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We Are What We Eat
The year is 1975. On BBC television a new programme appears. Its title is 'Fawlty Towers’. In one memorable episode Sybil Fawlty (played by Prunella Scales) is asked by a hapless customer in the hotel dining room whether he could change his order. Mrs Fawlty smiles and says: “Chef has ... (already) ... opened the tin”.
How much has changed in the kitchens of Britain since 1975 ? Naturally, it depends which kitchen is in question. In Cheltenham you might find a Marks & Spencer ready-made Italian-style mushroom risotto. In Swindon you might find the left-overs of a take-away kebab with chips.
But the metaphor of ‘opening the tin’ remains. It means that someone else has done the work and all you have to do is microwave it and eat it.
Of course there is nothing sinful in having your dinner prepared for you. It could be your mother or a five-star chef. (The French invented the restaurant, in a form we could recognise in 2008, in the 17th century to give those with enough coinage the chance to escape from a hot stove at home). (Actually, most of the first patrons were travellers).
In 18th and 19th century London it was the same as today but the menu was different. At the George & Vulture opened in 1746 (still at 3, Castle Court, London EC3) the fare was – and is – Devilled Whitebait and Brown onion and ale cheese soup. Moving on in time and space, in 1851 there was something for poor and rich at the restaurant founded by the celebrated chef, Alexis Soyer. At the first sitting there was pickled whelks and nightingales’ tongues. For the second sitting, the renowned best lamb cutlets in the capital.
Then in 1890, the extraordinary French chef Auguste Escoffier came to roost at London’s new Savoy Hotel. The British palate would never be the same again. He introduced the idea of adding ‘sauce’ to dishes amongst other culinary innovations outlined for the general public in a cookbook which became a bestseller.
If you were lucky and had the right connections, wardrobe and a fat wallet you might enjoy one of his legendary twelve-course dinners which lasted on average five hours.
Standard carte: Russian caviar, turtle soup, Thames oysters, sorbet, Wiltshire quail, sorbet, roast Hereford beef, Stilton cheese, sweet suet pudding, fruit, petit four, coffee. All this washed down with a long list of vintage French and German wines and assorted liqueurs.
So what went wrong between 1890 and 1990 ? In a nutshell it was the Second World War. The middle and upper classes, who never knew how to cook, lost their servants – especially cooks and chefs – due to ‘emancipation’, high taxes and depleted coffers. (The poor continued to be hungry whatever happened).
Rationing (1940 – 1954) finished off the job. The population got used to eating food manufactured by machines and available in packets of powder.
Is there any lesson we can learn from the history of eating in England ? The author W Somerset Maugham (1874 – 1965) who moved permanently to the south of France in 1927, was once interrogated by someone not born in the British Isles, as to his recommendation for nourishment in London.
His reply: Eat breakfast three times a day.
