import the Warwickshire Drooper Plum into Buckinghamshire, assuming it could cope with the chalky clay soil.
Apparently so - you'l have to wait until winter time but it needn't be too long before you have your very own set of drooping, heavy Warwickshire plums
Thanks, I hadn't got round to searching but would have done so. Timing is perfect as I'd already planned to plant some apple and plum trees this autumn. :D

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Re: British food heritage

Post by dyqik » Wed May 05, 2021 1:32 am

bagpuss wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:39 am
Now here's a question for you - why has Warwickshire got no traditional foodstuffs? It's long been a source of sadness to me that the county where I grew up had no foods that anyone would connect with it. All my other family branches comes from places where you immediately think of something, at least I do. Kent, Sussex, Staffordshire, Cumberland, Scotland*, all yummy things with associations to those specific counties/areas. Warwickshire? Naff all**. But why? The urbanisation theory doesn't explain it - Warwickshire now, at least, is plenty rural, since the cities got thrown out last century. I can't imagine that any of the other theories we've advanced applies more to Warwickshire than any of the counties where some heritage is still clinging on.

Answers on a postcard, please.





*OK, that one's a bit of a cheat being a whole country but they're from the borders and the Scottish borders claim rumbledethumps
**Google presents me with a recipe for Warwickshire scones but no such thing was ever heard of by anyone in my family and the recipe appears to be just scones but with a little local honey added. I'm not sure that counts.
I don't know of anything from Sussex except Banoffee Pie, and that's not old enough to be traditional.

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Re: British food heritage

Post by Martin_B » Wed May 05, 2021 6:10 am

dyqik wrote:
Wed May 05, 2021 1:32 am
bagpuss wrote:
Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:39 am
Now here's a question for you - why has Warwickshire got no traditional foodstuffs? It's long been a source of sadness to me that the county where I grew up had no foods that anyone would connect with it. All my other family branches comes from places where you immediately think of something, at least I do. Kent, Sussex, Staffordshire, Cumberland, Scotland*, all yummy things with associations to those specific counties/areas. Warwickshire? Naff all**. But why? The urbanisation theory doesn't explain it - Warwickshire now, at least, is plenty rural, since the cities got thrown out last century. I can't imagine that any of the other theories we've advanced applies more to Warwickshire than any of the counties where some heritage is still clinging on.

Answers on a postcard, please.





*OK, that one's a bit of a cheat being a whole country but they're from the borders and the Scottish borders claim rumbledethumps
**Google presents me with a recipe for Warwickshire scones but no such thing was ever heard of by anyone in my family and the recipe appears to be just scones but with a little local honey added. I'm not sure that counts.
I don't know of anything from Sussex except Banoffee Pie, and that's not old enough to be traditional.
The only thing which regularly gets mentioned as being originally from Surrey is Maids of Honour. Nanny Ogg: "Well, they start out as Maids of Honour, but mostly they ends up ..."
"My interest is in the future, because I'm going to spend the rest of my life there"

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Tessa K
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Re: British food heritage

Post by Tessa K » Wed May 05, 2021 7:39 am

dyqik wrote:
Wed May 05, 2021 1:32 am

I don't know of anything from Sussex except Banoffee Pie, and that's not old enough to be traditional.
Sussex Pond Pudding. It comes up on cooking programmes sometimes. I've never had it but like the look of it as I like citrus.

bagpuss
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Re: British food heritage

Post by bagpuss » Wed May 05, 2021 8:24 am

Tessa K wrote:
Wed May 05, 2021 7:39 am
dyqik wrote:
Wed May 05, 2021 1:32 am

I don't know of anything from Sussex except Banoffee Pie, and that's not old enough to be traditional.
Sussex Pond Pudding. It comes up on cooking programmes sometimes. I've never had it but like the look of it as I like citrus.
Yes, that was what I was thinking of. I've never made it yet but have every intention of doing so at some point. Mind you, I've been meaning to for at least 2 decades so I'm not sure when it'll actually happen. :lol:

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dyqik
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Re: British food heritage

Post by dyqik » Wed May 05, 2021 10:29 am

Tessa K wrote:
Wed May 05, 2021 7:39 am
dyqik wrote:
Wed May 05, 2021 1:32 am

I don't know of anything from Sussex except Banoffee Pie, and that's not old enough to be traditional.
Sussex Pond Pudding. It comes up on cooking programmes sometimes. I've never had it but like the look of it as I like citrus.
I'm from Sussex, my parents have lived in Sussex all their lives, and I'd never heard of it before the GBBO made one.

bagpuss
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Re: British food heritage

Post by bagpuss » Wed May 05, 2021 10:42 am

dyqik wrote:
Wed May 05, 2021 10:29 am
Tessa K wrote:
Wed May 05, 2021 7:39 am
dyqik wrote:
Wed May 05, 2021 1:32 am

I don't know of anything from Sussex except Banoffee Pie, and that's not old enough to be traditional.
Sussex Pond Pudding. It comes up on cooking programmes sometimes. I've never had it but like the look of it as I like citrus.
I'm from Sussex, my parents have lived in Sussex all their lives, and I'd never heard of it before the GBBO made one.
My grandparents and father were from Kent but grandparents lived in Sussex from around 1950 until they died in the 80s/90s and dad from 1950ish until he left for university in the late 50s. I heard of Sussex Pond Pudding from them, although granny never cooked it that I'm aware of, nor did grandad or dad for that matter.

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El Pollo Diablo
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Re: British food heritage

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Wed May 05, 2021 12:22 pm

To be fair, GBBO featured something from my home town that I'd never heard of before. A sort of biscuit/cake combo thing. Can't remember what it's called either.
If truth is many-sided, mendacity is many-tongued

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