Complex Numbers

Food, Glorious Food

In contrast to yesterday's ramblings about exoplanets, today's article is both humorous (because it's from Cracked) and slightly more down-to-earth.

    There’s No Such Thing as ‘English’ Food  

I think that's a matter of definition, but we'll see what the article says about it. After all, when you think of Italian food, what comes to mind? Pasta with tomato sauce? Noodles came from east Asia, and tomatoes came from the Americas.

In a nice break, this isn't a countdown list.

English food has a reputation as bland at best and outright objectionable at worst, full of vegetables boiled to mush, dubious “puddings” that bear no resemblance to the Snack Packs we love overseas, and jellied eels, possibly the least appetizing combination of sounds in the English language.

While that reputation may have some basis in reality, having been to England, I can say it has a lot more than that.

All of that is beside the point, though, because it turns out there really is no such thing as English food, or at least not what we think of as English food. Fish and chips, afternoon tea, beans on toast, all manner of meat pies or non-pies that are still confusingly called pies, and yes, even sausage rolls — they or their components all come from somewhere else in the world. The Brits have created an entire cuisine out of little more than theft and colonialism.

And? Lots of nations' cuisines came from somewhere else. Japanese tempura? That has the same source as British fish & chips: Sephardic Jews from Portugal. Hell, even the name has a Latin root.

Let’s start with what many bewilderingly consider England’s national dish: curry. Obviously, curry wasn’t invented by some dude who looks and sounds like Colin Firth, coming to England via its colonization of India.

One thing England did do well on its own: beer. You might have seen the proliferation of the beer style known as IPA, or India Pale Ale. That's not an Indian beer. That's a British beer, hopped-up (hops are a preservative) to survive the long trip around Africa (in the days before the Suez Canal), because apparently that was easier than setting up breweries in India.

Incidentally, speaking of curry, Japan has its own take on curry. You'd think they'd have gotten it from India, too. But it turns out that they got it from England, who got it from India, which is about as convoluted as it's possible to get. Whether India or Thailand invented it, I don't know and can't be arsed to find out right now; it doesn't matter. Point is, delicious food gets around.

Tea, of course, also came from India, which got it from China, though it’s as entwined with English identity as large clocks and the wrong kind of football.

You mean the kind that doesn't give its players brain damage?

For their part, scones originated from Scotland. That might sound close enough, but tell some burly Scottish dude that he’s basically English and see what happens.

I wouldn't brag about scones.

The article doesn't mention that other quintessential British food: crumpets. Depending on who you talk to, they might have actually been an English creation... or, perhaps, Welsh.

Another country that England didn’t colonize, despite their best efforts, but still cribbed much of their cuisine from is France.

I'm not going to rag on English food, but I don't think anyone except the most committed Anglophile would argue that the French are, in general, better cooks. There's an old joke to the effect of: the difference between Heaven and Hell is that, in Heaven, the Germans are the engineers, the British are the police, and the French are the cooks; in Hell, the French are the engineers, the British are the cooks, and the Germans are the police.

Basically, the most traditionally English meals, broken down to their constituent parts, have roots outside England, sometimes literally. For example, the only English part of fish and chips is the newspaper it’s served on, and that might be suspect as well. The fish came from Jewish immigrants, who fried it in flour for religious reasons (it turns out God wants us to live deliciously), and was initially advertised in England as fish “in the Jewish manner.” The chips, which we — probably correctly, it turns out — call French fries, actually do come from either France or Belgium. (We got something right, guys!)

Worse, it's not like potatoes are native to Europe. Or even Africa or Asia.

The mince pie, an English Christmas staple, came from the Middle East, and anything with custard owes a debt to Ancient Rome.

Okay, but let's be fair, here: the British conquered a good chunk of the world and appropriated various cultural foods, but not Ancient Rome. Rome instead invaded the British Isles. "We learned it from YOU, Dad!"

Anyway, a fun article if, like me, you enjoy knowing where your food came from.