A relish for rubbish: why the British have a unique appetite for utter junk
By WILLIAM SITWELL
2nd August 2007
Daily Mail
What is it about the British and food? Why, when our capital city has more Michelin- starred restaurants than ever, and farmers' markets are spreading like voracious fungi all across the country, do we still relish so many of the world's worst culinary calamities?
From bright yellow slices of processed cheese slapped on cardboard burgers, to canned fruit salad adorned by a swirl of cream from a tin, the crimes committed daily in Britain's kitchens are surely unmatched anywhere else on the planet.
We all know someone who has a fatal weakness for those scampi fries which make your breath smell for a week.
Why do the British still relish so many of the world's worst culinary calamities?
Or for the pork scratchings that contain your annual fat and salt allowance for the entire year in a tiny bag.
Given half the chance, how many of us wouldn't guzzle the soggy Scotch egg we see on a service station shelf?
This week, leading chefs, food writers and historians helped me compile a list of the 100 Greatest Moments in Food to celebrate the 100th issue of Waitrose Food Illustrated, the magazine I edit.
Pork scratchings: a pub snack to eat with your pint of beer
The triumphs ranged from man's harnessing of fire to the invention of the sandwich in the 1760s, after the Earl of Sandwich asked during a game of cards for his dinner to be put in two slices of bread so he could play with one hand and eat with the other.
But, alongside these glories, the experts also drew up their list of history's food disasters, kicking off with the invention of margarine in 1869, by a chemist, after Napoleon III offered a prize to anyone who could discover a cheaper and longer lasting alternative to butter.
And it is this hall of infamy - food history's equivalents of the Charge of the Light Brigade or Black Monday - that has caught everyone's attention.
What is extraordinary is that we actually seem proud of our culinary car crashes. We wear them like badges of honour.
Among today's metropolitan elite, you might be considered a social outcast unless you can talk food miles and serve ethnically sourced organic fairtrade coffee, but the reality is we Britons are actually much happier to dwell on the shortcomings of our cuisine.
This obsession goes far deeper than being simply a topic of fun conversation - a laugh about how filthy a meal was recently, how disastrous a friend's attempt was at baking a soufflee.
The truth is that our food misfortunes work as vital signposts in both our public and personal history.
If shared, our individual - and very possibly scarring - experiences of banana-flavoured Angel Delight bring us together and bond us in a way that a perfectly crisponthe- outside self-saucing chocolate fondant just can't.
What topics of mutual interest - other than the weather - can bind us together as we chat to strangers in a pub? If you can't talk about what you saw on telly last night, at least you can reminisce about Spam.
It's amazing that since the name Spam was introduced in 1937, to boost the fortunes of Hormel's Spiced Ham, it has gone on to sell more than six billion tins.
And what better way to bring a fractured nation together than to marvel together over the extraordinary success of such a heinous invention?
My own life can be chaptered by my own terrible food experiences. Take my loathing of cabbage. Even the word sends a shiver down my spine, as I recall the times it sat on the edge of my plate, the dull goody-two-shoes accompaniment to the meat.
My mother said I couldn't have pudding unless I ate my cabbage. Well, since nothing was going to force me to taste, let alone consume, the devil's vegetable, I had to find somewhere to put it.
This meant waiting until people had left the room and then either bunging it out the window, or chucking it on top of the corner cupboard.
Yet thinking back to my schoolboy allergy to cabbage does not fill me with horror. Rather, it brings back vividly the memory.
The more pungent the smells, the more events are stamped into our memory. Those recollections might be just a fading blur if they weren't coloured by things like salad cream.
There is, I am afraid, no doubt that Britain has such a terrible food history because we actually love eating appalling things.
You may laugh at them, but you probably secretly relish the thought of Bird's Eye Potato Waffles, Ginsters Southern Chicken Wrap, Cadbury's CrËme Egg McFlurries, Pot Noodles or anything served at an Aberdeen Steakhouse.
Funnily enough, you won't find an Aberdeen Steakhouse in Aberdeen.
What other nation on earth could conceive of inventing turkey ham and then manage to sell it - only to have the people screaming for more?
