Jim Comer
"...beef in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was popularly regarded as the very basis of English liberties."
To anyone who studies the foodways of the English-speaking peoples in both the Old and New Worlds in our own time, a notable feature will surely be the almost universal consumption of beef. "Real Food for Real People", ads proclaim, as if vegetarians were somehow subhuman. A bumper sticker exhorts us to "Promote Beef-Run Over A Chicken". Save among vegetarians, health faddists, and recent immigrants, the consumption of beef is a constant. Beef is the main component of the 'national' dishes of the US, the UK, and the Republic of Ireland-the roast beef of English national lore, the Irish Stew, and the American hamburger. The ethnic dishes of other nations are revised to include beef to make them more palatable to American consumers-beef is introduced into Chinese spring rolls and Greek gyros. Roast beef is the favorite of John Bull, the "beer quaffing, beef eating, fine figure of a man" who is the British realm personified, as well as among Americans of English descent. To supply the tables of these nations has required the transformation of whole nations, inside and outside the former British Empire, but the diets of the English-speakers have been transformed as well. In particular, the English have come to accept roast beef as a staple when a few centuries past it was a rarity, and its consumption discouraged. The American attitude toward beef can be summarized by the words of anthropologist Marvin Harris-"Holy Beef, USA". Beef has become not only a food, but an instrument of nationalist sentiment. This paper will examine the change in beef consumption habits of the English and the canonization of beef, especially roast beef, as the meat staple of the English people. The fondness for beef, amounting almost to worship of it, is a relatively new phenomenon in history. Sumerian and Egyptian records show little beef consumption, though both civilizations kept milk cattle. Their grass-fed herds were likely ill suited to use as meat animals. The Sumerians preferred mutton and the Egyptians duck and fish. The reaction of Caesar's legionaries to the beef of Gaulish cattle was indigestion, probably due once again to the stringy nature of these beasts.1 The recipe book of Apicius, a compendium of Roman banquet dishes, list one recipe for beef as opposed to twenty-seven for pork, which the Romans preferred. There are more recipes for flamingo than for beef. The bewildering array of dishes(sow's udders, sea urchins, and dormice) in Apicius bear witness to the thoroughly catholic taste of the Romans, but beef was not a favorite, it would seem. His recipe for beef seems strange in its choices of flavorings: the meat was to be cooked in stock with pepper, asafetida(a strong-smelling herb), olive oil, and then quinces were added, though Apicius allowed onions or beans to be used. This beef was boiled, not roasted. Beef was unpopular and merited no special treatment.2 This may have had an economic basis. Of the meat animals available to Rome, the beef converted grass and other fodder to meat at a thirty-to-one ratio, while the hog was more efficient at a ration of five to one. The Romans, so desperate for grain that they conquered Egypt to obtain it, would have had little to spare to fatten cattle. Swine, on the other hand, ate garbage, and could be kept in small spaces. Rome's fondness for swine shocked the Jews.3 The Middle East was poor pig-keeping terrain, but adequate for cattle and goats, whose meat Apicius also relished, giving three recipes for goat and ten for kid and lamb. For the migration period we know little of the eating habits of Europe. The large number of cattle kept by early Irish and Germanic peoples suggests at least some beef eating, as their surviving tales record. The caldrons found at Sutton Hoo and Gundestrup in Denmark suggest that the meat consumption of the Germanic peoples was of boiled meat like that of the Romans. Legends attest to this: the Irish knights of the Red Branch ate their meat boiled, while the eleventh-century Welsh poem "The Plunder of Hell" records a caldron which would boil no meat for a coward or oath breaker! Charles Green says: ...as the Irish legends tell, a chief's importance depended in part on the number of cauldrons he owned. For the life of the hall they were a necessity, as in them was seethed the flesh which formed the staple dishes at the daily feast; a great king would need to have many in his possession to feed his numerous retainers.4 Recipe rolls from fourteenth-century England and France reflect refinements of such cooking. Supposedly Arabic in origin, the food of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries resembled nothing so much as curry. Mixtures of spices serve to season hashes of boiled