Overread wrote:
Momotaro wrote:
Stuff we regard as "continental" has just been lost - read the list of Henry VIII's designated meals (yes, we had laws on who could eat what, as well as what everyone could wear) and you find blackbirds on the menu. Of course, custard tart was there too,
IIRC!
I seem to recall reading that British cooking never really recovered from rationing after WWII. On the other hand, sea greens like laver (seaweed) bread and samphire always stayed with us in coastal regions.
I believe that its still the law that only the Queen may eat Swan (and that all swans are owned by the crown - or that might be all swans in a certain area?)
And yes you raise a good point regarding WW1 and 2. WW2 certainly bred several generations brought up on tinned spam and other war-time foods and recipes. People forget that war time food shortage and rationing didn't go away with the end of the war. My father is nearing his 70s and can still remember ration books from his childhood;' whilst my mothers collection of old cookery books have a vast contrast to a lot of the modern offerings in terms of what ingredients were possible. It wasn't just post-war shortage but also that the
UK used food as a major exporting product after the war to start paying off the vast war debts that had built up. It's probably the reason today that we've wound up in the crazy situation where we produce food to export and import the same food because its cheaper for our own market that way (which when you pause and think that sheep from the other side of the world is cheaper to buy and eat than sheep made locally it kind of makes the mind boggle at the world).
Of course in contrast fewer people home cook today and even if they cook there's still a lot of pre-made components on the market. In the past making custard, gravy and all were done with
raw ingredients not custard powder or Bisto*. Which is not to say that people don't cook, indeed it seems to be having a bit of a revival at present, but that there is far less cooking (esp from
raw ingredients) than there was in the past.
*although these days I find the cheap alternative products better. I think Bisto have taken their cornfour out of things because it seems to take a huge amount to actually thicken; and one just cannot serve watery gravy!
The effect of rationing on future generations is an interesting point, when you're young you don't often know the reason for things just that that is the way they are (and as far as you are concerned the way they always have been) then you grow up and continue to make "home grown" recipes just like Mum used to make, never knowing what outside forces shaped those choices.
in a technique, rather than ingredient driven example, many years ago my Great Grandmother made the trip from Yorkshire to New Zealand, and my Aunt made a great show of making a leg of lamb using an old family recipe she had learned from her mum who had learned it from said Great Grandmother.
One apparently important step, was to cut the last inch off of the protruding bone, the search for an appropriate tool to achieve this drew the attention of guests and there was much speculation as to what purpose it served, did it allow heat to penetrate the center and shorten cooking time? Did it allow some form of venting?
When the guest of honor arrived the question was asked, and the answer? At the time she was teaching her daughters to cook she had an undersized oven and you needed to cut the end off the bone so it would fit ... for fifty years, across three generations, and at least 8 different women the end of countless legs of lamb has been cut off to accommodate a specific oven. and to all of them it had been normal and the way it had always been.
