Traditional British Foods

Traditional British Foods - Part 2

Peter Bradford

Part 1 is here

Choice of Foods

Traditionally, a far simpler range of Grain, Bean, Vegetable & Fruit types - but far greater variety of each type. Our image of the past can easily be one of a severe lack of variety of food. However, consider these points:

1. If you don't know of any wider choice, you don't miss it.
2. Actually far greater variety within the limited range than nowadays.

There were up to 80 apple varieties by C17th, then serious plant breeding began, so there were several hundred by early C19th. This probably gave people a far richer selection than we have today with our standardised exotic imports. Although tropical and mediterranean herbs and spices were generally unavailable to the average person in middle ages, (e.g, no pepper yet), Tusser (C16th) notes there were 42 native herbs available for culinary use, in addition to over 300 medicinals )

• Farming and gardening records show that cereals took up most acreage, followed not far behind by large amounts of peas and beans. Several varieties of each.
• Vegetables centred mainly around the Onion Family and the Cabbage Family.
• Apples were main fruits, also pears, Walnuts and Hazels as other tree fruits and nuts.
• Ales were main drinks -many kinds and of many varying strengths.
• Livestock were normally restricted to more marginal land. (except sheep).

Remember, there were no Nightshades - Potatoes, Tomatoes, Aubergines, Peppers-until C16th-18th. No Tea or Coffee until C18th-19th, No Sugar and Spices widely available until Cl8th-19th. No Maize, Rice and Millet common until C17th-18th. This was standard for the whole of Europe. It may seem hard to imagine Italian or Greek cuisine without Tomatoes, Aubergines, Peppers and Coffee! Fish and Chips was a late Cl9th invention, the idea of fried fish came from France, and the Chips from Belgium. Let's look at each food group in closer detail.

Choice of Foods

Originally Emmer and Einkorn (types of primitive wheat). Also both Hulled and Naked Barleys.

Rye and Oats arrived as seeds of cultivation in pre-Roman Iron Age.

Right up until C19th mixed grains crops were very common: Maslin (wheat and rye) Dredge Corn -(Barley and Oats) Right up until the Industrial Revolution Barley was the predominant grain. It had the widest range of uses -

1. Malting for Ale.
2. Grinding and Baking for Breads
3. Cooking whole or ground for Pottage.

Next most widely used was Oats - good for both humans and livestock. Each of the four cereal grains found their ideal home.

• Wheat - likes rich heavy lowland soils (the best soils - only for wealthy!)
• Barley - versatile, can survive in poor upland soils.
• Oats - versatile, loves poor soils in the damp North and West.
• Rye - likes sandy dry soils of East.

Two basic traditional ways of using grains:

1. Grinding and baking on hearthstone or in oven.
2. Pot Boiling - Pottage (Porridge), whole or ground, maybe soaked first.

Baking

Originally mixed grains (and some “weed” seed) coarsely ground. Flat batked on Hearthstone. Barley Bannocks, Oaty Hearthcakes (Oatcakes) These were not necessarily thin - ”as broad as from elbow to wrist, and so thick as not to bend when held by the edges.” ln poor harvest years, peas and beans would be added to breads. Maslin bread common". Bread (presumably stale) often used in Soups and in Ales.

Pottage

Originally one-pot cooking based around cereal grain. Grain + Fish/Meat + wild Seeds (in the grain) + Seaweed.

Variations:

1. Fats and Oils to make richer. From Fish/Meat or Linseed (flax), Wild Cabbage seed, Rape seed, Bindweed, Goosefoot, Knotgrass seeds.
2. Greens - seasonal and wild - Nettles, Plantains, Docks, etc.
3. Aromatic Herbs -wild Garlic, Leeks. Onions, Chives.
4. Fruits and nuts in season.

Pot Barley - Pottage Barley

Barley Water -nourishing water from roasted, soaked, cooked barley. Favoured for invalids. Can have licorice, herbs and raisins added. Frumenty -soaked and cooked wheat or barley with dried fruit (& eggs,spice) Can ber “sugared and spiced” and contain eggs. Served thick or thin.
Oatmeal Gruel (Crowdie in Scotland) optional shredded onions or leeks. Flummery -(Wash Brew in the West) fine oatmeal steeped in water for a long time, strained, boiled and left to stand to set (like blancmange). Often made with “the leavings”- husks.
Brose - oatmeal broth, sometimes fine oatmeal simply put in leather hoggin and carried by shepherds. Warmth and bacteria fermented and aerated the porridge.

Peas and beans

Traditionally consumed in quantity and grown in rotation with cereal grains in the field. Not lust a garden crop. All meals included peas or beans, as a staple starch, much like potatoes today.

PEAS Almost entirely dried and used as staple starch, rather than as fresh green vegetable (a quite recent practice). Three types -Green Peas, White Peas, and Grey Peas. Pease Pottage - fundamental to life. Often oatmeal thickened t with leeks.

BEANS Celtic Bean (Faba vulgaris) small, almost like a pea is our native bean. Larger versions, culminating in the Broad Bean, have evolved over centuries. English Medieval Bean Pottage travelled across the Atlantic and became Boston Baked Beans. Bacon and Bean stews are classic, as is Bean and Onion Pottage. Some records of Chickpeas and Lentils having been grown in a small experimental way, although the Celtic Bean and its variants is really our only bean until recent imports.

Curated by Angus Soutar with acknowledgement to support "Local Food - getting it together"

[To be continued]