meat, dyed with saffron and shaped into saints or elephants to enliven an age that had no television. Food served alchemical purposes and was cooked and eaten in accordance with medicinal doctrines, in which essential qualities, called humors, had to be balanced. For example, cinnamon, containing hot and dry humors, would help a man suffering from flu, seen as an excess of cold and moist humors. This idea resulted in strange concoctions indeed. The French recipe roll attributed to the fourteenth-century court cook Taillevent refuses to roast beef. Taillevent boiled his beef, thinking that beef's dry humors needed to be dampened. Roasting would only dry the meat further and produce an unhealthy or even dangerous dish. When the revival of Greek and Roman tastes brought about the end of the spicy, sugared, saffroned dishes of the Gothic era, the fondness for boiled beef continued.6 A poet of the Tudor period held that: The rural laborers of the eighteenth century, however, got little meat, and what they ate was often so tough or old that it had to be boiled. Boiled beef filled the tables of the schools and institutions of the eighteenth century and went with the convicts of the First Fleet to become the national dish of Australia. Called bully beef, this fare was heartily disliked by the visitors to Australia, who complained of its indigestibility, perhaps with good reason.8 Modern Australians wince at the mention of bully-beef, a national embarrassment. One recently said that the stuff was passed out to those who had no choice in eating it.9 The American colonists were less inclined to beef-eating, as the forest of the East Coast was less suitable to cattle-ranching than the parklike southeast of Australia. The Americans instead returned to the old fondness for pork, fattening their hogs on acorns and even rattlesnakes and curing them to make the justly famed Virginia ham. William Byrd thought that their consumption of vast amounts of pork had made his fellow Virginians "extremely hoggish in their temper, and prone to Grunt rather than Speak."10 Another wit suggested that the young United States be renamed the "Republic of Porkdom", and Cincinnati "Porkopolis".11 With the opening of the western range, however, it became possible for large numbers of cattle to be raised for meat, instead of milk. The England of the early modern period is our principal concern. Daniel Defoe, in his "tour" through the island of Great Britain, saw much of the agricultural base for this beef-eating. Near Southwold, He also described cattle being fattened in Yarmouth, Kent, (where the cattle weighted eighty stone a quarter when killed in Smithfield), and the Rhetford Marshes. This trade received much encouragement from the work of eighteenth-century gentleman farmers such as Bakewell and Turnip Townsend. These gentlemen used their lordship over vast tracts of land to practice enclosure and the fattening of stock on root crops, turnips, beets and potatoes being favorites. Their efforts produced dramatic results. The average weight of beeves killed at Smithfield was 370 pounds in 1710 and 800 pounds in 1795. In the same period, calves went from 50 pounds to 148 pounds. lambs from 18 to 50 lbs, and sheep from 28 pounds to 80 pounds.13 The growing of fodder crops in enclosed fields changed the English countryside: William Cobbett, in his famous rural rides, was constantly remarking on the turnips and cattle he saw, and the quantity of each in the country.14 But long before the cowboys became folk icons, the food they provided had become indispensable to the English diet. The writers of the eighteenth century provide ample evidence. One form it takes are the statements of foreigners such as Per Kalm, a Scandinavian: Scandinavia at this period was not so far removed from the hunger of the Gothic period, when bread made of pine bark and straw appeared on the table and the stock were fed seaweed. Often the runty cattle of Norway had to be carried from the barn to the field like babies, too weak to walk. The Scandinavians' diet was based on fish and milk products. But England ate meat, as this 1747 broadsheet ballad explains: This song found approval as a 'national' anthem as late as 1795. Roast beef was a mainstay of Dr. Johnson's subterranean chop-houses and the a la mode beef shops of a later day. Defoe remarked on the huge numbers of cattle he saw all over Britain being fattened for the market, often for London. The dish was linked to national icons. A print, likely a beer advertisement, from the 1740s shows St. George holding a spear impaling a sirloin, with the following beneath: Stingo is a kind of beer much drunk as late as the time of Victoria, and mentioned in Disraeli's speeches.18 As is typical of nationalist sentiments, the eating of beef was(and is) linked not only to the positive affirmation of being English, but