George Orwell's other, longer essay on British cookery

[BrainGlutton]

Many of you may be familiar with George Orwell’s 1945 essay, “In Defence of English Cooking.” (It’s so cute how those Brits pretend English is their native language but they consistently spell things wrong.) It’s a short essay. The point of it is that Britain really does have some very good native cuisine, but the world does not appreciate that because good British cooking is almost never served in restaurants, only in homes, where tourists are rarely invited. It’s interesting – when I first read it I had to look up “marrow jam,” “bramble jam” and “bread sauce.” (Marrows are zucchinis, brambles are blackberries, bread sauce is made from white bread, milk and onions and is served with poultry.)

But less well-known is his longer 1946 essay, [Less known because it was not published at the time.

Indeed, when Orwell subsequently expanded on the theme of our national cuisine in British Cookery, his enthusiasm seemed rather watered down. The essay was commissioned by the British Council in 1946 with the aim of attracting continental tourists but was never published because it failed to provide the anticipated ringing endorsement of the nation’s culinary traditions.

In it, Orwell dismisses the British diet as “simple, rather heavy, perhaps slightly barbarous”, going on to describe porridge “boiled into a spongy mess” and cabbage rendered “almost uneatable” by overcooking, and deride milk puddings, made with rice, semolina, barley, sago or macaroni mixed with milk and sugar and baked in the oven, as “the kind of thing one would prefer to pass over in silence”. Hardly the stuff to bring international gourmets flocking to our shores.

[url=http://theorwellprize.co.uk/george-orwell/by-orwell/essays-and-other-works/british-cookery/]“British Cookery”](]“British Cookery.”[/url) is a much longer essay and describes, as to foreigners, the eating habits of the British, including what they eat at various times of day and how that varies by social class. It ends, BTW, or at least this version does, with some actual recipes, for Welsh rarebit, Yorkshire pudding, treacle tart, orange marmalade, plum cake and Christmas pudding.

It begins:

When Voltaire made his often-quoted statement that the country of Britain has “a hundred religions and only one sauce”, he was saying something which was untrue and which is equally untrue today, but which might still be echoed in good faith by a foreign visitor who made only a brief stay and drew his impressions from hotels and restaurants. For the first thing to be noticed about British cookery is that it is best studied in private houses, and more particularly in the homes of the middle-class and working-class masses who have not become Europeanised in their tastes. Cheap restaurants in Britain are almost invariably bad, while in expensive restaurants the cookery is almost always French, or imitation French. In the kind of food eaten, and even in the hours at which meals are taken and the names by which they are called, there is a definite cultural division between the upper-class minority and the big mass who have preserved the habits of their ancestors.

Generalising further, one may say that the characteristic British diet is a simple, rather heavy, perhaps slightly barbarous diet, drawing much of its virtue from the excellence of the local materials, and with its main emphasis on sugar and animal fats. It is the diet of a wet northern country where butter is plentiful and vegetable oils are scarce, where hot drinks are acceptable at most hours of the day, and where all the spices and some of the stronger-tasting herbs are exotic products. Garlic, for instance, is unknown in British cookery proper: on the other hand mint, which is completely neglected in some European countries, figures largely. In general, British people prefer sweet things to spicy things, and they combine sugar with meat in a way that is seldom seen elsewhere.

[BrainGlutton]

Oh, and, BTW, now I think I finally understand why Brits have bad teeth (or used to). It must be from eating so much sugar.

. . . Every style of cookery has its peculiar faults, and the two great shortcomings of British cookery are a failure to treat vegetables with due seriousness, and an excessive use of sugar. At normal times the average consumption of sugar per head is very much higher than in most countries, and all British children and a large proportion of adults are over-much given to eating sweets between meals. It is, of course, true that sweet dishes and confectionery – cakes, puddings, jams, biscuits and sweet sauces – are especially glory of British cookery but the national addiction to sugar has not done the British palate any good. Too often it leads people to concentrate their main attention on subsidiary foods and to tolerate bad and unimaginative cookery in the main dishes. Part of the trouble is that alcohol, even beer, is fantastically expensive and has therefore come to be looked on as a luxury to be drunk in moments of relaxation, not as an integral part of the meal. The majority of people drink sweetened teas with at least two of their daily meals, and it is therefore only natural that they should want the food itself to taste excessively sweet. The innumerable bottled sauces and pickles which are on sale in Britain are also enemies of good cookery. There is reason to think, however, that the standard of British cookery – that is, cookery inside the home – has gone up during the war years, owing to the drastic rationing of tea, sugar, meats and fats. The average housewife has been compelled to be more economical then she used to be, to pay more attention to the seasoning of soups and stews, and to treat vegetables as a serious foodstuff and less a neglected sideline.

