• Home
    • About
      • Home
      • About the Site
      • The Authors
      • Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
      • Email me
    • Reviews
      • List of All Reviews
      • Best of Portland by year
        • Reader Survey: Best of Portland Food 2017
        • Best of Portland 2015
      • Steakhouse Roundup
        • Steakhouse Reviews Introduction
        • El Gaucho Steakhouse
        • Morton’s Steakhouse
        • Ringside Steakhouse
        • Ruth’s Chris
        • Steakhouse – Results
      • Product/Business Reviews
        • Retailer Reviews
        • Product Reviews
    • Topics
      • Food Writing
        • Alcohol Related
          • Beer
          • Wine
          • Spirits
        • April Fools Stories For Portland
        • Contests and Competition
        • Food Memories
        • Travel Writing
      • Authors / Book Reviews
      • Cheese information
      • Interviews: Honest dialog with people in the Portland food industry
      • Portland Food and Restaurant News and Discussion
      • Recipes
    • Guides
      • Guide to Portland coffee
        • Portland Coffee Guide
        • A Map of our favorite Portland coffeehouses
        • Reader Survey: Best Coffeehouses in Portland 2017
      • Guide to Local Wine Shops
      • Guide to Portland Bakeries
      • Guide to Portland Distilleries
      • Guide to Portland’s Beer Shops
    Portland Food and Drink

    Portland Food and Drink

    Restaurant News and Information For Portland Oregon Area Restaurants and Bars

    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Send me email!

    NPR: Why British Food Was So Bad for So Long

    By PDX Food Dude Last Update March 16, 2014 1 Comment

    NPR has an interesting article about British food. The question raised, is why food was such a big deal in Edwardian England, yet it was less than stellar in later years. If you’ve watched Downton Abbey (of course I didn’t… cough), then you saw the amount of work that went into cooking at each meal.

    …the food itself? Turns out, it was “incredibly sophisticated,” says Ivan Day, one of Britain’s preeminent food historians. “The upper-middle classes and the gentry and the aristocracy — they saw food as a way of impressing people,” Day tells The Salt.

    What happened? World War I. As you may have seen in Downton Abbey, many of the skilled servants went off to fight in the war, but never came back.

    Without the skilled labor required to make them, complex, time-consuming dishes dropped off the menu. Cooks had long relied on imports of produce and other ingredients to supplement limited domestic varieties, Day says, but the war disrupted these shipments. And those fancy ice creams? Banned — sugar and cream were both among the food stuffs being rationed.

     

     

    Related

    Category: Portland Food and Restaurant News and Discussion.

    Previous Post: « Chef Ben Bettinger Leaving Beaker & Flask
    Next Post: Portland Parks Looking for New Tenant for Violetta Space »

    Reader Interactions

    Comments

    1. TJ Sybilrud says

      February 24, 2012 at 3:25 pm

      For my whole life I have heard that English cuisine was no good. I grew with a father who was the head of gourmet food buying for Bloomingdales in Manhattan NYC and he would always talk about how it was so very bland and way too basic. I had a chance to visit England and could not find a decent English restaurant to eat at, so I gave up and ventured to the other ethnic restaurants. It is a mystery to me

      Reply

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

    © 2023 · PortlandFoodandDrink.com • See Terms of Service and Privacy Policy