Title: Re: English Food
Categories: British Info
Yield: 1 Servings

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Why does English food suck so much?

English food sucks because it is bland. Although English food is generally considered bland today, it has not always been so. An article I read said that researchers found English recipe books from a couple centuries back included recipes that were quite zesty.

One possible reason for English food being perceived as bland is the effect of the last World War on English culture. Food rationing didn't finally end here until 1953, and many non-staple foods didn't become available until later that decade. (My mother tells me the story of my brother, born in 1948, who was shown his first banana when he was 7 or 8; he refused to eat it because it was so strange.)

I'd suggest that the cooking and eating habits of the current generation of English grandmothers and grandfathers were formed at this time. Many (including my mother) regard any non-bland food as `foreign'. (A typical meal is roast meat, potatoes and two or three varieties of boiled vegetables. She is even suspicious of lasagne. Lots of her similarly aged friends are the same, and have never been any different.)

The English generation born in the late '40s and the '50s took to the English restaurant boom of the '60s, amplified by the new freedom of the lower and middle classes to travel to the continent of Europe and the discovery of Italian and French cuisine (in particular). There was at least one Indian restaurant in London before the war (I saw a TV program about this - does anyone remember the restaurant's name and whereabouts?), but the expansion didn't start until the introduction of batch-cooking Indian restaurants in the '60s.

English food in history certainly hasn't always been bland - but this is a very large separate subject. There *are* excellent restaurants which serve grand old traditional and distinctly English food - John Tovey's place somewhere (I can't remember where) in the English Lake District comes to mind as a shining example.

John A. Murdie From: john@minster.york.ac.uk

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