also to the assault on all things foreign, especially French. Significantly, the Gothic emphasis on multiple spices faded in favor of serving roast beef with English mustard, a condiment from the northern temperate zone. Even the bottled sauces, such as ketchup and Worcestershire sauce, were lightly spiced; ketchup's flavor comes from its constituent walnuts or tomatoes and Worcestershire sauce's from anchovy and fermented soy. The link between the Tudors(seen as English, though they were not) and eighteenth-century roast beef is especially amusing in the light of surviving menus from the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, featuring the gastronomic menagerie of the early recipe rolls(crane, porpoise, and peacock are fairly common). The implication that dietary deficiency was also moral and political deficiency, seen in the ballad above, is restated in the works of Robert Campbell: The idea that English cooking presented food naturally, while other foodways disguised or altered what they served, is alive even today in the innumerable repetitions of the canard that medieval or Asian cooks drowned their food in spices to disguise its rottenness, an idea possible only to someone who has never smelled or tasted rotten meat. Beef became associated with manliness. It was banned from the diets of invalids, and pregnant women were fed on chicken and fish, soft and delicate dishes devoid of blood. Beef was also sometimes forbidden to children or schoolboys lest their carnal appetites be aroused. It was even suspected of causing 'self-abuse' in boys!20 The belief that Englishmen had always eaten roast beef was a good example of an invented tradition. Defined as behaviors repeated to inculcate morals or sentiments or produce group cohesion, such traditions were common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Two good examples were the invention of the Scottish kilt, later thought to be a costume dating to the Iron Age, and the invention by demented Welsh nationalists not only of the "Druid" society that continues to practice its silly rituals in the England of Elizabeth II, but of the Welsh national costume and literature, including thousands of words unknown to the Welsh of previous centuries. In like manner, the English insisted not only that roast beef was English but that it had always been.21 This can best be understood as a part of nationalism. A movement sweeping across Europe in the nineteenth century, nationalism insisted that the nations of Europe rediscover their national character in language, culture, and daily life. Some nations went so far as to invent languages for their people as well as national costumes never seen before. The most obscure locations and locutions were paraded as uniquely the product of the national culture. In England this experience was less necessary. England had well-defined boundaries, a national tongue, and so little folk culture that even Cecil Sharp could do nothing with it. English nationalism manifested itself mostly as imperialism, as a half-hearted glorification of the Germanic past and as folkloric oddities reminiscent of Blake's Druids. In as much as roots were sought, they were found in the Anglo-Saxon era. The moldering manuscripts of the monks became sources for legal and social precedent. The Saxon witangemot saw much press as a predecessor of Parliament, and the Normans were lambasted as invaders. But the Tudors were obvious targets for the eighteenth century. The Stuarts were the favorites of newly kilted Scotland, and the Hanoverians were Germans, lacking even the English language. The Plantagenets, who had been French speakers anyway, were by this time associated with popery, gothic architecture, and the "Middle Ages". In the "lost Eden" of the Anglo-Saxon period, then, they looked for the source of English liberties, when "Great and Immortal King Alfred" had "created the cornerstones of [the English] constitution- trial by jury, manhood suffrage, and annual parliaments". The 'free Englishman' was a unique creature, father to the equally free and equally mythical free American. He had many rights, the chiefest being 'security of property', the bulwark of liberal free enterprise. He was free as well from absolutism, arbitrary arrest, and was entitled to jury trial, equality before the law, and limited freedom of thought, speech, and the press. These elements, sometimes seen as relics of the ancient and unwritten English constitution, became vital to the concept that the English had of themselves as a people. It is interesting that although most people in Victorian England could not vote, they nevertheless thought of themselves as participants in the political process through the public rituals of election day and the public nature of voting before the introduction of the secret ballot. They were, after all, English.22 