Fish consumption is evident in recipes such as those in The Compleat Cook, a recipe book from 1694, which includes instructions for frying fish or boiling fish but there is no recipe for battered fish as we know it.īattered fish has origins from the Jewish community in Britain. However, thanks to the discovery of the New World, British people were encouraged to eat more fish as there was a ready supply of cheap cod from the North Atlantic. Prior to the marriage of battered fish and chips, fish consumption in Britain can be dated back to the first century. Can you believe that the combination of fish and chips had not been thought of before the 1860s?! And it is all thanks to Joseph Malin who opened the first fish and chip shop in 1860. So I’ve researched the famous dish to tell you all about how it came about. They seemed particularly interested to learn that traditionally fish and chips are served in a newspaper! I wanted to tell them the history as there is nothing more British than fish, chips and mushy peas.

However, during my year studying abroad in Hawaii I began to really miss the tastes of home! It was interesting trying to describe ‘British’ foods to the American’s I met, who couldn’t grasp the concept of a sausage roll or a Yorkshire pudding.

In Eating the Empire: Intersections of Food, cookery and Imperialism in Eighteenth Century Britain Troy Bickham askes ‘when a woman in Edinburgh drank a cup of tea, or a family in Bath sat down to a meal of Indian curry, did they consider the cultures they might be mimicking or how these products reached Britain?’ This is still true as so much of our foods are imported and most people don’t know, or care, where they are actually from.īeing a foodie myself, I absolutely love all kinds of food and love to try new dishes. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that some of our British cuisine is actually not all that British as our recipes have been affected by food imports from around the world. I mean who can deny a full English breakfast or a scone with Cornish clotted cream and strawberry jam with your afternoon tea? Or maybe you’d prefer a traditional Sunday dinner with all the trimmings covered in gravy followed by a banofee pie (yum!)

Eating the Empire by Troy Bickham