History HubΒ permalink
American food
This discussion has been closed.
-
Message 1.Β
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Tuesday, 6th September 2011
how did the rest of the world get by before?
-
Message 2
Posted by dmatt47 (U13073434) on Tuesday, 6th September 2011
I assume that this about American fast food. People tended not to go out and eat at home or if they did got then they eat traditional food, like roast beef, roast potatoes and yorkshire pudding. It really ws the end of rationing and the importattion of food that changed the situation after the Second World War. Although there were Italian restaurants people's taste for non-British food appears to have been limited.
-
Message 3
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Tuesday, 6th September 2011
?????????????? -
Message 4
Posted by Silver Jenny (U12795676) on Tuesday, 6th September 2011
Much as it does now I imagine: eating regional cooking using local ingredients.
-
Message 5
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Tuesday, 6th September 2011
If the OP is referring to the amount of food, principally grain, that is donated by America to famine relief programmes, perhaps these might make salutary reading for those who consider it to be only of benefit to the recipients.
Obviously in situations such as the current famine, food relief is of vital significance but when, in the normal course of events, surplus grain is dumped in the developing world, the probability of famine increases. -
Message 6
Posted by baz (U14258304) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
I can remember my parents and grandparents keeping beef dripping in pudding bowls, to be spread on bread as a snack. It was foul, but the older generation seem to have been almost brought up on it during the early part of the 20th century. They MUST have been hungry.
I seem to remember that roast beef, far from being a luxury, was a regular feature at sunday dinner, along with Billy Cotton shouting "Wakey Waaaakey!" on the radio. -
Message 7
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
Beef dripping is a very healthy food. The brown sediment at the bottom of the roasting pan is full of vitamins and minerals.
Unfortunately beef dripping is also full of cholesterol - a whopping 94mg per something or other, but as the authorities are now telling us that cholesterol from food sources is OK (it's the stuff your own liver produces to excess that clogs your arteries) and indeed keeps us slim, happy, energetic and sane, I think we should all start eating dripping butties again. Beef dripping is what those nasty little rioters need to calm them down.
Sugar butties and Conny-Onny butties ( bread spread with Nestles Condensed Milk) were delicious too, but they really were unhealthy, I suppose. -
Message 8
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
Vizzer, do you mean foods originating in the Americas? Maize and potatoes are now essential staples for much of the old world. I guess people probably went hungry prior to the introduction of these wonder-crops:
Personally, I'd be lost without chillis, and I know several friends who claim life isn't worth living without chocolate. -
Message 9
Posted by Silver Jenny (U12795676) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
When childen were eating such things, they were also more energetic. Walking to school, have PE every day, and team games on their own school playing field. Mothers had ways of dealing with healthy appetites and limited housekeeping money which allowed them to eke out the sunday roast beef through the week in different guises: cold sliced with home made pickles, or minced and made into rissoles or cottage pie, .
No fast food take-out outlets other than the fish and chip shop. Not sure when fast food came to UK: was it with Wimpy hamburger Bars in the 1950's?. -
Message 10
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
Baz, where were you brung up? Beef dripping on toast, or on a slice of fresh bread, with a light sprinkling of salt, delicious!
All the food from my childhood was high carb and fat, but we ran it all off at school and at play. Most adults (which usually meant men) worked at manual jobs, so they were hungry. We ate food in season; the only preserved food was canned or bottled, except runner beans which were salted, so had to be rinsed really well before they were cooked (still tasted yucky). Cheap and filling was the order of the day, but it all had flavour, it wasn't stuffed with fat and sugar to make it palateable
BTW, Fish and chips in the North East used to be cooked in beef dripping and it was a food fit for kings. I don't know whether it still is, or whether oil has taken over. -
Message 11
Posted by baz (U14258304) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
One thing that sticks out as a contrast to today is that I hardly ever drank anything but water, as a child. "There's plenty in the tap" was something I heard a lot.