Nationalism required symbols, and England had many. Some, such as the royal arms, were linked directly to the monarch, but others came to represent political factions, as the elephant and donkey do in America. Of these, a Tory example was John Bull, whose "cup ran over with beer, roast beef, and plum pudding". He had been created in the eighteenth century, but took on his familar shape in the period of the wars with France. Thus a national symbol defined itself once again by what it opposed. Later, John Bull, "tolerant, frank, and hearty", was contrasted with a typified Yankee, Brother Jonathan, in a series of satires. He was "Honest John Bull", "Not afraid of his betters when mellow/ Since betters he knows he must have". Against him stood the teetotalers, vegetarian eccentrics, and moralizing religious sorts who, the Tory party implied, didn't know how to party. Amusingly, the butchers of England were Tory to a man. He came through the years to stand for the English nation as a whole, but especially for the Tory faction. Conservatives by modern standards, the Tories favored a free market, a British Empire, and above all a comfortable English lifestyle. They disliked reform and looked back in the nineteenth century to a rural "golden age, when England was truly Protestant and John Bull enjoyed roast beef, beer, and plum pudding every night". Theirs was the party of "beer, Britain, and bonhomie". Strong in rural Kent and other farm areas, they became the party of tea and cakes, and of roast beef. In 1839, a public celebration of Field Day in the town of Oldham regaled the Tories with "unlimited supplies of roast beef, plum pudding, beer, and bonhomie". The opposition Foxites jeered at the Tories for faith in the "enlightening power of beer" and their "British Constitution as based upon a beer-barrel". But not all could afford such plenty, and some would claim that the expansion of capitalism made things worse.23 The early industrial period saw sweeping social changes, and diet was a primary concern. Views of the available evidence vary widely, but contemporaries saw the time as one of great human suffering. It is ironic that the people who had been forced from their land by enclosures designed to abet the raising of sheep and cattle were also the ones who according to contemporaries were deprived of meat and other necessities by the enclosures. Although historians debate this, statistics show that less meat was available at Smithfield Market than had previously been the case. In country villages the situation was bad. In Pudsey in the West Riding, the common workers ate "oatcake, brown bread, porridge pudding, skimmed milk, potatoes, and homebrewed beer..." were the staples, with meat and white bread as rarities. Beef was the favorite meat but was eaten only at great feasts. In Bolton, another rural village, they ate oatmeal, oatcake, potatoes, onion porridge(?), blue(skim) milk, treacle, ale, and only rarely tea and bacon. Cheese and eggs were not mentioned. The workers of Manchester ate the same diet.24 The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm and his counterpart R. M. Hartwell, associated with the Economic History Review, argue the British standard of living in a series of articles. The matter remains unsettled in what both sides agree is a lack of new evidence, but some important facts remain. It seems that while the Smithfield market butchers did not produce an increase in the number of carcasses slaughtered that was commensurate with the increase in population, that meat was served in workhouses in the period 1800-1850. Likely, it was the boiled beef mentioned above. Upward of 10,000 cows lived in the greater London are alone in 1837, and Hartwell goes so far as to say that "in the first half of the nineteenth century the English working classes came to expect meat as part of their normal diet."25 Labor movements protested the developments. It is by no means certain that all of their complaints had a basis in fact, but their willingness to suffer death or exile to Australia for their convictions certainly argues that they were troubled by something more than boredom. Food riots filled the streets, an early one in 1788 was specifically over meat. Protestors said: Even as late as the 1830s the Marxist notion of 'immiseration' has some support from documents of the period. A labor agitator of the period alludes to beef and pudding as treats, hardly common on a worker's table. The owners were not above throwing a festival for their workers once in a while. In 1850 Rochdale's sheriff gave the townspeople a roast ox and "a superfluity of beer and plum-pudding". In 1857 a worker of Ashton remarked on the public dinners given as "treats" by the employers, saying "Our master think to put us off with a plate of beef and a glass of beer, but he[sic] will find himself