George Orwell Matters! discussion

This is the thread to discuss the essay In Defence of English Cooking by George Orwell, which was suggested by Ian.

We will be reading this as a group in February 2022. Hopefully it will be a nice contrast to the grim (but important) read we have just completed!

Here is the essay on the George Orwell website:

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/?s=i...

This read begins today! What do you think?

Orwell discusses English cooking in the context of attracting foreign tourists to the country. He gives many examples of his favorite English specialties--baked goods, puddings, potatoes, various sauces, jams, and cheeses.

However, he admits there is a problem for visitors:

"You practically don't find good English cooking outside a private house. If you want, say, a good, rich slice of Yorkshire pudding you are more likely to get it in the poorest English home than in a restaurant, which is where the visitor necessarily eats most of his meals."

Other problems mentioned were the Sunday hours of establishments, and liquor licensing laws. Some food rationing laws were also in effect in 1945 when Orwell wrote this essay. Orwell did seem to get great enjoyment from a good English meal of his favorite foods.

I've never visited England so I can't comment on the quality of the food there. But I've noticed there is only one English restaurant located 15 miles away from my American home that advertises lovely English teas with little sandwiches and baked goods. But there are multitudes of restaurants featuring other ethnic cooking in the area. This is in an area that was originally settled by the English. I'm not sure if it's the food, or a public relations problem, but nobody says they're going to pick up some English food on their way home.

It seems that people think that English cooking is the worst of any country, bland and tasteless. I have never gone to an English restaurant, so I can't criticize, but go by what others say.

From the essay there isn’t much to defend really is there? It wouldn’t exactly fill a restaurant menu. Having said that, the Aussie sausages in my freezer are labelled ‘Cumberland style’!
You can also get a Devonshire tea at many little cafes around the place, how close they are to a proper Devonshire tea, I’m not sure.
Kippers? Who eats kippers?
When I think of English food from English television I think of fish and chips (which is common here too) and bacon butties (the Royle family always seemed to be eating them!)

Fish and chips are very popular in the United States and also in Scotland.

When my husband and I were on a trip to Prince Edward Island we had tea and dessert in a tea-room in a beautiful little town called Victoria by the Sea. We had treacle pudding for dessert and it was amazing! We could also choose our teacups from a wide variety, which was fun too.
A lot of British people have settled in Canada, and brought their cooking traditions with them.
I've never been to England, so I can't really discuss the restaurants there.

That sounds like a delightful tea, Rosemarie. There are several coffee shop/bakeries in my area that usually serve French or Italian pastries, and some of them added tea and scones to the menu when "Downton Abbey" was so popular on TV.

My grandmother used to collect fancy tea cups, and she gave me several from her collection. It's a special experience when the tea is in a gorgeous cup.

My mother was from Scotland. Her favorite drink was tea, made like they did in Scotland, no tea bags. She brewed tea like someone would make coffee, in a big pot. After the big pot of tea was drunk, she would brew another one. The Scots also like fish and chips, a favorite dish.

I found this essay interesting, because the attitude that English has no national cuisine still prevails!

George Orwell was writing in 1945, and identified that if you want to taste the best English cooking, you have to ignore restaurants and have a meal with an English family. Even now, we have all sorts of ethnic cuisine; within walking distance from my home I can think of Thai, Chinese, Italian, Turkish and Indian. We do have a local "chippie" selling fish and chips to take away, and that has German sausages I think, as well, but if I try to think of an English restaurant there isn't one. A newspaper did a survey and found that the favourite dish the English chose when eating out is curry!

So George Orwell was actually being very prescient here. He was writing before rationing had completely stopped, and was looking forward to resuming the variety of English cooking (and yes, it is very varied, as he describes!) and yet already both English people and the world did not think it was up to much.

I remember when I was just 14, going to Holland to visit relatives. My "aunt" was very excited and proudly dished up what she called an "English pudding". I glanced at my father, completely baffled and could tell by his warning expression that I'd have to ask him later ...