Also, the lost art of scrumping ( nicking apples and other fruit from people's gardens ) kept you fit with all the running involved.
I can also remember eating fried fish ...WITH BONES IN! You'd probably be taken into care today, if your parents gave you that as a 7 year old.
The horror of horrors, though, was my grandmother's boiled eggs, which were invariably underdone; but she would make us eat them. -
Message 12
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
One thing that sticks out as a contrast to today is that I hardly ever drank anything but water as a child. Β
I was going to comment on all the nasty American fizzy drinks that make kids go completely barmy, but then I remembered how we would down gallons of Dandelion and Burdock. It sounds like a heathy drink, but I seem to remember it as a dark and evil brew. We also loved Jubblies - those very strange ice lollies shaped liked triangles. They were *huge*, and goodness knows what chemicals they contained. You sucked away until you'd extracted all the colouring and flavouring - the remaining triangle of white ice was thrown away.
Re beef dripping - Rick Stein uses what he calls "proper beef dripping" to fry everything at his very posh fish 'n' chip shop in Padstow down in Cornwall. He mentions beef dripping in this article:
-
Message 13
Posted by baz (U14258304) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
One 'foreign' meal I had as a kid was with a German family who ran a garage on the Chapeltown road, in Leeds. Delicious potato salad and salami, mmmm!
Also, living in Bedford, you couldn't do better than "get your feet under the table" with an Italian family. I've never tasted pasta like it. Superb!
But my favourite is hot, buttered toast, with bread fresh from the baker's. I can feel my waistline expanding just thinking about it. -
Message 14
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
Of course another possible answer to the question as far as the UK was concerned was we grew our own food and had a thriving agricultural industry and countryside. After the end of protection by the Corn Laws c1846 English agriculture enjoyed its Golden Age with more people working on the land than ever before or since..
Previously England had imported grain from Europe- especially France, but population growth generally meant that food production had to be increased.. It even became possible for Russia to become an exporter.. But the economic opportunities offered by the American mid-West once opened up by railways allowed really cheap cereals to be grown using mechanisation favoured by the vast plains and the lack of man power. British producers just could not compete. Then railways opened up the Pampas in Argentina and "corned" (tinned) beef became a cheap source of protein, and the Dunedin (?) arrived from New Zealand with the first chilled cargo of NZ lamb.
British farming collapsed and hundreds of thousands of countrymen fled to the towns and cities. The hard life of the Great Depression in farming in this period was the backdrop to Lark Rise to Candleford set in the North Oxfordshire of my grandparents and my mother's childhood. Properties and property values collapsed. My mother once showed me a photo of a beautiful stone house now worth a million that her parents lived in in its decayed days as mere farm workers, my grandfather having to be close to the horses.
Farms were so cheap in the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Counties that one growth area was that Scottish farmers with a tradition of herding bought up farms close to London on which to grow potatoes and produce milk, two areas of Scottish expertise. It wax very clever. Potatoes were too cheap to import from afar. Milk would not travel distances. The potato tops and spuds not worth selling were fed to the stock. While they produced manure to enrich the potato fields.
The Depression got turned around when Britain needed to feed itself during the 1WW.
Cass -
Message 15
Posted by ritajoh (U10855204) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
The very thought of proper beef dripping makes my mouth water, i still have it if i cook a joint of beef, much better than all the shop bought rubbish. the number of times i have bought ham off the bone and its complete rubbish, i am old enough to remember when food tasted as it should, not like sawdust. -
Message 16
Posted by mismatched (U14242423) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
Is the original poster referring to the so called Columbian Exchange whereby Europe and the rest of the world received maize, potatoes, tomatoes, chillies and a whole ;ot more onf now esssential food stuffs
-
Message 17
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
Apologies to dmatt47 and ferval etc for falling into my fiendishly set trap but - yes - cloudyj and mismatched have got it right. It's about all the wonderful plants and foodstuffs from the Americas which have swept the other continents since 1492.
