I dated a British girl in high school. She microwave broccoli in water. No salt or seasoning. No butter. No nothing.
She took it out, drained the water and told me her dish was done.
That was the last time she made anything for us.
There’s somewhere between 10 and 20 spices in the food pictured, why do you think its orange?
I mean the beans mostly get their color from the molasses and sugar but lots call for Worcestershire sauce which is going to have a bunch of stuff.
Use sparingly:
Salt
Pepper
BBQ rub seasoning from ???
Onion powder
Garlic salt
Misc. dried Italian herbs you’ve owned for years
Anything else left in your pantry
“spices”, in this context, is Obese American for " salt, butter, and bacon grease"
I know that it’s mostly a joke, yet it is worth mentioning that those valuable spices were exclusively used by the rich and wealthy. Ordinary people and their food did not benefit from the spice trade at all. If you delve a little bit into culinary history and find out what the aristocrats did with (for example) extremely rare and precious nutmeg the British Empire fought wars over, you want to dig up their bones, revive them, just so that you can kill them again.
I mean, that’s true, but hasn’t been the case for at least a century, so why do they still eat like the aristocrats are hoarding all the spices?
WW2 rationing really messed up their culinary scene
Sure, but that ended in the 50s. They can no longer reasonably use that excuse.
The real problem in my view is that people don’t recognise post-imperial fusion cusines as ‘legit’ British food even though the curry house is the definition of an Anglo-Indian institution. When people in Britain claim the tikka masala it’s not being twee or politically correct, rather it’s earnestly considering an immigration-originated fusion cusine as part of the wider national one.
Also even pre-20th century British food isn’t exactly bad, I’d argue it doesn’t travel amazingly in many cases but a Sunday roast in our climate is sheer perfection. Too many people expect France or Italy from a country with nothing like their climate.
They tried to fix it later though
I always wonder whether it’s a lingering effect of rationing,which didn’t end until the '50s.
“Culture”
You’re somewhat correct but also not.
The spice scarcity and making do without is a result of two world wars ravaging a somewhat isolated island nation. See e.g. the Irish potato famine. Some were misfortunate enough to have no food at all - and many had to live with bland, rationed food items.
Those decades were formative and a lot of that stuck around.
And to be perfectly honest… I kinda like it. I like spiced (spicy in the flavourful, not the hot sense) food too, but there’s some beauty in putting together a dish of meat and potatoes where you let the flavour of the meat and potatoes come through. In some sense it’s actually similar to Japanese cuisine, specifically sushi, where the focus is on the fish itself, with minor added flavours (salt from soy sauce, heat from wasabi).
wow i dont have time to research what they did. tell me what did they do?
They ate it, mostly as a status symbol. They’d carry it around with a small silver grinder to add it to their food. I’m not sure what was so bad about that, other than adding something worth a laborer’s salary for a year on your food. Also, it contains myristicin which if one consumes enough in one sitting can sort of give a high - a really bad one with hallucinations that go in for 48h - don’t try it, it can make you very sick.
We only got them to stop the Dutch getting them.
visited a greggs for the first time this summer, i was genuinely shocked at what they served. it’s like they went out of their way to not put any flavor in. and it was packed.
Yeah because a Stilton and cheese bake is totally favoueless, right?
apparently.
It certainly won’t earn you any favours with me!
I’m sorry to hear that you’re stuck in a permanently basic bitch state. Stilton and steak is delicious.
You said “favoueless” instead of “flavourless.” They were making a joke about your typo.
It’s even better with good cheese!
I read before ww2 rations got Brits used to bland flavourless food and they gave the same to their children so now it’s just what they do there
but there are also flavourful things there! i visited edinburgh and their black pudding and haggis were very pleasantly spiced. i just don’t get why they would charge almost €4 for a completely un-toasted bread roll and a tiny sausage.
You can’t improve on perfection
“perfection”
“British food”
Pick one
it was just a joke man ._.
Sure. But what does this have to do with British food?
If that were perfection, the rest of the world would be eating it.
The tragedy is that many of the spices most jealously traded for became so integral to British and international cuisine that memesters don’t even realise that they were ever unusual or expensive. I guarantee you that those baked beans have a bunch of black pepper in them and guess what… pepper don’t grow in Britain! It’s in more or less every single kitchen thanks to a global spice trade that is now forgotten. Ginger is a main flavour in many British recipes and also doesn’t grow in Britain.
But Britain was in fact not that big a player in the spice trade, being beaten by the Dutch, who got there first and had better financial backing. The British East India Company tried to make its way by raiding ships of the Dutch East India Company but after a bunch of wars eventually had to settle for less exciting endeavours - trade in cotton being a staple.
The Dutch are themselves not renowned for their food either, though it is my firm belief that every country has great food if you’re willing to look past your prejudices, and stamppot is great.
I just wish long pepper was more widely known, I can get it easily from Indian shops in the UK but it’s not so widely known or available. It’s among my favourite spices, think black pepper but way more aromatic and ‘flowery’. It was known to the Romans but fell out of favour many centuries ago in Europe.
I bought some to make some old recipes (from Tasting History, which I imagine is a not-insignificant driver of online types having long pepper…?) but had to go online. The local place I go to for spices also didn’t have lovage or savoury - tsk!
There’s some fantastic dutch food!
Curry beans would like a word
