This is the part II of A People’s History, Breakfast,
Lunch and Dinner
(BBC Documentary). This documentary is hosted by the late Chef and cooking show host Clarissa Dickson Wright.
I would love to share with you
what I have learned in the documentary, so I will be posting all the important
details that I have noted here.
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Lunch for Chef Wright is the most
important meal of the day. It’s the work horse meal, the one we use to refuel.
But for us it’s a quick pit stop. People eat in a speedy average barely even
noticing their food. She believes taking time for a decent meal. For Chef
Wright we lost our relationship to our food. In the not so distant past we
respected lunch like in the distant century. Chef Wright visited one last
remaining authenthic chop houses, The Simpson’s Tavern, still serving
traditional Victorian food. She dined together with historian A.N. Wilson. In
the 19th century chop houses started. So there were more and more
people crowding to into London who haven’t had breakfast, and it was a long
time for dinner. They ate lamb chops with shredded cabbage as side dish,
although Chef Wright preferred mutton chop.
A belly full of protein would get
you through the afternoon. Victorian office workers were allocated an hour to
have their lunch. Chop houses serve an ordinary or fixed price meating. Nose to
tail eating was very common to cheap dishes offered. They focus on the
middle-house people. Ox tail was very cheap. The specialty of the house was
stewed cheese (mixed with a bit of cream, mustard and beer) it’s commonly known
as Welsh rarebit. In medieval times food was preferred eaten in daylight hours.
The word lunch at that time didn’t even exist, daily life revolved around the
time consuming demands of hunting, cooking, and growing food. In Sussex Ms.
Yeldham prepared a pottage (something cooked in a pot) selection of dishes from
a typical medieval menu. All ranks of society cooks a pottage. Boiled mutton
was being cooked also. People grow a range vegetable in those times, like
purple carrots, white ones for animal feeds, and also they also have access to
spices to flavour their food. Spices costs a fortune in those days. Medieval
people love color. The popular substitute for meat is fish. The wealthy ate it
fresh from rivers and fish ponds, while the poor relied on salted fish. Food
was not also considered nourishment but also medicinal. They believed that
bodies were composed of 4 humors, earth, air, fire and water. (yellow bile,
black bile, red bile, phlegm). So a cook’s job is to provide somebody with the
food that will balance their humors and bring them to perfect health.
The wealthy would enjoy eating a
lot of course, but the poor only ate one dish. Medieval food is good food says
Ms. Yeldham. The meal would always end with something sweet that was considered
medicinal, in a way to close the stomach and aid digestion. Chef Wright was
served with sweetened pears. In the early modern period of the late 17th
century the Catholic scriptures were replaced by Prostestant Puritanism with
the restoration of Charles II in the 1660, food became about taste and style,
than balancing humors. More people are embracing city life, and new work
patterns. Main meals was eaten in 11 in the morning to 2 in the afternoon.
Samuel Pepys, a civil servant in London, and a gourmand. Venison was the priced meat at the age. To
eat deer you have to had connections. Pepys mentioned it in his diary 76 times.
Ivan Day brought Pepys dish into life. 17th century people weren’t
fussy eaters. Ian Day prepared a pasty, coffins or pies. Intricate designs were
all the rage in Pepys time, there’s even a design for a venison pasty. In
London not people had many ovens so they sent it out to be baked. People used
salt and sodium nitrite (responsible for the red color of meat) to preserved
meat. Garlic is not a common ingredient in the 17th century.Wealthier
people would accompany their meals with salad to show off imported ingredients
from afar. In Pepys time men can rise
to patronage. The ever fashionable Jane Austen talked about lunch in her novel
Pride and Prejudice, were the 2 sisters purchased food for luncheon. Chef
Wright sat down in a luncheon table setting, consisting of salad, slice of cucumbers and melons,
dressing made of pounded hardboiled eggs (salad cream), devilled peasant legs,
cold meat, and her favorite sefton of herrings (cooked in butter) invented by
the Earl of Sefton he developed the recipe for his wife. Put that in a wafer
biscuit, and you put cayenne pepper. Luncheon wasn’t just for high-society
working people also had to eat at midday.
Victorian street food kept the poor
from starving. Some portable foods have designed for specific jobs like the
Cornish pasty had a crimped handle which was discarded because the miners hand
might contain poisonous arsenic from tins. England’s greatest gift to
convenience food is the sandwich. Lord John Montagu the 4th Earl of
Sandwich, by calling for a slice of beef between two slices of bread, either he
is gambling or working. A sandwich is a great invention, portable, and you can
eat it very quickly. The sandwich was
invented in the 18th century. Life for the Victorians were speeding up they
have convenience food which includes potted foods as Chef Wright mentioned it
is a fashionable food, and they also have rail travel. Early on street the
realization dawned that his was affecting the health of the nation.