What she had placed before us was custard. Just that! Where was the pudding? The suet sponge: ginger duff, treacle sponge or jam sponge - or apple pie, or blackberry and apple pie, or plum cobbler. There was nothing under the custard, so where was the actual pudding?

Some background:

After In Defence of English Cooking, the next year an essay on British cookery was commissioned from George Orwell by the British Council. They paid him the agreed fee of 30 guineas, but they did not publish it, because they thought it made English cuisine sound so ghastly! They were anxious about mentioning the disastrous effects of wartime rationing, and to avoid producing an essay about food, when folk remembered still being hungry in the winter of 1945.

Seventy years later though, they did publish it, including some of George Orwell's own recipes. He was quite a chef!

Here they are (I'll put them under spoilers, to save space):

WELSH RAREBIT

(view spoiler)[Ingredients:

1 ounce butter.
4 ounces cheese (coarsely grated).
1 tablespoonful milk or beer
½ teaspoonful made mustard
Pepper and salt

Method. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the milk, salt, mustard and cheese. Heat and stir until the cheese has melted. Pour on to slices of hot buttered toast which have been prepared beforehand. Serve immediately. (hide spoiler)]
(Not English, but Welsh! Though we do have this, and it was a childhood favourite of mine. It's best made with Cheddar, Red Leicester or Cheshire cheese)

TREACLE TART

(view spoiler)[Ingredients:

12 ounces short crust pastry.
Golden syrup.
2 ounces breadcrumbs.
A pinch of ginger or a little lemon juice.

Method. Make the pastry crust in the proportion of eight ounces of flour to five ounces of butter, with a pinch of salt, and mix with cold water. Line a flat metal dish with the pastry. Cover with a layer of bread crumbs, then pour in the golden syrup. Sprinkle lemon juice or ginger over the syrup and cover with the remainder of the crumbs. Bake for 30 minutes in a hot oven. (hide spoiler)]
(This is glorious hot, with custard! Or you can have it when it's cold, and a bit more solid, as a teatime treat.)

ORANGE MARMALADE (handwritten note – ‘Bad recipe!’ –‘too much sugar and water’ – not other edits)

(view spoiler)[Ingredients:

2 seville oranges
2 sweet oranges (no)
2 lemons (no)
8lbs of preserving sugar
8 pints of water

Method. Wash and dry the fruit. Halve them and squeeze out the juice. Remove some of the pith, then shred the fruit finely. Tie the pips in a muslin bag. Put the strained juice, rind and pips into the water and soak for 48 hours. Place in a large pan and simmer for 1 1/2 hours until the rind is tender. Leave to stand overnight, then add the sugar and let it dissolve before bringing to the boil. Boil rapidly until a little of the mixture will set into a jelly when placed on a cold plate. Pour into jars which have been heated beforehand, and cover with paper covers. (hide spoiler)]

PLUM CAKE

(view spoiler)[Ingredients:

¾ 1b butter
½ 1b sugar
4 eggs
¾ 1b flour
¼ lb crystallised cherries
¼ Ib raisins
¼ lb sultanas
¼ lb chopped almonds
¼ lb mixed candied peel
The grated rind of 1 lemon and 1 orange
½ teaspoonful of mixed spice
A pinch of salt
1 glass brandy

Method. Beat the butter and sugar to a cream; add each egg separately and beat until the mixture is stiff and uniform. Sift the flour with the mixed spice and the salt, stir well into the creamed mixture, add the raisins (stoned beforehand), the cherries cut in halves, and the sultanas, the candied peel cut into small pieces, the grated lemon and orange rind, add the brandy. Mix thoroughly, put into a round tin lined with greased paper, put into a hot oven for 10 to 15 minutes, then reduce the heat and bake slowly for 3 ½ hours. (hide spoiler)]

CHRISTMAS PUDDING

(view spoiler)[Ingredients:

