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The Vikings brought us rape, pillage and kippers.
The Normans brought castles, cathedrals and monasteries
with a side order of the spices of the east: cinnamon,
mace, nutmeg, pepper and ginger. For centuries the new
aristocracy ate French food while the peasants, enjoying
a much warmer climate than ours, which made this a land
of plenty ate surprisingly well. However the sudden
change in climate from about 1300, sometimes described
as a mini-ice age, led to several hundred years of savage
weather and there was widespread starvation. A misery
compounded by rampaging outbreaks of pestilences like
the Black Death. Quantity became valued over quality
and the people became thin. Most people, rich and poor,
emerged from the winter months with a touch of scurvy
so fresh vegetables were valued and, close to the coast at
least, fish was highly prized as a necessary annual cure.
King Henry’s Fysshe Dayes
By Tudor times, new kinds of food were arriving with the
rise of the merchant adventurers and the consequent
increase in sea trade. These master shipbuilders were
fishing cod off Newfoundland. Our own coastal waters
were thick with fish but without decent roads it was
a much under exploited food source until that canny
businessman Henry VIII espied an opportunity. Christians
had adopted the habit of eating fish on Fridays from the
practice of the Jews and Henry exploited this tradition by
introducing compulsory
fysshe dayes
, up to two a week
in England, for purely secular reasons. Encouraging fish
consumption kept fishing alive, which in turn preserved
a continuity of shipbuilding and sailing skills during times
of peace. Also with farming methods still primitive and
livestock vulnerable to the vagaries of weather and all
manner of diseases it helped manage cattle stocks.
In the City of London alone one
fysshe daye
a week saved
350,000 head of beef each year.
That trigamist tyrant of the kitchen Fanny Craddock
fiercely defended her opinion that there was no such thing
as English cuisine. “Even the good old Yorkshire Pudding
comes from Burgundy.” My Auntie Marian cleaned for the
Craddocks at their house up on Blackheath in the 1960s
and can testify personally that neither fierce nor tyrant are
exaggerations in case you thought the TV persona was an
act and that off screen she was a pussy cat. Fanny was
right though. We’ve always been a trading nation and our
cuisine is a pot pourri of styles from distant shores.
First Sittings
As far as we can know the pre-Roman “British” staple diet
boiled down to bread, wheat, rabbit, oats & dogs. That’s
oats, not cats. The Romans introduced cherries, cabbages,
cucumbers, stinging nettles and peas. And flavour.
We were already using saffron, brought by Phoenicians
who came to trade for Cornish tin and while it added
colour to our food it did not add a great deal of taste.
We probably wouldn’t have strong salty flavours like
Lee & Perrins if it wasn’t for the Romans and their love
of spicy fish based sauces. The Romans liked their food,
sometimes to excess, although it is a tad disappointing
to discover that the practice of gorging and purging in the
vomitorium is nought but a legend born of the wonky
marriage of puritan piety and a misunderstanding of
archaeology. Brutal in their entertainments the Romans
could also be brutal in their food. Mrs Beeton talks of the
horrible Roman fashion for serving red mullet alive in a
glass dish so that diners could tear strips off the poor wee
thing and see the exquisite changes of colour in the flesh.
The Romans were great fish eaters and ever the pragmatic
administrators they issued fish market regulations
forbidding fish sellers from sitting down during market
hours which ensured all stocks were sold quickly
.