Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fanny Cradock, a lodestar in the foul-tasting odyssey of bad British food

theparisreview.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 51 posts

Re: Fanny Cradock, a lodestar in the foul-tasting odyssey of bad British food

#41

Post by Symbiote »

dingaling wrote: post #32
bfuclusion wrote: post #2

In jest I like to describe British native food as follows: When people are starving, they're willing to eat things they otherwise would throw away. Unfortunately the British decided the PREFERRED those things, and attempt to make every dish taste accordingly.

Not every function has to be a programmatic masterpiece Not every meal has to be a culinary experience Meat, potatoes and two veg might be mocked as unadventurous and bland but it's a decent balance and gets the job done.

> Meat, potatoes and two veg might be mocked as unadventurous and bland but it's a decent balance and gets the job done.

I think you have neatly summarized the usual criticisms of British food.

Much of it is easily improved, but many British people (including my parents) don't bother with even the smallest improvements to the most basic recipe. Just garnishing with some fresh herbs would be a good start, or adding some herbs or spices during cooking. Then we can talk about sauces.

Re: Fanny Cradock, a lodestar in the foul-tasting odyssey of bad British food

#42

Post by 082349872349872 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #30
pjc50 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The combination of the class system and the war rationing absolutely wrecked British cooking in the 20th century, but from about the 1980s the middle class became interested in improving this, largely by importing cuisine. Nowadays the top end is a bit self-parodic with too much emphasis on weird visual presentation, culminating in Heston Blumenthal, but the middle rank of available restaurants are great.

> The combination of the class system and the war rationing absolutely wrecked British cooking in the 20th century I don’t think this explains it. Being the first place in the world to get processed food has more to do with it. Britain’s been importing a lot of calories for a long time and canning and other flavor destroying methods of preservation really didn’t help. Rationing is unlikely to be relevant. British foo…

Canning was yet another cultural triumph of the military-industrial complex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning#History_and_developmen...

Re: Fanny Cradock, a lodestar in the foul-tasting odyssey of bad British food

#43

Post by 082349872349872 »

olivermarks wrote: post #7

https://youtu.be/kunuXThp51E 1975 Fanny cooks Turkey. Cradock was a lodestar of how weird the British class system and the BBC were in the 70's, along with BBC A list characters like Jimmy Savile. They had little to do with real life and were extremely weird. British cuisine these days is amazing, all the old cliches no longer apply IMO

Home and garden! In case anyone else needs a chaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1K4v5gPz_s

Any specific recommendations for contemporary british cuisine?

Re: Fanny Cradock, a lodestar in the foul-tasting odyssey of bad British food

#44

Post by 082349872349872 »

Symbiote wrote: post #39
lowbloodsugar wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roast potatoes, cooked in the fat of the roast, till they are crispy. Carrots and onions roasted to caramel. Juicy meat that falls off the bone. Pork crackling! I don't think every family in Britain automatically has a good chef. Now if we're going to talk about leaks. Ewww. And boiled brussel sprouts. FML.

> Now if we're going to talk about leaks. That is British houses. Different topic! But I do like leeks in cheese sauce. Basic recipe: https://www.recipesmadeeasy.co.uk/leeks-in-cheese-sauce/#gal... Fancy version: https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/cheese-recipes/cheesy-le... I would cook them in the oven with everything else though, and only very slightly brown the top of the cheese. They then make a good contrast t…

... and here I'd thought the reference was to british automobiles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24489860

(On houses, there is a line in The Xenophobe's Guide to the Swiss about how swiss abhor drafts. According to my father, this observation, albeit made in a book nominally about the swiss, says much more about the british.)

Re: Fanny Cradock, a lodestar in the foul-tasting odyssey of bad British food

#45

Post by 082349872349872 »

kyuudou wrote: post #5

olde joke: Heaven: The police are British The cooks are French The engineers are German The administrators are Swiss The lovers are Italian Hell: The police are German The cooks are British The engineers are Italian The administrators are French The lovers are Swiss

The trope is not only olde, but positively archaic. Plutarch says Stratonicus mockingly proposed a law that:

The conductors of mysteries and processions be Athenian

The organisers of games be Eleians

The whipping-boys, should any hellene misbehave, be Spartan

Re: Fanny Cradock, a lodestar in the foul-tasting odyssey of bad British food

#46

Post by el_oni »

082349872349872 wrote: post #43
olivermarks wrote: post #7

https://youtu.be/kunuXThp51E 1975 Fanny cooks Turkey. Cradock was a lodestar of how weird the British class system and the BBC were in the 70's, along with BBC A list characters like Jimmy Savile. They had little to do with real life and were extremely weird. British cuisine these days is amazing, all the old cliches no longer apply IMO

Home and garden! In case anyone else needs a chaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1K4v5gPz_s Any specific recommendations for contemporary british cuisine?

Tommy Banks, "Roots" in York. Very refined British cuisine, using local produce.