[NDP]

@BrainGlutton

Oh, and, BTW, now I think I finally understand why Brits have bad teeth (or used to). It must be from eating so much sugar.

That passage also explains why HP Sauce is so cloyingly sweet. I realize Americans like me are in no position to criticize commercially-produced British sauces and condiments for having a high sweetener content but I’ve tried HP Sauce and it tastes far sweeter than A-1 Sauce or even Heinz Ketchup. Heinz 57 Sauce comes closest but at least in has a bit of tanginess and spiciness that mitigates the sweetness.

[Johnny_Ace]

Any thoughts on major differences now compared to WWII?

[BrainGlutton]

@Johnny_Ace

Any thoughts on major differences now compared to WWII?

Well, there must be a whole lot more to eat in the UK now. As Orwell notes (writing in 1946):

Finally, it must be remembered that in talking about “British cookery” one is referring to the characteristic native diet of the British Isles and not necessarily to the food that the average British citizen eats at this moment. Quite apart from the economic difference between the various blocks of the population, there is the stringent food rationing which has now been in operation for six years. In talking of British cookery, therefore, one is talking of the past or the future – of dishes that the British people now see somewhat rarely, but which they would gladly eat if they had the chance, and which they did eat fairly frequently up to 1939.

[BrainGlutton]

Being fond of lamb, here’s something I’ve noticed: In American restaurants, lamb (if on the menu at all – it’s hard to find even in steakhouses) is served with mint jelly. Only once in my life, in a British restaurant in the 1970s, have I ever had lamb (or maybe it was mutton, which you can’t get in the U.S. at all) with mint sauce. And it’s better.

Here also we may mention the special sauces which are so regularly served with each kind of roast meat as to be almost an integral part of the dish. Hot roast beef is almost invariably served with horseradish sauce, a very hot, rather sweet sauce made of grated horseradish, sugar vinegar and cream. With roast pork goes apple sauce, which is made of apples stewed with sugar and beaten up into a froth. With mutton or lamb there usually goes mint sauce, which is made of chopped mint, sugar and vinegar. Mutton is frequently eaten with redcurrant jelly, which is also served with hare and with venison. A roast fowl is always accompanied by bread sauce, which is made of the crumb of white bread and milk flavoured with onions, and is always served hot. It will be seen that British sauces have the tendency to be sweet, and some of the pickles that are eaten with cold meat are almost as sweet as jam. The British are great eaters of pickles, partly because the predilection for large joints means that in a British household there is a good deal of cold meat to finish up.

[gazpacho]

@BrainGlutton

Being fond of lamb, here’s something I’ve noticed: In American restaurants, lamb (if on the menu at all – it’s hard to find even in steakhouses) is served with mint jelly. Only once in my life, in a British restaurant in the 1970s, have I ever had lamb (or maybe it was mutton, which you can’t get in the U.S. at all) with mint sauce. And it’s better.

I live in the US. I haven’t seen mint jelly with lamb in a restaurant since the 80s.

[Kimstu]

@BrainGlutton

Being fond of lamb, here’s something I’ve noticed: In American restaurants, lamb (if on the menu at all – it’s hard to find even in steakhouses) is served with mint jelly. Only once in my life, in a British restaurant in the 1970s, have I ever had lamb (or maybe it was mutton, which you can’t get in the U.S. at all) with mint sauce. And it’s better.

As gazpacho notes, even the few restaurants that still serve lamb nowadays seem to have drifted away from mint jelly as a condiment. But I think some traditional family-style restaurants in not very cosmopolitan places still use it, and of course I remember it well from home cooking in my childhood.

But you are right that the so-called “sauce” of mushed mint with sugar and vinegar is way better than manufactured mint jelly. I had read of mint sauce in books but never had a notion it was different from mint jelly, until a New Zealand colleague served me some to accompany New Zealand lamb. At first I was like “what is this parsley hash stuff and why the hell is it on my plate” but the first taste revealed my error. Mint sauce is amazing, esp. made with fresh garden mint.