Can one imagine a Europe without potatoes. Steak but no pommes frites? And bangers but no mash. Or how about Asia without chillies. No curries? Or Africa without cassava and sweetcorn? Imagine Hungary without paprika or Spain without pimento. No goulash, no paella. Imagine Italy without tomatoes. Imagine England without strawberries. And imagine everyone without chocolate and vanilla.
And yet that is exactly how it was up until the 16th century. -
Message 18
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
Chocolate.. Tobacco,, Cocaine
Cass -
Message 19
Posted by gillypop (U14935730) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
yes i remember all that too
-
Message 20
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
And yet that is exactly how it was up until the 16th century.Β
A terrible thought indeed! Though local herbs and (for the rich) imported spices would have been used. Black peppers and guinea peppers were worth their weight in gold - if not more.
But once the old world got a taste for chilli peppers there's scarcely a cuisine in the world which didn't adopt them!
Chocolate is interesting though. It was exclusively a drink in ancient Mexico and only became a solid food once some enterprising Bristolians got hold of it. -
Message 21
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
But to look at the issue another way -- Who is to say that had Europe not discovered America it might have realised Columbus' actual objective which was to get to Cathay-China.?
So far we have got a few plants from China. Isn't the tomato supposed to have come from China? But in the last couple of years we seem to have seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of the seeming hundreds of plants that the Chinese have been growing for thousands of years.
Or perhaps that is just a modern vegetable gardener's myth. Certainly when I have seen film coverage of Chinese gardens- and in that series on the natural world in China- I recognise very few.
Cass -
Message 22
Posted by Silver Jenny (U12795676) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
The plant hunters brought back all sorts of specimans but how many actually survived the journey.
-
Message 23
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Thursday, 8th September 2011
Who is to say that had Europe not discovered America it might have realised Columbus' actual objective which was to get to Cathay-China.?
So far we have got a few plants from China.Β
Not sure what your point is Cass. There was already a route for foods to be transported from China and the far east prior to 1492. And direct European trading with China by 1513.
Popular Chinese foods were already available in Europe. Rice was introduced to Europe by the C10th and spices were readily available for those with cash. Though interestingly rice wasn't considered "proper Chinese cuisine" by the locals until the Tang dynasty - it being associated with the southern peasantry. Posh Chinese ate wheat flour products such as pancakes or noodles.
Possibly-Chinese Ginger (though probably domesticated in India) went the other way rapidly and was being commercially grown in Jamaica by 1585.
I'm not sure I see any evidence that American foods hampered the spread of Chinese foods. -
Message 24
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 8th September 2011
Two points
(a) As I rejoice at this time of year at the taste of the fresh veg from my allotment- and the delicious smell as my carrots "give up the ghost" when I dig them up- I reflect on the fact that really they need no spices and extra taste in order to be delicious.. But it is also true- I believe- that we owe many of our modern vegetables to the Dutch who were the first to really import goods from Asia and married this with their cutting edge knowledge of horticulture.
(b) The potato was hailed by a pamphlet c1640 as the answer to European famine. But in England it was considered pig food for a long time. This may, however, have been especially the wheat growing and more prosperous Southern England. The "dear years" in Scotland in the 1690's- years of consecutive famine ,when about 20% of the Scottish population were wandering around begging- would have been a great incentive to cultivate potatoes in order for families to be self-sufficient.
But that degree of self-sufficiency impacted upon the developing economic system that operated on "The Subsistence Theory of Wages" before that law of economics was identified and slavishly followed as a "law of Nature".
Workers able to grow their own veg outside of working hours would work for lower wages than others, and so the potato diet depressed wages and therefore purchasing power within those regions where "working class pride" or other forces widening potential divides encouraged people to embrace this semi-independence from the developing industrial economy. The English noticed the depressing impact of the Scots and Irish workers on wages and promotional prospects- for Scots overseers, foremen and managers were usually cheaper than Englishmen.