Personally, I'd like to see criminal charges brought against the person who invented coleslaw. I know I don't like cabbage, but doing that to it is beyond cruel. Yet the British queue up for it.
Today, all of us can with a little effort seek out a bakery for a decent loaf. We can even make our own. But who doesn't actually hark after a good cheap white loaf?
Indeed, when a Tesco opened recently in London's Holland Park (one of the country's most exclusive areas), it put advertising hoardings in the neighbourhood telling people about its cheap white bread.
I'm told that rich locals shop there in disguise, placing their ready-meals and bread into bags from posh nearby delis with names like La Fromagerie.
So deep is the vein of awful British food that this November will see the publication of Sausage In A Basket: The Great British Book Of How Not To Eat.
Can you imagine a 325-page book being published in any other country that celebrated how awful your national cuisine was? The food of Eastern Europe may be dire - and I speak with experience, having last week suffered the "cuisine" of Romania for six hungry days - but at least they don't pretend otherwise.
The book's author, Martin Lampen, taps into a rich vein of culinary catastrophe from stirin- sauces to Coronation Chicken.
The latter, of course, is everyone's summer buffet nightmare. It's incredible to think that the dish was invented by Constance Spry to "celebrate" the Queen's coronation in 1953.
With its patronising mildcurry-powder nod to our former colonies and alarming colour, it would long have been consigned to the recipe dustbin were it not for our lack of good taste.
These days, common sense should dictate that all a successful restaurateur need do is as little as possible to the finest ingredients.
But that doesn't stop ambitious chefs from attempting to go a mile further than what should be considered sensible.
Perhaps they just need reminding of how low they need aspire. The British have no taste and I have the evidence: statistically it's known that one in 12 bottles of wine is corked, so how come only one in 100 gets sent back?
We're not fussy and the sooner those preparing our food realise that we have a deep-seated love for the likes of Pepperami, margarine and all-day breakfasts-in-a-tin, the better.
• William Sitwell is editor of Waitrose Food Illustrated.
dailymail.co.uk
By WILLIAM SITWELL
2nd August 2007
Daily Mail
What is it about the British and food? Why, when our capital city has more Michelin- starred restaurants than ever, and farmers' markets are spreading like voracious fungi all across the country, do we still relish so many of the world's worst culinary calamities?
From bright yellow slices of processed cheese slapped on cardboard burgers, to canned fruit salad adorned by a swirl of cream from a tin, the crimes committed daily in Britain's kitchens are surely unmatched anywhere else on the planet.
We all know someone who has a fatal weakness for those scampi fries which make your breath smell for a week.
Why do the British still relish so many of the world's worst culinary calamities?
Or for the pork scratchings that contain your annual fat and salt allowance for the entire year in a tiny bag.
Given half the chance, how many of us wouldn't guzzle the soggy Scotch egg we see on a service station shelf?
This week, leading chefs, food writers and historians helped me compile a list of the 100 Greatest Moments in Food to celebrate the 100th issue of Waitrose Food Illustrated, the magazine I edit.
Pork scratchings: a pub snack to eat with your pint of beer
The triumphs ranged from man's harnessing of fire to the invention of the sandwich in the 1760s, after the Earl of Sandwich asked during a game of cards for his dinner to be put in two slices of bread so he could play with one hand and eat with the other.
But, alongside these glories, the experts also drew up their list of history's food disasters, kicking off with the invention of margarine in 1869, by a chemist, after Napoleon III offered a prize to anyone who could discover a cheaper and longer lasting alternative to butter.
And it is this hall of infamy - food history's equivalents of the Charge of the Light Brigade or Black Monday - that has caught everyone's attention.
What is extraordinary is that we actually seem proud of our culinary car crashes. We wear them like badges of honour.
Among today's metropolitan elite, you might be considered a social outcast unless you can talk food miles and serve ethnically sourced organic fairtrade coffee, but the reality is we Britons are actually much happier to dwell on the shortcomings of our cuisine.
