best food from Orwell's "In Defense of English Cooking"

There are no vegetables anywhere in this list (justifiably, the English worked out how to cook vegetables well maybe 10 years ago?)

two unexpected things i learnt from the actual essay: the french do not cook with mint (is this true?) and packets of crisps were already sold in pubs in the 1940s

the "english cuisine is of course terrible" cliche held full sway roughly from the early 1800s to the 1970s, and while you do still encounter it (often from americans, lol), it's false enough now that it's hard to remember that it was once a truism with a very strong and long-lasting element of truth to it (british cookbooks between mrs beeton in the 1840s and elizabeth david in the 1950s are some weird shit let me tell you) (and elizabeth david was all about continental non-UK cuisine)

ppl usually explain this via the industrial revolution (though that's also what caused fish and chips so eh?)

fish and chips shd probably be on this list?

potatoes are on this list and were proven the best vegetable only very recently in a poll on ilxor dot com

all the recipes i can find for marrow jam use a fvckton of ginger, which i guess takes care of the taste (marrow tastes of nothing, it's just ultra-diluted courgette)

until that post i just assumed it was bone marrow for some reason haha

noted paleo diet enthusiast george orwell

he was all about those lean gains

Voted haggis because, even though it's not English, it is the yummiest thing on that list.

Missing, apart from the already mentioned fish & chips and black pudding: Sunday roast! Or at least Yorkshire pudding if we're going ingredient-only. Porridge not really a contender tastewise but it does help a whole lot to regulate the stomach, should get an honourable mention.

In re: the cliché of English food being terrible, I think that while there is no doubt lots of great English meals you guys do have a weird talent for coming up with stuff that would strike most other European nations at least as non-euclidean, i.e. jellied eels, bangers & chips w/ curry sauce.

haggis is really nice yes

love haggis

this list reminded me how much i hate everything about mint sauce

I have found myself in plenty of places around the country * through work and I struggle to find decent restaurants that would serve English food.

One pub in Sheffield so far is all I have.

* not counting London

dude chips w/ curry sauce is the most belgian thing ever

xp hand & flowers my man

i once went to a wedding where the proud essex dad had front-loaded the buffet with his favourite food to honour his beloved daughter's best-ever day, so that table after table groaned with jellied eel piled high

i quite like jellied eel -- and don't see it often -- so i dug in but by the end of the evening nearly no one else had touched it :(

at the risk of stereotyping myself, i think i'm probably gonna have to go haggis on this one

this list reminded me how much i hate everything about mint sauce

otm - mint is the flavour of toothpaste, keep it the fuck away from my food

feeling very attacked right now

Hand & flowers is Michelin star but what I mean is nice places where you could get something good and British for about 15-20 quid no fuss.

Real lack of places.

Lol if Haggis wins

haggis won't win. the american shift will all roll in and vote for stilton or something

BLOOD SAUSAGE

never forget

this thread replicating an argument I had with my son the other day i.e. mint flavour does not belong in food

but I don't consider fresh mint to count so mint sauce and mojitos are fine by me

course, with both of those the alcohol is doing most of the heavy lifting

Missing, apart from the already mentioned fish & chips and black pudding: Sunday roast!

Potatoes roasted under the joint, though. Btw if you didn't vote for that, you've never done it (and you should).

haggis won't win. the american shift will all roll in and vote for stilton or something

stilton is rad tbf

There's alcohol in mint sauce??

can't wait for the us muffins vs uk muffins arguments to kick off

xp

vinegar is just spoiled alcohol innit?

Dublin prawns surely more contentious than Haggis, which has been alleged to have been invented in England

xp yeah I guess, doesn't get you pissed though iirc

I do usually further dilute mint sauce with more vinegar come to think of it.

my fam did that, could make one jar go a year easily

so you don't like mint sauce at all, you just like vinegar with a dash of toothpaste?

next you'll be telling me you only enjoy homeopathic servings of mushy peas

a: you need mint in tabbouli (w/parsley to counteract the spear-carrying element of the mint)
b: a good quick tomato salad is tomatoes and shredded mint leaves in red wine vinaigrette
c: there's an excellent soup, spinach, leek and mint with lamb DUMPLINGS! which i live off in the winter
d: the first book i reached down went to "leaves in liver tea" a bit fast for my liking, but it turns out "liver tea" is a old-fashioned polite way of saying "diuretic": the tea contains no liver it acts on the liver (beneficially) and contains mint leaves, dandelion leaves, rosemary, blessed thistle (broken) and wormwood lol lol lol
e: pliny sez students shd wear a sprig of mint to classes to "exhilarate their minds"
f: after eights so i win the thread

