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).
I think the two things we mentioned are not only not excluding each other, but rather cumulative: Spices were not common before the wars and the wars further increased their scarcity for most people, essentially preventing them from becoming part of the popular cuisine in a time period when other European nations became increasingly accustomed to using them.
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).
I think the two things we mentioned are not only not excluding each other, but rather cumulative: Spices were not common before the wars and the wars further increased their scarcity for most people, essentially preventing them from becoming part of the popular cuisine in a time period when other European nations became increasingly accustomed to using them.