The cult of self-sufficiency through the potato was especially the case in Ireland where sub-letting and the allocation of potato plots to hired workers became more or less standard practice..
It created a system that made it possible for the common people of Ireland - largely Roman Catholic because of the colonial regime- to produce one of the largest rates of population growth in the world. But the system of mono-culture created the ideal conditions for the potato blight to establish itself. There were potato famines Ireland and Scotland and Belgium, while the North of England suffered, though perhaps less so because local government in England had provided Poor Relief since the time of Queen Elizabeth. Scotland and Ireland had no tradition of poor relief funded out of local rates on the community.
The idea of providing vegetable plots in order to keep down Labour costs was also employed on the slave plantations. Much of plantation work -like all work on the land- tends to be seasonal, and it was cheaper for the plantation owners to provide the slaves with plots than to buy food for them.. For the slaves the incentive was that the food they grew belonged to them, even any excess that they could take to the market and sell. Ultimately they might hope to buy their freedom and a piece of land to own.
But it did mean that these regions had very little cash flow and therefore could not support much in the way of local subsidiary businesses, the seeds of the new businesses and industries of the future.
Cass -
Message 25
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 8th September 2011
cloudyj
My point was that Europe put a great deal of effort into opening up America.. Of course it suited the milltaristic and crusading States of Europe and the Civilization that was emerging to just appropriate the new Continent and use it as a kind of windfall bonus given by God and or the Church.. It was a process that led to concepts of "lebensraum" and World War for supremacy..
Of course there had been contact with China since ancient times- but notably goods that would endure months of travelling, not foodstuffs that were liable to "go off". Cereals like rice can travel, but I would imagine that rice had spread widely along the Chinese diaspora long before Europeans sailed to China.
But the story of China's greatest export to the West taught the Chinese a lesson. For centuries silk came along the great silk road as a Chinese monopoly that was carefully preserved. But eventually someone was bribed to smuggle out some silk-worm eggs so that silk could be produced in the Middle East.
It is no wonder that- in the early Nineteenth Century when Europe was really trying to open up China into the developing global economy based upon European military power and strength, that the Chinese basically saw very little to be gained from Westerners who had nothing really to offer- apart from larger quantities of opium- that was produced in China anyway as a state monopoly.. By then Britain was strong enough to win the Opium Wars and force China to open up to the West..
But had Europeans not been shaped into arrogant self-belief by the American windfall, we might well have learned how to treat people in a Civilized way. And then we might have benefitted from what China had to offer of value, rather than merely try to get our hands on things that would serve our purposes and teach us nothing.
Cass -
Message 26
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Thursday, 8th September 2011
Cass,
It wasn't just Europeans who shared this bonanza. The importation of maize benefitted Africans and Asians (and even Chinese) long before these places were colonized by Europeans. It wasn't just Europeans who shared this bonanza.
I'm glad you like your homegrown carrots - fresh veg can be truly wonderful. But just because you don't want to spice your food, doesn't mean the rest of us have to be bound by your subjective preferences. Most of the rest of the world has voted with their tastebuds and opted for chillies. The cultural heritage of Indian and Chinese food would be vastly poorer without them. -
Message 27
Posted by mismatched (U14242423) on Thursday, 8th September 2011
The contribution of the Americas to food stuffs is amazing. We all know about potatoes and tomatoes but how did Africa survive without maize and cassava (manioc) not to mention peanuts? French beans originated in N America, so did a lot of other beans and members of the pumpkin family.
However the Americas had no dairy products until the introduction of cattle, no horses, wheat was a European introduction. Amazingly no honey bees, all American bees are introductions with the exception of some small colonies of original bees in mountain locations.
Most North American grasses are of European origin, Richard Mabey's book, Weeds, has an interesting chapter on their introduction, Chapter Seven.