1 lb each of currants, sultanas & raisins
2 ounces sweet almonds
1 ounces sweet almonds
1 ounces bitter almonds
4 ounces mixed peel
½ lb brown sugar
½ lb flour
¼ lb breadcrumbs
½ teaspoonful salt
½ teaspoonful grated nutmeg
¼ teaspoonful powdered cinnamon
6 ounces suet
The rind and juice of 1 lemon
5 eggs
A little milk
1/8 of a pint of brandy, or a little beer

Method. Wash the fruit. Chop the suet, shred and chop the peel, stone and chop the raisins, blanch and chop the almonds. Prepare the breadcrumbs. Sift the spices and salt into the flour. Mix all the dry ingredients into a basin. Heat the eggs, mix them with the lemon juice and the other liquids. Add to the dry ingredients and stir well. If the mixture is too stiff, add a little more milk. Allow the mixture to stand for a few hours in a covered basin. Then mix well again and place in well-greased basins of about 8 inches diameter. Cover with rounds of greased paper. Then tie the tops of the basins over the floured cloths if the puddings are to be boiled, or with thick greased paper if they are to be steamed. Boil or steam for 5 or 6 hours. On the day when the pudding is to be eaten, re-heat it by steaming it for 3 hours. When serving, pour a large spoonful of warm brandy over it and set fire to it.

In Britain it is usual to mix into each pudding one or two small coins, tiny china dolls or silver charms which are supposed to bring luck. (hide spoiler)]
(We have this with custard, although it's traditional to have white sauce as well as your brandy sauce.

YORKSHIRE PUDDING

(view spoiler)[Ingredients:

4 ounces flour
1 or 2 eggs
½ teaspoonful salt
½ pint milk (or milk and water)

Method. Put the flour into a basin with the salt. Make a well in the centre, break in the eggs; beat well, adding the milk to make a thick batter; allow this to stand for 2 hours. Melt some dripping in a baking-tin and when quite hot pour in the batter. Make for half an hour in a hot oven. (hide spoiler)]

My grandma made the best Yorkshire pudding in the world! She made a well, as George Orwell says, and took a very long time sitting in her chair by the oven range, to incorporate all the flour mixture into the water and milk (mainly water made better puddings).

She cooked large round Yorkshire puddings in the range, next to a coal fire, turning them over half way through, and then cutting them into four quarters while they were still in the iron pan. She would pile them high on a plate, and keep them warm on a top shelf of the range until there was plenty for everybody.

We had our flat Yorkshire puddings by themselves with gravy, before the stew and potatoes which followed. This was the traditional Yorkshire way. Better off families would have roast beef instead of stew.

My mother always kept a jar orange marmalade, it reminded her of home.

Who else is reading this essay?

I had read it Jean but as I've never visited England, I didn't feel competent to comment on the food there.

We have some English pubs here in California, USA (or at least places that are trying to imitate English pubs), but I can't think of any English restaurants . . . which is strange since we have everything else, from Dutch Indonesian to Cuban to Ethiopian to Cambodian to Peruvian within 5-10 miles of my house.

It was a clear and entertaining read though. And I enjoyed the recipes you shared!

I actually ended up getting diverted into the essay below it where Orwell talks about the controversy surrounding Wodehouse. I'd had no idea whatsoever that there was a controversy!

And I thought Irish pubs were quite a thing in the USA and Canada ... But we don't have any English restaurants here either! That's kind of the point, I think. We do have plenty of tea rooms though, especially in villages.

Please let us know Greg, if you think the one on P.G. Wodehouse would be a good group read!

Mincemeat pie is popular in England, not so much in the United States.

True, we have mince pies at Christmas, both hot and cold, and people get a bit fed up of them! But they are seasonal, and not readily available at other times of the year.

One Christmas we were given mince pies. My parents always insisted on having mince pies on this holidays. The people who were given them didn't care for them.

Try them warm with custard :) That's how I like them.

I'm sure George Orwell would have made his own - and probably made his own mincemeat too. I did once, but my mother-in-law carefully picked out all the zest from the orange, so I decided not to bother again making the mincemeat as well as the shortcrust pastry.

