The Chip Fiends have been doing their homework: reading up on the history and meanings of fish and chips in Professor Panikos Panayi's book 'Fish and Chips, a History'.
This is an accessible book that anyone interested in the origin and meanings of fish and chips would enjoy reading - whether they are a fish fryer themselves or a consumer.
The book is split into the following chapters: Origins, Evolution, Britishness, Ethnicity, and The Meanings of Fish and Chips.
The historical chapter is peppered with gems such as the quote from an edition of the Morning Post in 1865 that says London Dockers ate their fried fish (amongst other foods) 'washed down with a dark, repulsive-looking fluid which [was] called beer' (Panayi, 2014: 35).
Other quotes like the one from 1885 referring to the 'savoury odour that comes on the snowy wings of steam from the open door' simply leave the reader salivating (Panayi, 2014: 37).
Panayi finds that there is no firm evidence on the national origins of fish and chips. Fried potatoes appear to have emerged at similar times in Britain, France and Belgium. The practice of frying fish as a means of preservation and eating it cold has Jewish origins. Panayi argues that combining the fried potato and the fried fish as a complete meal seems to have occurred in London in the late Victorian period when it became an inexpensive source of nourishment for the working class.
Developments in transport meant that the frying of fresh fish stopped being a method of preservation, therefore enabling consumers to eat the fish served hot.
It seems as though fish and chips have long been established as Britain's 'national dish' but Panayi reveals that this phenomenon occurred in the postwar period. The emergence of curry houses and Chinese takeaways meant that fish and chips had to find an identity in order to survive through product differentiation.
The 'Britishness' of fish and chips is therefore mainly a construct by food writers, the fish frying trade and the British press (Panayi, 2014: 140). This is especially evident in chip shops that have opened abroad (in America and the Mediterranean) and which use Britishness to give the food a cultural identity.
If you love fish and chips as much as we do, we heartily recommend that you read this book!
Panayi, Panikos, 2014, Fish and Chips, a History, London: Reaktion Books
Comments
Post a Comment