I did once read that chili arrived in India within 75 years of its arrival in Europe, I have not seen proof of this but given the well established trade routes at that time I am prepared to believe that -
Message 28
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Thursday, 8th September 2011
Chocolate.. Tobacco,, CocaineΒ
Add to that list another potentially addictive substance - coffee. That doesn't come from America. It originated in East Africa but intriguingly only began to spread beyond Ethiopia and the Yemen in the mid-fifteenth century. In other words coffee and chocolate both exploded onto the global scene at around the same time.
Isn't the tomato supposed to have come from China?Β
No. The tomato comes from Peru.
Another fruit which does originate in China, however, is the Kiwifruit. Some clever re-branding and marketing by our Antipodean cousins now means that its former name of 'Chinese gooseberry' is increasingly forgotten.
Regarding strawberries, then it must be said that there were indeed strawberries in England before 1492. Shakespeare mentions strawberries in 'Richard III' for example. However these would have been what we now know as wild strawberries - quite small and tart. The ones we are generally familiar with today (to be found on sale at Wimbledon etc) are the plump sweet American garden strawberries. -
Message 29
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 8th September 2011
Looking a "the Tomato" in a Fifties Encyclopedia I was struck by this paragraph in the light of having to bag up so much of my blight-affected plants last week-
"The commonest pests are Tomato Moth Caterpillar, controlled by dusting with D.D.T. powder: Greenhouse White Fly , controlled by B.H.C. or D.D.T. smokes or aerosols or by the White Fly parasite which parasatizes it: and the red spider mite, controlled by treatment with one of the recently developed acaricides, e.g. the chlorinated di-phenyl compounds. Animal pests in the soil, including wireworms and eelworms , are best controlled by steam sterilization."
Is it just me or does that sound like gardening in the era of the Nuclear Holocaust solution to the Cold War?
Cass -
Message 30
Posted by ritajoh (U10855204) on Friday, 9th September 2011
When i was a young girl, a long time ago and i used to put perfume on , or scent as we called it ,an old family friend used to say a smell to hide a smell, and thats what i think sauces and spices do,cover up inferior food, whereas food grown in your own garden or allotment needs no tarting up.
-
Message 31
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Friday, 9th September 2011
Sorry, Rita, not true at all, the judicious use of spices enhances food. I love a plate of steamed veg from the garden, but just as much, I love a delicious curry made in an Indian kitchen with fresh ingredients. Furthermore, many Indian people are vegetarian, so their food certainly hasn't 'gone off'.
This idea about using spices to disguise bad food is a form of snobbery disseminated by those who dismiss spicy food as 'foreign muck'. Italians also eat food quite highly flavoured with herbs, but as with domestic Indian cookery, the ingredients themselves are fresh and bought daily. -
Message 32
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Friday, 9th September 2011
Drat, I'm getting forgetful!
"whereas food grown in your own garden or allotment needs no tarting up".
Presumably you don't use pepper on your food, then. -
Message 33
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Friday, 9th September 2011
I like spicy foods, but Cass is right - the difference in flavour between veges picked straight from the garden and those from a shop is amazing. When we started to run out of carrots this years I bought some. They looked good and were clean and easy, but they tasted awful in comparison.
Sometimes I would put pepper on them, not always. Salt usually. Salt was always used (and I'm sure this isn't a myth) to keep food. Still is.
Caro. -
Message 34
Posted by mismatched (U14242423) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
If Columbus has not discovered America or to be correct the Caribbean I wonder how long it would have been before some other mariner sailed there. Probably within about fifty years I would think.
The Basque fishermen had been fishing for Cod off the Newfoundland Grand Banks for some time. I know that it is about two thousand miles away but it means that some Master Mariner knew that "there was something out there"
I have always understood that the reason that the Basques did not disemminate the information was for commercial reasons, they were not giving away information about the good fishing grounds. -
Message 35
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
<quote. and thats what i think sauces and spices do,cover up inferior food</quote>
They may cover up inferior food in your household, but not in mine. You may not believe this, but some of us choose spicy food because we like the taste of spices.