This obsession goes far deeper than being simply a topic of fun conversation - a laugh about how filthy a meal was recently, how disastrous a friend's attempt was at baking a soufflee.
The truth is that our food misfortunes work as vital signposts in both our public and personal history.
If shared, our individual - and very possibly scarring - experiences of banana-flavoured Angel Delight bring us together and bond us in a way that a perfectly crisponthe- outside self-saucing chocolate fondant just can't.
What topics of mutual interest - other than the weather - can bind us together as we chat to strangers in a pub? If you can't talk about what you saw on telly last night, at least you can reminisce about Spam.
It's amazing that since the name Spam was introduced in 1937, to boost the fortunes of Hormel's Spiced Ham, it has gone on to sell more than six billion tins.
And what better way to bring a fractured nation together than to marvel together over the extraordinary success of such a heinous invention?
My own life can be chaptered by my own terrible food experiences. Take my loathing of cabbage. Even the word sends a shiver down my spine, as I recall the times it sat on the edge of my plate, the dull goody-two-shoes accompaniment to the meat.
My mother said I couldn't have pudding unless I ate my cabbage. Well, since nothing was going to force me to taste, let alone consume, the devil's vegetable, I had to find somewhere to put it.
This meant waiting until people had left the room and then either bunging it out the window, or chucking it on top of the corner cupboard.
Yet thinking back to my schoolboy allergy to cabbage does not fill me with horror. Rather, it brings back vividly the memory.
The more pungent the smells, the more events are stamped into our memory. Those recollections might be just a fading blur if they weren't coloured by things like salad cream.
There is, I am afraid, no doubt that Britain has such a terrible food history because we actually love eating appalling things.
You may laugh at them, but you probably secretly relish the thought of Bird's Eye Potato Waffles, Ginsters Southern Chicken Wrap, Cadbury's CrËme Egg McFlurries, Pot Noodles or anything served at an Aberdeen Steakhouse.
Funnily enough, you won't find an Aberdeen Steakhouse in Aberdeen.
What other nation on earth could conceive of inventing turkey ham and then manage to sell it - only to have the people screaming for more?
Personally, I'd like to see criminal charges brought against the person who invented coleslaw. I know I don't like cabbage, but doing that to it is beyond cruel. Yet the British queue up for it.
Today, all of us can with a little effort seek out a bakery for a decent loaf. We can even make our own. But who doesn't actually hark after a good cheap white loaf?
Indeed, when a Tesco opened recently in London's Holland Park (one of the country's most exclusive areas), it put advertising hoardings in the neighbourhood telling people about its cheap white bread.
I'm told that rich locals shop there in disguise, placing their ready-meals and bread into bags from posh nearby delis with names like La Fromagerie.
So deep is the vein of awful British food that this November will see the publication of Sausage In A Basket: The Great British Book Of How Not To Eat.
Can you imagine a 325-page book being published in any other country that celebrated how awful your national cuisine was? The food of Eastern Europe may be dire - and I speak with experience, having last week suffered the "cuisine" of Romania for six hungry days - but at least they don't pretend otherwise.
The book's author, Martin Lampen, taps into a rich vein of culinary catastrophe from stirin- sauces to Coronation Chicken.
The latter, of course, is everyone's summer buffet nightmare. It's incredible to think that the dish was invented by Constance Spry to "celebrate" the Queen's coronation in 1953.
With its patronising mildcurry-powder nod to our former colonies and alarming colour, it would long have been consigned to the recipe dustbin were it not for our lack of good taste.
These days, common sense should dictate that all a successful restaurateur need do is as little as possible to the finest ingredients.
But that doesn't stop ambitious chefs from attempting to go a mile further than what should be considered sensible.
Perhaps they just need reminding of how low they need aspire. The British have no taste and I have the evidence: statistically it's known that one in 12 bottles of wine is corked, so how come only one in 100 gets sent back?
We're not fussy and the sooner those preparing our food realise that we have a deep-seated love for the likes of Pepperami, margarine and all-day breakfasts-in-a-tin, the better.
• William Sitwell is editor of Waitrose Food Illustrated.
dailymail.co.uk