In the most recent episode of Foyle’s War, Sam is deep-frying something that looks like big balls of liver or kidney. When her husband asks what it is, she replies “Waite [???]. They say it tastes like beef.”
Does anybody know what she was talking about? Was this something the Ministry of Food promoted to allieviate postwar shortages?
It was probably whale meat; which Ministry of Food was promoting as an unrationed beef alternative.
she does me ‘wait … and you’ll find out’?
I just listened to it for the fifth time, and she must be saying “whale,” though it still sounds like “waite” to me.
I remember in the novel Enigma, the codebreakers at Bletchley Park were fed whale meat, along with other unpalatable dishes.
In her autobiography Mrs. Appleyard and I, Louise Andrews Kent, a writer of cookbooks (among other things) tells how during World War I, she traveled around New England trying to get people to try whale meat. She said she was a good cook, but whale meat defeated even her best efforts. When World War II rolled around, she basically didn’t even try.
Whale was one of the things the Ministry tried pushing alleviate the food shortages (which got worse once the war was over). Snoek [fish] from South Africa was another.
Whale’s not terrible, but you need some serious marinade.
The end result AIUI was a real disdain for snoek in Britain, which is weird to me, as it’s a much sort-after fish in my community.
Many of us Brits (still nowadays, and considerably more so 70-odd years ago) are just pathologically mistrustful of anything strange / new / foreign in the food line – objectivity be damned !
What do you recommend?
Along the same lines, the high-end supermarket here offered kingklip one time, and it was delicious. Once my wife went to Wikipedia to read about it, though, and discovered that it is an eel covered in thick mucus, I was forbidden to bring it home again.
Well, you start with 50,000 gallons of ketchup…