in conclusion mint is good not bad

If you think mint sauce tastes like toothpaste, you have either never eaten mint sauce or never brushed your teeth

unsure why i capitalised DUMPLINGS! in that list however they are very nice

wrong, it's actually both xp

and elizabeth david was all about continental non-UK cuisine

Only her early books: her later work was very much to do with the history of regional British cookery

hahaha the DUMPLINGS! autocorrect abides

TS mint sauce vs mint jelly

e: pliny sez students shd wear a sprig of mint to classes to "exhilarate their minds"

and where are pliny and his students now i ask u

ts ky sauce vs ky jelly

they are under the sod iirc

xp

exactly

WHERE IS YOUR MINT GOD NOW, PLINY

what I mean is nice places where you could get something good and British for about 15-20 quid no fuss.

Real lack of places.

This is the thing - the quality of casual food in France and Italy is just so much better than it is here. You can go to a French inn largely frequented by lorry drivers and the food will be great. A lot of places serving what might be described as 'British' food in that price bracket are just lazy.

There's loads of good stuff in London and other big cities obviously and a lot of country/village pubs still bother. It's medium-sized towns and cities where you really see the problem, like why is the food in Oxford so shit?

so the only foods that clear BG's bar are (i) nectar and (ii) ambrosia

the latter reminds me that THIS is not in the only-the-english list:

https://www.englishteastore.com/media/catalog/product/cache/6/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/F/P/FPUD_AMB_CRCE_-00_Ambrosia-Creamed-Rice-Pudding-15oz-425g.jpg

dude chips w/ curry sauce is the most belgian thing ever

I have never heard of this but the Belgians are culturally English according to that one Jonathan Meades doc so the point stands.

the roast is the quintessential english meal & all the best, truly decadent 3-types-of-stuffing&all-the-sauces, christmas-dinner-level roasts I've had have been home cooked.

I'm voting sausages though. I've had some great sausages around europe but my favourites have been in england

never cared for any of the desserts though, they're just for old people

a *lot* of lunchtime lifting in small towns is done by eg highish-quality chains like pret or else supermarket packaged snacks*, which maybe cuts into the share that good casual caffs and restaurants wd need to stay solvent?

*to be eaten back at yr desk so you look as if yr working thru lunch?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Voted Yorkshire pudding

Crumpets came close but it had to be the roasties

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

these are good, defensible results imo

Roasties was robbed

imagosplaining on-point -- and to think we once mainly committed cultural imperialism on others

called it

oh, as you said haha

stilton's great! tho not in my top 5 blue cheeses tbf

i like it too but it didn't win bcz i voted for it

(i didn't vote, polls are bad and you should feel bad)

the phrase "top 5 blues cheese" reminds me there was a soft blue cheese invented by yuppie marketing men in the 80s -- forget name, it began with L i think -- which my dad luuuuurved, we were all v sad for him when it went off the market bcz no one else did

lymeswold!!

^^^top brainstormed name there

(it was basically mild cambozola except none more brexit) (dad was not brexit, probably)

i remember Lymeswold, pretty sure it became some sort of Private Eye meme at some point

I Remember Lymeswold is the title of my forthcoming bodice-ripper set in 18th century Bridlington btw

a young orphaned herring gutter is forced to choose between local smuggler and ruffian Blue Vinnie and the mysterious Italian shipwreck survivor Giuseppe Cambozola

I agree that the best food we can hope for from the English is some moldy cheese

lol america sonning europe on cheese

ts: head vs string

God I love bread sauce

since moving to canada i don't think i've ever had a good roast potato. you never get nice crispy ones, i think they don't bother with the parboiling or something

It's not like they'd be short on duck and goose fat, so what gives?

My idea of good roast potatoes prep is to boil them from cold for 3 mins from when the water starts bubbling, rough them up good in a colander with some flour. Then they are ready for roasting. It so easy!

boil them from cold for 3 mins from when the water starts bubbling

bit puzzled at the "from cold" combined with the "from when the water starts bubbling" here? what's the thing that's cold -- the raw potatoes?

the water!

Like there is a difference than if you just throw them straight into boiling water for 3 mins, which would make poorer roast potatoes, quite possibly.

"in defense of (bad) English posting (and cooking)"

so how is the water cold if it is also bubbling? do you use sparkling water?

(i think i am being dense but i can't work out how)

Put potatoes in cold salted water, bring to rolling boil, then 3 minutes later you drain. Just like making a three-minute boiled egg!

thanks, Suzy!

You just xp'ed me where I had described "rolling boil" as a "lively boil" then deleted it, thankfully!

lol ok i do understand it now and i was totally being dense, for some reason the two "froms" formulation just threw me

(i think i might still be quite tired post-op) (also argumentative)