But joking aside, the Americas produced some truly amazingly productive foods. The Mexicans developed a brilliant combination called the "three sisters" where maize, squash and beans are grown together. Agriculturally the three plants improve the yield of each other and between them provide almost all the nutrition a person needs. -
Message 36
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
I thnk it's sad that some people believe that sauces and spices cover 'the taste of inferior food'. They are missing so much, a whole range of glorious flavours. And like you, Cloudyj, I definitely don't buy inferior food, so I like to enhance flavours, not disguise them. Besides which, many spices contain substances which are beneficial. Things like chillies, paprika and turmeric are actually good for you.
-
Message 37
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
However, I remember reading or being told that spices were first used to disguise the taste of meat that was getting distinctly high and also because they helped to preserve it. Is that correct? Digging deeply into my memory, I think that some spices promote the production of acid in the stomach and so also have an antibacterial effect.
-
Message 38
Posted by gillypop (U14935730) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
i have just had my first piece of bread n dripping..... i am nearly 57. i have to say its delicious
-
Message 39
Posted by ritajoh (U10855204) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
No roundsgirl i dont use pepper, and very little salt. im not critizising people who use sauces or spices, just giving my opinion of them -
Message 40
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
However, I remember reading or being told that spices were first used to disguise the taste of meat that was getting distinctly high and also because they helped to preserve it. Is that correct?Β
I'd guess the answer to that is as varied as each spice and local cuisine. In medieval Europe, for instance, many spices would have cost vastly more than the non-spoiled meat. But local herb sauces may well have developed to hide the taste of salt from ubiquitous salted food.
Other herbs and spices may have been added simply to bulk out the small portions with the happy coincidence that it tastes nice (to some). Others have medical properties - chillis cause the release of endorphins which is your body's natural reaction to stress. -
Message 41
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
Just a boring note.. Spices were just "things" recorded as "spieces" in Medieval Trade.. I am not sure just when the word gained such a limited and specific meaning i.e. very strongly flavoured things.
Did everyone watch the Kate Humble series? I am just trying to remember the East/West balance.
Cass -
Message 42
Posted by mismatched (U14242423) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
I believe that the statement that spices were used to cover tainted or poor meat is now regarded as incorrect by food historians. Basically of you had enough money to buy spices then you could afford good meat and did not need to mask any tastes.
-
Message 43
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
mismatched
I think that however rich you were winter was winter..
Right up to the eighteenth century livestock were slaugtered in the autumn and preserve by salting or smoking, as with pickling in vinegar the addition of spices made the food more pallatable-- as is the case with mulled wine..
Further to my last- Medieval "spieces" included dried fruits like raisins, sultanas and dates, and inTudor times- before all the modern veggies produced "meat and two veg".. meat was often eaten with dried fruit.. Hence eventually the "mincemeat" that we use particularly at Xmas.
Cass -
Message 44
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Sunday, 11th September 2011
This idea about using spices to disguise bad food is a form of snobbery disseminated by those who dismiss spicy food as 'foreign muck'.Β
Agreed raundsgirl.
The irony of this, of course, is that England used to have a very good reputation across Europe for its produce and food. The use of garlic, for example, was widespread in English kitchens up until the late Georgian era but then fell out of practice for about 150 years.
It's believed that it was the Industrial Revolution and the accompanying rapid urbanisation of much of the population which caused the decline in British cuisine. This resulted in large numbers of young people leaving the family home and moving away to the towns and cities. Consequently there was an arrest in the handing down of skills, tips and recipes from one generation to another and many of the new industrial workers would live their lives almost like perpetual students. It's no coincidence that the advent of tinned and canned foods and other so-called 'convenience' foods such as cheap jam came quick on the heals of industrialisation. This was further exacerbated by the Poor Law and workhouse system in the 19th century and the general privations of the world wars and rationing in the first half of the 20th. It only slowly began to pick up again from the 1950s onwards.