mistaken." This man saw through Tory spectacle and would rather have legal rights than beef and pudding.27 But by the 1860s a writer on the working class said that a 'Sunday Joint' was the usual fare in the home of a married factory worker, whose home boasted a gas oven and a fireplace. Though poorer men might have their wives take dinner to a bakeshop to cook, as Roman poor had done, the wife in this family cooked at home. They might breakfast on 'shrimps' or watercress, but loved roast beef: A commentary on the rural world that these industrial developments produced may be found in the writings of William Cobbett, who rode round England from 1821 to 1832 and published his reflections some time later. Described as a radical conservative, this man offered a vision of a lost rural utopia in his endless ruminations on Quakers and turnips. He saw the changes made both by enclosure and rural depopulation, which he abhorred, and by the agricultural reformers, which he liked. He remarks on the influence of Jethro Tull in his comments on "Tullian" wheat and lucerne, and expresses English national sentiment: He looked to the Saxon and Norman kings for English liberty, and bemoaned the factory system, taxation, and Prime Minister Canning: He delighted in seeing "a pig at almost every laborer's house.", reminiscent of twelfth century days "when there were no poor wretches in England, called paupers, when there were no poor-rates; when every labouring man was clothed in good woollen cloth; and when all had a plenty of meat and bread and beer." He evoked John Bull to attack monetary reforms and would rather have been a lifetime tenant "under monks and Templars, than rack-renters under duchesses", who "were real yeomen" in this "once happy country", the "nature and character of the people of Old England" being a good one. Of course, he also had a good deal to say about the market in Warminster: In Cobbett the love of Old England and the love of roast beef were one. We could ask for no more perfect evidence of the marriage of the two ideas. His paean to beef exemplifies the exalted status that the dish had come to occupy in the England of Victoria, a position which it still holds. Of course, the other nations of Europe also underwent changes in their eating habits. France saw the origins in the years between Louis XIV and Napoleon of the style of cooking and eating called cuisine. The overconsumption of previous years, commented on by Fernand Braudel, vanished in favor of a balanced meal of the freshest foods to be had, with salad to clear the palate and coffee and liquor afterward.30 The royal chef Carême was called the originator of cuisine, but its most famous proponent was Brillat-Savarin, author of The Physiology of Taste. In this work, witty and pleasant even in translation, Brillat-Savarin sets down the history and principles of proper treatment of food. In his underemphasis on meat and his insistence on proper seasoning, the use of vegetables, and the balancing of the meal, his work is literally centuries ahead of the butter-drenched worlds of Mrs. Beeton and other English Victorians. The modern cooking style of all Europe is essentially French, the result of the alteration of the Gothic mishmashes into the main courses, soups, and desserts of cuisine. In this way, even so "English" a meal as roast beef followed by pudding was French in the succession of courses and the progression from the main course to what followed, as well as in the serving of food devoid of the Oriental melange of spices found in the old recipe rolls. But hostility to anything foreign was and had to be a feature of nationalism. Roast beef continued to define the Englishman in England and the colonies deep into the twentieth century: the author can recall his mother, the descendent of English immigrants to the Chesapeake, serving roast beef every Sunday dinner. Roast beef also defines the Orangemen in Ulster, as narrated by an Ulsterwoman living in America.31 In 1897, the manufacturers of Keen's Mustard, a popular condiment, said that roast beef was the favorite dish of the English throughout their empire, preferably seasoned with Keen's Mustard, of course.32 Alice is introduced to plum pudding in Lewis Carroll's famous book, and Victorian writers refer to roast beef as the epitome of English cooking. Argentine and Australian beef arriving on the new container ships meant that the dish was more affordable. As late as 1870 only 10% of English beef was imported, but by 1914 the percentage had risen to 40%. This was mostly due to the advances in refrigeration made in the period. In 1866 Britain imported 15,044,181 pounds' worth of beef, but in 1911, 97,050,856 pounds worth. However, the number of cows increased only a little, going from 3, 307,034 to 5,173,976.33 Coal and gas stoves provided city flat-dwellers with a means of cooking