The idea that British food is bad arrives from two points. One is that after WW2 British cuisine was limited due to continual rationing into the 50's which caused a lot of food to only be edible and filling instead of rich and delicious and this arguably still leaves a mark on British food to this day.
The primary one though is that traditional British cuisine even before WW2 really relied on simple flavors to start with. Spices are used in a limited fashion especially when compared to say Italian, Mexican, indian, Chinese or south east Asian foods.
Your not going to find extremely complex flavors in British food. Hence why some people see it as bland. Meat pies, fried fish, various baked goods, blood sausage are all foods with fairly one note flavors. What it is is hearty. British food fills you up, tastes perfectly fine and gives you energy.
Now for me personally, I love food like that. As an American, our version of this would be roast beef with mash potatoes and gravy, warm buns with butter and green beans or broccoli. I have a place I go to local to me that makes that exact meal and I could eat that every day and I absolutely love complex foods like Indian, Italian or Chinese.
I like to call that kind of food lizard brain food. Because your inner animal loves it. It's nothing but fat, carbs and protein and we are hardwired to desire that stuff. Regardless of if its complex or not our bodies crave it.
I find a lot of the people who really beat on British food who have actually tried it (let's be honest it's mostly a meme at this point, most people raggining on it have never actually had it) are usually from those spice heavy culinary cultures who are use to complex flavored foods which honestly is just a cultural thing. The foods fine, it's just not like your food.
Traditional British food can have a lot of complex flavours, but the issue is that most people don’t use the ones we have. Exotic spices became the norm and the wealth of British herbs in particular started falling out of favour. Wild onion, garlic, and Angelica, not to mention the famous parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. These were a lot of the basis of British cooking but with the decline of the herb garden and easier access to different spices from elsewhere they aren’t given a lot of the spotlight they deserve
They didn't just fall out of favor. In the song parsely used to be "savory" as in "summer savory." No idea what the hell that is? I didn't know either. Capitalism, urbanization, and industrialization robbed British people of many of the spices they used for well over a thousand years. It wasn't just herb gardens - most people who mostly lived in the countryside would eat many of the "weeds" that would grow in their fields and these sorts of plants formed the basis of British seasoning. Now most of us don't have land, most of those who do own very little, and foraging on land you don't own is illegal since Thatcher starved out the striking coal miners.
In some ways the world wars started to bring back the old spices as people foraged out of desperation. But I think a lot of people just simply didn't season when they couldn't acquire what they were used to. The great depression didn't help. And then their kids who grew up in that environment didn't have the knowledge passed down and found strong seasonings overwhelming anyway.
I agree though we should bring the old spices back. I season with sage, rosemary, and thyme nearly every time I cook red meat. (I genuinely keep forgetting to try to get savoury.) It really is just a recipe it's absolutely very nice. Also oregano. I also like paprika and garlic powder and of course black pepper so I quite enjoy foreign spices, but there's nothing at all wrong with the traditional ones. Everything but the paprika I mentioned makes a fantastic sunday roast with some salt.
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u/Ralife55 22d ago
The idea that British food is bad arrives from two points. One is that after WW2 British cuisine was limited due to continual rationing into the 50's which caused a lot of food to only be edible and filling instead of rich and delicious and this arguably still leaves a mark on British food to this day.
The primary one though is that traditional British cuisine even before WW2 really relied on simple flavors to start with. Spices are used in a limited fashion especially when compared to say Italian, Mexican, indian, Chinese or south east Asian foods.
Your not going to find extremely complex flavors in British food. Hence why some people see it as bland. Meat pies, fried fish, various baked goods, blood sausage are all foods with fairly one note flavors. What it is is hearty. British food fills you up, tastes perfectly fine and gives you energy.
Now for me personally, I love food like that. As an American, our version of this would be roast beef with mash potatoes and gravy, warm buns with butter and green beans or broccoli. I have a place I go to local to me that makes that exact meal and I could eat that every day and I absolutely love complex foods like Indian, Italian or Chinese.
I like to call that kind of food lizard brain food. Because your inner animal loves it. It's nothing but fat, carbs and protein and we are hardwired to desire that stuff. Regardless of if its complex or not our bodies crave it.
I find a lot of the people who really beat on British food who have actually tried it (let's be honest it's mostly a meme at this point, most people raggining on it have never actually had it) are usually from those spice heavy culinary cultures who are use to complex flavored foods which honestly is just a cultural thing. The foods fine, it's just not like your food.