With regard to the Columbian Exchange then cloudyj's point that the spread of American foodstuffs across of Africa and Asia occurred ahead of (and independent of) later European imperialism is very important. Also - the point made by mismatched in Message 27 that chillies were being used in European kitchens decades before they were being used in Asian kitchens is also extremely valid considering today's understanding of 'European food' and 'Asian food'. To think that chillies reached Copenhagen before they reached Canton, reached Bruges before they reached Bangkok and reached Dublin before they reached Delhi, is truly food for thought. -
Message 45
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Sunday, 11th September 2011
Now you can hardly describe this as 'Foreign muck'! The 14th century cookbook "The Forme of Cury" (not curry, apparently, but 'Cookery') is in English. Here it describes how to make 'pompys' which are meatballs. Click on the red link to see a transcription. Interesting to see that adding sugar to enhance the flavour is not a new idea!
-
Message 46
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 11th September 2011
Vizzer
I agree with your comments about industrialialization..
The very dodgy evidence collected by the Sadler Enquiry includes suggestions about rickets coming from the urban-industrial environment and the smoke-
Lack of sunshine is a factor.. But so is poor diet, and certainly one father whose children had rickets had also lost his wife and ii was left to one of the daughters looked after the children.. Well, famously working men found more money for beer than for milk, even when they had wives to nag them: and one has to wonder just how much the factory girls had been taught about baby and child care, and healthy housekeeping, by the time that they started having children often in their late teens.
I recall reading Dr. Spock to prepare myself for parenthood.. He was quite clear that he wrote the book because in the modern world so many young Mums were living too far away from their own Mums to get simple reassurance and practical advice.. The demise of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Economics in schools-far too sexist- may well have some bearing on the apparently appalling state of the health of the nation's young people.
Cass -
Message 47
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Monday, 12th September 2011
I'm a little surprised at the over-reaction to Rita's simple comment on her food preferences.
Actually, imo, Rita made a valid point and at no time did she mention "foreign muck" nor food that had "gone off" or was "bad". What she did mention was inferior food and with the mass produced, artifically ripened and cheap imported foods that stock supermarket shelves today, the description of inferior is very apt. And so tasteless has our fruit and veg now become that there is an over-reliance on herbs and spices to give it some form of flavour whilst good quality, home grown produce actually needs very little in the way of enhancement.
Personally, I loathe chillies, hot curry, corriander, dill, fennel, ginger and won't eat any food flavoured with any of these, but then it is all about personal taste, isn't it? -
Message 48
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Monday, 12th September 2011
Personally, I loathe chillies, hot curry, corriander, dill, fennel, ginger and won't eat any food flavoured with any of these...Β
Burn the Witch!
-
Message 49
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Monday, 12th September 2011
Ha, I'd like to see you try!
-
Message 50
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Monday, 12th September 2011
"home grown produce actually needs very little in the way of enhancement."
I don't think it's anything to do with *needing* enhancement, it's just a different way of preparing it.
BTW, I didn't attribute 'foreign muck' to Rita. I was speaking generally. What she said was this,
" an old family friend used to say a smell to hide a smell, and thats what i think sauces and spices do,cover up inferior food,"
and I don't agree at all. You *can* hope to disguise inferior food that way, but it doesn't follow that food with sauces or spices is inferior, quite the contrary.
One of my favourite dishes is a delicious curry made with potato and spinach, both of which are fresh from my garden.
If that's not for you, then fair enough, but don't tell me my food is inferior because I use spices or a sauce on it.
About this Board
The History message boards are now closed. They remain visible as a matter of record but the opportunity to add new comments or open new threads is no longer available. Thank you all for your valued contributions over many years.
or Β to take part in a discussion.
The message board is currently closed for posting.
The message board is closed for posting.
This messageboard is .
Find out more about this board's
Search this Board
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ iD
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ navigation
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ links
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Β© 2014 The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.