beef, though food writers such as Karen Hess down to our own day continue to extol the open spit as the only way to roast meat. But not all of Europe concurred with the English ideal: in Vienna the best beef continued to be boiled. Restaurants under the Empire offered twenty-four different boiled beef specialties, made from the meat of beeves fattened on sugar-beet mash. A customer would enter and nod to the waiter, who would know without a word the favorite beef dish of his regular customer.34 In England and English America the boiled beef of Taillevent and the ancient kings had descended to the level of a boarding-house staple. The Rombauer family, authors of The Joy of Cooking, continued until the 1960s in successive editions of their cookbook to present boiled beef recipes. Though few nowadays would care for boiled beef, it is worthwhile to notice its prestige through century after century.35 But food was not only something to eat. It was also a political statement. Hannah Glasse, who under the rubric "A Lady" published a cookbook in 1747, gave her readers a French style of cooking made as English as possible. She avers: But Mrs. Glasse is no admirer of French cooking, as she is at pains to point out: Another chapter features disgusting and preposterous recipes supposed to be French, in one of which an entire ham is used to make a sauce for another dish. And therefore, despite a cookbook that contains 26 'ragoos', and endless other dishes with French names, Mrs. Glasse's cookbook is as English as its very first recipe-roast beef. The housewives and gentlemen whose names indicate their subscription to her volume could eat the meals she outlined with aplomb-it was merely good English cooking!36 A 1757 ballad, sequel to the one above, lamented the "French" dishes: The consumption of beef has continued to the present, spreading to include such nations as Japan, where Buddhism and population pressure had combined to make the eating of beef not merely unhealthy but unlawful. But after the Meiji restoration the Japanese began to eat beef and today consume a fair amount. Consumption of pork and lamb cannot begin to compete in America or even England, and despite fads for everything from wheatgrass to sushi the only real challenger to beef is factory-raised chicken. The battery system of raising chickens has resulted in the transformation of chicken from a rare Sunday treat to the daily staple of the Nineties.38 The figure of John Bull, the national symbol of England, is literally the result of centuries of beef-eating. And Uncle Sam, despite his thinness, is apparently not averse to beef now and then, either. With the rise of vegetarianism and the animal rights movement, consumption of red meat may drop, as consumption of chicken has skyrocketed. But it seems likely that beef will continue to be a favorite for generations to come. We can only hope that greater awareness of our food history and food heritage will go hand in hand with greater health awareness to make the future a place better both to think and to eat.
"Old England's Roast Beef"
Julia Twigg, food historian
As a result of the attentions paid to the natural temperament of foodstuffs, a recipe for roast beef is simply not found in the Viandier: beef is considered to be the driest of all domestic meats, and roasting to be the most drying of all cooking processes. Such a preparation of such a meat would risk either cholera or melancholy in the person consuming it.5
Our English nature cannot live by Roots,
by water, herbs, or such beggary baggage,
that may well serve for vile outlandish Coots;
give English men meat after their usage,
Beef, Mutton, Veal, to cheer their courage.7
This part of England is also remarkable for being the first where the feeding and fattening of cattle, both sheep as well as black cattle with turnips, was first practiced in England, which is made a very great part of the improvement of their lands to this day; and from which the practice is spread over much of the east and south parts of England, to the great enriching of the farmers, and increase of fat cattle.12
Roast meat is the Englishman's delice and principal dish. The English roasts are particularly remarkable for two things. I. All English meat, whether it is of ox, calf, sheep, or swine, has a fatness and delicious taste, either because of the excellent pasture...or for some other reason. 2. The English men understand almost better than any other people the art of properly roasting a joint, which also is not to be wondered at; because the art of cooking as practiced by most Englishmen does not extend much beyond roast beef and plum pudding.15
When Mighty Roast Beef was the Englishman's Food,
It ennobled our veins, and enriched our Blood,
Our Soldiers were brave, and our Courtiers were good,
On the Roast Beef of Old England,
And Old English Roast Beef!