In fact only keen cooks make their own mince pies, as they are far cheaper to buy readymade in the shops, than to buy the ingredients and make them yourself. I'll bet George Orwell never imagined that would happen!

Janelle wrote: "From the essay there isn’t much to defend really is there? ..."

I think in terms of listing English dishes, George Orwell was working to a tight schedule so had to save his space for his persuasive arguments. I've filled the list of tasty treats out a bit in my review, Janelle ;)

In Defence of English Cooking by George Orwell ⭐⭐⭐

Jean's review

"Other problems mentioned were the Sunday hours of establishments, and liquor licensing laws"

I think this was in the later essay a year later Connie. I searched quite carefully and couldn't find it in this one.

Jean, the second and third sentences of the essay are:

"It is well known that England's two worst faults, from a foreign visitor's point of view, are the gloom of our Sundays and the difficulty of buying a drink. Both of these are due of fanatical minorities who will need a lot of quelling, including extensive legislation."

We've had similar situations in the US, but I used google to see what Orwell was referring to. I haven't read the later essay. English people at that time would probably know exactly which laws he was writing about.

Yes, you're quite right Connie! I'd even quoted that bit in my review - sorry! I hadn't put two and two together, as it's such a brief reference, and not explicit.

I now remember that public houses were closed all day on Sundays, until 1976! There was a lot of controversy about licensing hours, especially from the Church. It had been going on for ages (even Charles Dickens wrote about it) - all leading up to the law which was passed, so that that pubs could open for a limited number of hours on Sundays, (and then the hours were gradually increased).

There was similar legislation about any sort of trading, shops, cinemas etc. but I think the pubs were the last to be allowed to stay open. I do remember this very well, but I'd thought he was just complaining about there being nothing to do on Sundays, with "the gloom of our Sundays" - and "the difficulty of buying a drink” was a separate point, because at that time alcohol was not usually served with meals! (*Duh*)

Actually I was surprised that George Orwell didn't talk about any types of drinks in this piece at all (except by implication in the meal "tea"), but perhaps this was for reasons of space too.

Anyway, sorry again. And I went through it so carefully as well! :D

Here in the United States, it is easy to forget that it is Sunday. Almost everything is open. There are a few places that close on Sunday reminding everyone that one should keep the Lord's Day.

Josephine wrote: "Here in the United States, it is easy to forget that it is Sunday. Almost everything is open. There are a few places that close on Sunday reminding everyone that one should keep the Lord's Day."

In the early 1990s in Tuscon, Arizona, USA where I lived then, I know there were laws restricting alcohol sales on Sundays. I suspect there was a huge variation by locality in these laws, and possibly, there could still be . . . though I'd bet a lot of those laws have been removed or relaxed.

I have never been to England, but I heard that in Scotland, and probably also England, these countries serve meals besides liquor. People go there to eat, but not to drink.

The old laws were called Blue Laws in my state of Connecticut, and they changed some of them in the 1960s and later. Most stores were closed on Sundays. I grew up in a dry town so the only restaurants were sandwich shops. There was a liquor store, located just over the town line, that did a booming business. For fine dining we had to go to the next town. Everyone went out of town for their wedding receptions and parties. It was a different type of world.

Yes, the Blue Laws still exist, and many places do not sell liquor. People have to go to other places to get hard liquor. Kentucky is known for good alcohol, scotch as good as that made in Scotland. Scotland does make good scotch, my mother thought so though she didn't drink.

We have near us The Crown and Anchor British Pub which boasts about their family British recipes (that have been refined over the years). Menu items include Sausage Roll, Scotch Egg, Cornish Pastie, Bangers and Mash, Lamb Stew in a Yorkshire Pudding, Chicken Curry, British Pies (steak and mushroom, steak and kidney, and cottage pies), and Ploughman's Lunch (English cheddar and Stilton cheeses, tomato cucumber, beets, pickled onion and roll). I can't vouch for the authenticity of the meals compared to what you would find in Britain, but the fish and chips are great. As the name gives it away, they serve beer in traditional English Pint glasses!