Thinking back a few years, "The fat duck" was voted as one of the best restaurants in the world.

Check out the great British menu on the BBC too. Chefs from around Britain on top of their game, usually making refined versions of British classics

Re: Fanny Cradock, a lodestar in the foul-tasting odyssey of bad British food

#47

Post by bryanrasmussen »

rudiv wrote: post #19
w0mbat wrote: post #14

As most people know, British food has improved a million times since the days of Fanny Craddock on black & white TV. British people know about food now, watch endless foodie shows, they can cook, and the UK supermarkets have great ingredients. The influx of people from what was the empire helped open everybody's horizons. You get the weird situation where the Indian food in Britain is the best in the world, for examp…

> the Indian food in Britain is the best in the world Got about a billion people here who'd like to disagree. In fact, of all the crimes against humanity the British visited on India, I think that assertion might just be the worst.

Perhaps we should just go out for an English then https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huSP7PtctC4

Re: Fanny Cradock, a lodestar in the foul-tasting odyssey of bad British food

#48

Post by mmmBacon »

barry-cotter wrote: post #30
pjc50 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The combination of the class system and the war rationing absolutely wrecked British cooking in the 20th century, but from about the 1980s the middle class became interested in improving this, largely by importing cuisine. Nowadays the top end is a bit self-parodic with too much emphasis on weird visual presentation, culminating in Heston Blumenthal, but the middle rank of available restaurants are great.

> The combination of the class system and the war rationing absolutely wrecked British cooking in the 20th century I don’t think this explains it. Being the first place in the world to get processed food has more to do with it. Britain’s been importing a lot of calories for a long time and canning and other flavor destroying methods of preservation really didn’t help. Rationing is unlikely to be relevant. British foo…

The impact of the Great Depression on food in the US cannot be overstated. The Depression followed by the war was a relatively long period of time and for an entire generation the food of this time became what they were used to. Additionally prior to WW2 the middle class was fairly limited and most people in the US didn’t have lots of money. Industrialized food was simply less expensive and kept for long periods of time.

I had plenty of great food in the 70’s and 80’s just not usually in restaurants.

I’d imagine in the U.K., they probably didn’t have enough farmland to feed everybody given a rapidly growing population during the industrialization period. If you have to import food, it had to be preserved and again you acquire a taste for poor quality food because that’s what’s available.

Italy, France, and Spain did not industrialize anywhere near the scale that existed in Britain or the US.

Re: Fanny Cradock, a lodestar in the foul-tasting odyssey of bad British food

#49

Post by barry-cotter »

mmmBacon wrote: post #48
barry-cotter wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The combination of the class system and the war rationing absolutely wrecked British cooking in the 20th century I don’t think this explains it. Being the first place in the world to get processed food has more to do with it. Britain’s been importing a lot of calories for a long time and canning and other flavor destroying methods of preservation really didn’t help. Rationing is unlikely to be relevant. British foo…

The impact of the Great Depression on food in the US cannot be overstated. The Depression followed by the war was a relatively long period of time and for an entire generation the food of this time became what they were used to. Additionally prior to WW2 the middle class was fairly limited and most people in the US didn’t have lots of money. Industrialized food was simply less expensive and kept for long periods of t…

> Italy, France, and Spain did not industrialize anywhere near the scale that existed in Britain or the US.

???

Northern Italy has been among the richest, most developed parts the world non-stop since the renaissance. They didn’t achieve that without industrializing. France was so rich that it conquered half of Europe after 1800 and then it got richer with the Industrial Revolution. Paris was one of the biggest cities in the world for over 200 years by any standard. No history of the West, or the world would make any sense without France since the Revolution. You do not manage to acquire imperial possessions on every continent without industrializing early and fast. Spain, sure. It, Portugal and Southern Italy did not do as well as most of the rest of Western Europe.

Re: Fanny Cradock, a lodestar in the foul-tasting odyssey of bad British food

#50

Post by simonblack »

pjc50 wrote: post #22
w0mbat wrote: post #14

As most people know, British food has improved a million times since the days of Fanny Craddock on black & white TV. British people know about food now, watch endless foodie shows, they can cook, and the UK supermarkets have great ingredients. The influx of people from what was the empire helped open everybody's horizons. You get the weird situation where the Indian food in Britain is the best in the world, for examp…

Indeed. The combination of the class system and the war rationing absolutely wrecked British cooking in the 20th century, but from about the 1980s the middle class became interested in improving this, largely by importing cuisine. Nowadays the top end is a bit self-parodic with too much emphasis on weird visual presentation, culminating in Heston Blumenthal, but the middle rank of available restaurants are great.

When you read about the British with their rationing bringing about a near-starvation diet during WW2, and then reading what delicacies and their amounts that Churchill was eating and drinking at the same time, it's a wonder that he wasn't lynched from the nearest lamp-post when the British public found out.

https://www.splendidtable.org/story/2013/02/22/winston-churc...

Post reply on HN