But since we have learned from all-conquering France,
To eat their Ragouts as well as to dance,
We are fed up with nothing but vain complaisance,
Oh the Roast Beef of Old England,
And Old English Roast Beef!
Our Fathers of old were robust, stout and strong,
And kept open House with good cheer all Day long,
Which made their plump Tenants rejoice in this song.
Oh the Roast Beef of Old England,
And Old English Roast Beef!
But now we are dwindled, to what shall I name,
A sneaking poor Race, half begotten-and tame,
Who sully those Honours that once shone in Fame,
Oh the Roast Beef of Old England,
And Old English Roast Beef!
When good Queen Elizabeth was on the Throne,
E'er Coffee, or Tea and such Slip Slops were known,
The World was in terror, if e'er she did frown.
Oh the Roast Beef of Old England,
And Old English Roast Beef!
Oh then they had stomachs to eat and to fight,
And when Wrongs were a-cooking to do themselves right!
But now we're a-I cou'd[?]-but good Night.
Oh the Roast Beef of Old England,
And Old English Roast Beef!16
Behold your Saint with Gorgeous English Fare,
Noble Sirloin, Rich Pudding, and Strong Beer.
For you my Hearts of Oak, for your Regale,
Here's good Old English Stingo Mild and Stale.17
In the Days of good Queen Elizabeth, when mighty Roast Beef was the Englishman's Food; our Cookery was plain and simple as our Manners; it was not then a Science or Mistery, and required no conjuration to please the Palates of our greatest Men. But we have of late Years refined ourselves out of that simple Taste, and conformed our Palates to Meats and Drinks dressed after the French Fashion: The natural Taste of Fish or Flesh is become nauseous to our fashionable Stomach; we abhor that any thing should appear at our Tables in its native Properties; all the Earth, from both the Poles, the most distant and different Climates, must be ransacked for Spices, Pickles, and Sauces, not to relish, but to disguise our Food.19
Tyrants. Ye fill the poor with dread
and take away his right.
And raise the price of meat and bread...26
...and Mrs Jones wont turn her back at anyone in turning out a plain dinner, though she says it as shouldn't. None of your baker's dinners for her, thank you; meat burnt to a cinder outside and red raw inside; and pies with scorched crusts and uncooked insides...28
...and you see here, as in Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire, and, indeed, almost every part of England, that most interesting of all objects, that which is such an honour to England, and that which distinguishes it from the rest of the world, namely, those neatly kept and productive little gardens round the labourer's houses, which are seldome ornamented with more or less of flowers. We have only to look at these to know what sort of people English laborers are: these gardens are the answer to the Malthuses and the Scarletts.
...we should find, that the people of these villages were as free in the days of William Rufus as are the people of the present day, and that vassalage, only under another name, exists now as completely as it existed then.
Not only the finest veal and lamb that I had ever seen in my life, but so exceedingly beautiful, that I could hardly believe my eyes. I am a great connoisseur in joints of meat; a great judge, if five-and-thirty years can give sound judgement. I verily believe that I have bought and roasted more whole sirloins of beef than any man in England; I know all about the matter; a very great visitor of Newgate Market; in short; though a little eater, I am a very great provider. 29
I have indeed given some of my Dishes French Names to distinguish them, because they are known by those Names: And where there is great Variety of Dishes and a large Table to cover, so there must be Variety of Names for them; and it matters not whether they be call'd by a French, Dutch, or English Name, so they are good, and done with as little Expence as the Dish will allow of.
I have heard of a Cook that used six Pounds of Butter to fry twelve Eggs; when every Body knows, that understands Cooking, that Half a Pound is full enough, or more than need be used: But then it would not be French. So much is the blind Folly of this Age, that they would rather be impos'd upon by a French Booby, then give Encouragement to a good English Cook!
Notes
The Conveyor Belt
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