Unit 15. The food connection

BRIT-CHOMP:Here, Brits have a problem with pure pleasure. They feel guilty about wallowing in food, like continental types; one should eat to live, and not the other way around. The traditional British diet reflects this sense of gastronomic utilitarianism. It runs to cold pork pie, sausages, offal (heart, tripe, braised kidney), zillions of things on toast (meat paste / cheese / baked beans / spaghetti) and zillions of permutations on the general theme of mince (i.e., shepherd’s pie). The best thing that can be said for this sort of Brit-fare is that, in the short term, it keeps you alive. In the long term, it probably kills you.

Though Brits are slowly becoming more diet-and-health conscious (bearing in mind their natural resistance to change) many food favourites bear more relation to solid fuel than nutrition as we know it. It must be remembered that middle-aged Brits grew up in the post-war years, with their legacy of basic food shortages and ration-books. An egg was a luxury, many fruits and vegetables scarce. But there were heavy syrup puddings, and cakes made with lard. Mum needed two strong men and a fork-lift truck to remove baked goods from the oven.

Eating in Britain: Things that confuse American tourists

1. Why do Brits like snacks that combine two starches?

(a) If you’ve got spaghetti, do you really need the toast?

(b) What’s a ‘chip-butty’? Is it fatal?

2. Why is British pie-crust removed from the oven while the dough is still raw and white?

3. Is bread-with-dripping a form of mass suicide which involves voluntarily clogging your own arteries?

4. Is cockaleekie the curse of the permissive society?

5. What is Marmite? What are Ribena and Lucozade? What is their connection with the British Way of Life and the War Effort?

6. Why are they nuts about Weetabix ... the only breakfast cereal designed to disintegrate into mush on first contact with milk?

7. Why do they call cakes ‘gateau’? Why is the icing on a birthday-gateau hard and thick enough to prevent nuclear melt-down?

8. Sandwich, huh? I see the bread. But where’s the filling?

9. What have they got against water?

10. What have they got against ice-cubes?

11. Is that why the beer is warm?

12. What this town needs is a good coffee shop.

13. What is a ‘stone’? How many do I weigh? How about after I eat the pork pie?

Most Brits are not very experimental about food. They won’t touch anything that they haven’t eaten since earliest childhood ... (‘if Mum didn’t serve it, I don’t want it’). This leaves them with a very limited range, which includes toast soldiers and orange squash. There are those who consider spaghetti bolognese and pizza exotic ... ‘foreign muck’. Years spent at the mercy of Mum and / or a succession of school cooks have made them wary of consuming plant-life (i.e., all fruit and veg.) in its natural state. When confronted with a raw vegetable, they will revert to earliest training and boil it for hours to make sure it is dead.

AMERI-SLURP: Most Yanks are heavily into food. Up to the elbows, if possible. If they like something, they don’t so much eat it, as merge with it. Basically, their tastes are simple: hamburgers, pizza, ice cream with hot fudge. Huge, mouth-watering hunks of cheesecake topped with whole strawberries. Also – things that remind them of the range and variety of America’s ethnic heritage: kolbasi, strudel, lasagne, gefilte fish, pastrami. Together if possible.

As in interior decor, Yanks are open-minded about combinations. After all, they invented the ‘combination sandwich’. (Where else can you get a corned beef, pastrami and breast of turkey combo, with melted cheese, cole slaw and Russian dressing on rye?) Nevertheless, they draw the line at anything too authentic. Culinary tradition is diverse, but carefully adapted to American tastes ... Yanks have a way of sanitizing food. Wiener schnitzel may sell in a German restaurant, but not the blood sausage. Ditto kebabs in a Greek establishment, but not the whole baby octopus. Bland, processed ‘American’ cheese is popular, but the powerful French varieties virtually unknown. Though America produces some of the world’s best wines, more consumers prefer Coke.

Yanks like to be shielded from the realities of eating – and cooking. This is, after all, the nation that invented the pop-up toaster waffle and frozen orange juice. Butcher shops and supermarkets are careful never to let a customer see a whole animal – nothing to associate their selections with life on the hoof. (Most Americans think that meat grows in polystyrene and cling-film). They tamper with liquor to mix the world’s best cocktails and with grain to produce the most revolting breakfast cereals. The world has Yanks to thank for sugar-and-honey-coated Cocoa Puffs.