[Johnny_Ace]

@BrainGlutton

Well, there must be a whole lot more to eat in the UK now. As Orwell notes (writing in 1946):

I was thinking more along the lines of culinarily. Still basically the same variety of dishes?

[BrainGlutton]

@Johnny_Ace

I was thinking more along the lines of culinarily. Still basically the same variety of dishes?

Well, Orwell makes no mention of Anglo-Indian cuisine. Perhaps that’s a postwar thing (at least in the UK proper).

[CalMeacham]

@BrainGlutton

Oh, and, BTW, now I think I finally understand why Brits have bad teeth (or used to). It must be from eating so much sugar.

This has been clear to me for quite some time. In Shakespeare much reference is made to the drinking of “sack and sugar”, for instance. “Sack” is a kind of wine. They were sweetening their wine with sugar, which I don’t know of anyone else doing. There are quite a few references to the eating and drinking of sugar in Shakespeare.

[BrainGlutton]

@CalMeacham

They were sweetening their wine with sugar, which I don’t know of anyone else doing.

Italians, perhaps? I recall a scene from Moonstruck where Italian-Americans drop a sugar cube into a glass of wine.

[BrainGlutton]

And, it occurs to me: Sugarcane cannot be grown in Britain (and sugar beets were not introduced until WWI). Tea plants cannot be grown in Britain. Probably not even lemons can be grown outside of hothouses. For centuries now, most things distinctive about the British diet have been imported. A nation of sailors indeed.

[pulykamell]

@NDP

That passage also explains why HP Sauce is so cloyingly sweet. I realize Americans like me are in no position to criticize commercially-produced British sauces and condiments for having a high sweetener content but I’ve tried HP Sauce and it tastes far sweeter than A-1 Sauce or even Heinz Ketchup. Heinz 57 Sauce comes closest but at least in has a bit of tanginess and spiciness that mitigates the sweetness.

There’s no way HP sauce is sweeter than ketchup. Looking at nutrition labels it’s 3-3.5 g sugar per 15ml serving and most ketchups are 4. I like HP sauce precisely because it tastes tangier and less sweet than ketchup.

[terentii]

@CalMeacham

They were sweetening their wine with sugar, which I don’t know of anyone else doing.

The Romans sweetened their wine with honey and (yeccch!) lead.

[BrainGlutton]

@gazpacho

I live in the US. I haven’t seen mint jelly with lamb in a restaurant since the 80s.

From the Bern’s Steakhouse menu: “Pinot Noir reduction, mint jelly upon request.” Bern’s is literally the finest fanciest restaurant in the Tampa Bay area, they grow their own vegetables and herbs, etc. But even there you can’t get mint sauce.

[Johnny_Ace]

@BrainGlutton

Well, Orwell makes no mention of Anglo-Indian cuisine. Perhaps that’s a postwar thing (at least in the UK proper).

Yeah, I’m a Red Dwarf fan. How could I forget chicken vindaloo?

[BrainGlutton]

@Johnny_Ace

Yeah, I’m a Red Dwarf fan. How could I forget chicken vindaloo?

Vindaloo is the new fish & chips.

Oh, and there’s this:

There are, however, two or three kinds of pie or meat-pudding which are peculiar to Britain and are good enough to be worth mentioning. One is steak-and-kidney pudding, which is made of chopped beef-steak and sheep’s kidney, encased in suet crust and steamed in a basin.

I tried that once at a British-themed pub-restaurant in St. Petersburg. It was like liver to the tenth power. I was still tasting it the next day, and not in a good way. Acquired taste, I guess.

[Ludovic]

@BrainGlutton

Well, Orwell makes no mention of Anglo-Indian cuisine.

He’d already covered that in Shooting An Elephant

[terentii]

@BrainGlutton

I tried that once at a British-themed pub-restaurant in St. Petersburg. It was like liver to the tenth power. I was still tasting it the next day, and not in a good way. Acquired taste, I guess.

Russia or Florida? :dubious:

At the hotel where I stayed in the former city (actually a quite posh establishment), they served us boiled liver smothered in brown gravy. I could only get through three or four bites before giving up on it.

Served as pub grub in Great Britain, steak and kidney pie is heavenly! :o