Those who volunteered for world
war in the 1900’s were rejected because they were too short or were
malnourished. The British empire might collapse something had to be done! In
1906, the government responded with a new law,
provision of school meal was done for the poorest children, for a proper
balanced lunch. It changed the lives of millions. That a substantial meal by
the middle of the day paid dividends. By the time World War II came, people
were stronger. The onset of war triggered another government invention in the
British diet happened and that was rationing. Rationing was introduced in
January 1940. Many basic items were in very short supplies and the cues lasted
for hours. Just acquiring the ingredients of a basic lunch was far more a
challenge. Chef Wright visited her former school, Woldinghom school. She will
deliver a ration book recipes to a class of girls. They will eat what they made
after. Most girls didn’t like the taste,
but some think it was okay. Chef Wright gave a message to the students to just
think back of their grandmother’s probably who were in certains situations like
these during the wartime, we should gave the cooks a round of applause. Many
people struggled to eat during the war. Rationing ended in 1954. A new import
from overseas came not an ingredient but an idea which was the supermarket also
appeared at this time, making a lunch a much easier proposition. Sliced bread first
appeared in the 1920’s, the baking process in the early 1960’s devised by
Britains gave bread a longer shelf life, and so fuelled the rise of the sandwich. Could the 4th Earl of Sandwich
realized the titanic culinary legacy he left today. One if four us buy a
sandwich for lunch everyday.
The popular selling line of
sandwiches today are anything that has prawn or chicken. There are even awards
for the most inventive sandwich fillings. His best-seller is the turkey
sandwich. He designed the world most exotic sandwich. Tom Allen has won of the
top prizes. Tom’s award winning sandwich is a clever take on the beef
Wellington. Lunch is not just about refuelling but it’s about a relax communal
experience centering on a well-cooked meal. Lunch is an important tradition
because it reminds us of our old customs. Chef Wright urges everyone to take
time and enjoy lunch just like our medieval ancestors.
Viscount Charles ‘Turnip’
Townshend he invented the four course rotation system (division of fields into
4 different produce). In 1752 root crops has become a part of the British’s
stable diet. They ate turnips and carrots. The Georgian (18th
century) dinner (high watermark of British dining) reflected a more intimated
dining, and there’s a boom in decorative centrepieces, fashionable
candlesticks, and the Pineapple fruit was considered a decorative emblem, a
thousand pounds extravagance. If you are rich you also have a chandelier a word
first recorded in England in the 1730’s. By this time the ladies were also
allowed to seat down gentleman.
By the end of the 18th
century, beef was regularly included on the dinner menu. Dinner was moved
forward to 8pm because of the invention of gas lamps. Also at this time, Mrs. Isabella Beeton’s
book of cookery and household management
came out. Victorians were obsessed with dinner parties. They even serve
a calf’s head! The Georgian era was an age of age when it came to dinner, the
service of food was evolving too.
In the later times, Fanny
Cradock, she’s famous for her cooking with performance. She gave women
confidence to cook. Chef Wright also visited a ready meal manufacturing company
and she sampled some food there, according to her surprise she remarked that it
was good, and is palatable.
Chef Wright ends with a beautiful reminder for all of us.
We now live in convenience cooking. Before dinner is associated with fashion,
to show off grand clothes, embrace theatrical display. The one thing that we haven’t
lost, is the common desire to enjoy good company with food. . In that it
doesn’t really matter what we’re eating because every generation has its own
priorities. It’s the company that matters. In the past people devote a huge amount of
time to their meals. Nowadays we’re usually too busy, and that is reflected in
what, and how we eat.
But meals are not just about
food. They’re social events that connects us all, and I thoroughly disapprove
of families who fail to eat together. Our meals have always been movable. But
the irony is that we can eat better now than at almost any other time in the
past if we care to. I urge everyone to reconnect with the tradition of fresh
local produce, take time to cook and eat together. Then we’ll be getting the
best out of our daily meals.
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I dedicated this post of mine to
Chef Clarissa Dickson Wright, in honor of her works, she contributed a lot to the British history in Culinary. I really learned a lot from
this documentary, and it made me appreciate the British Culinary History
even more.
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