Elizabeth A.G. wrote: "We have near us The Crown and Anchor British Pub which boasts about their family British recipes (that have been refined over the years). Menu items include Sausage Roll, Scotch Egg, Cornish Pastie..."

Thank for this Elizabeth! It does sound very authentic, even down to the Yorkshire pudding :) A big one, like my grandma made, but instead of cutting it into quarters it sounds as though they put the stew inside. We can forgive them for not having it separately, afterwards ;)

Scotch Egg is a sausagemeat ball coated with breadcrumbs, and a whole hard-boiled egg inside.

Shepherd's pie and Cottage pie are both minced meat, gravy etc. with no pastry but a mashed potato topping, baked to a crust on the top. Shepherd's is lamb, cottage is beef.

Sausage rolls are made from sausagemeat inside puff pastry.

Elizabeth A.G. wrote: "We have near us The Crown and Anchor British Pub which boasts about their family British recipes (that have been refined over the years). Menu items include Sausage Roll, Scotch Egg, Cornish Pastie..."

I do like shepherds pie, there is a restaurant that sells really good shepherds pie in this town. I has been so long since I have had a dish cooked with lamb. My mother used to cook lamb chops. We also had mutton pie cooked in the Scots way.

Please forgive my tardiness once again.

Just to quickly set the scene. I am sat in front of the keyboard with an open packet of Smith's (Alas! Not Walkers) Prawn Cocktail crisps. These are a decent enough snack, of course; just not quite as delicious as the original Leicestershire (Thurmaston to be exact, my home town) Walkers Crisps product they are imitating. The same goes for flavours such as Cheese & Onion, Salt & Vinegar and Roast Chicken flavours that one can buy in supermarkets out here in Australia. I think it has something to do with the potatoes. The potatoes out here are, at best, utterly mediocre. No Jersey Royals out here, or those incomparable spuds that are incubated in the black rich soils of Lincolnshire! Oh what I would give for a big brown sack of the spuds my grandparents used to always have.
Such a yawning gulf lies between the flavours and constituent ingredients of a Sunday dinner I used to enjoy back home in Leicestershire, and the Sunday dinners one is able to 'knock up' out here in Melbourne. Mediocre meat, decent vegetables, accompanied by spuds of the middling sort that just refuse to roast into an exterior of crispy wonderment and in interior of supreme fluffiness that I was always able to achieve back home.
Bacon butties in England are a established staple, an absolute classic, even. Bacon that can be bought on the shelves in Australia is so utterly contemptible I cannot even bring myself to buy it.
'Pork Pies', I bought from the deli counter out here and and tried when I got home, that turned to ashes in my mouth, inedible sawdust. I hail from the home of Pork Pies in England, just a few short miles from Melton Mowbray, and that imposter pie I bought seemed like somebody was playing a sick joke on me.

I long to get home. I remember the first time I arrived back in England for a visit, after almost 3 years, my Mum made me a bacon cob (crusty bread roll) with English butter, fried rashers of Wiltshire back bacon and Brown sauce. I almost wept. The flavour was so wonderful.

I miss English Jam and Marmalade, lemon curd (be still my heart!), Tate & Lyles Golden Syrup, Red Leicester cheese (this can actually be found, but is sometimes tainted with the misnomer - 'Red Lancashire'[!]), scotch eggs, a decent sausage roll (here in most Australian bakeries, the sausage meat inside is almost a smooth salty puree), a decent Cornish Pastie, decent cheddar, (I have to buy exclusively English or N.Z imported cheddar as the Australian variants are comparable, in taste and texture, to plastic), pork sausages (Australia seems to have a fetish with BEEF sausages) I mean who would use beef sausage in a Toad in the Hole for instance, or a fry-up? It's enough to make one cry. luckily, some places sell 'Cumberland sausages' and 'pork sausages' which are, I suppose, the best out of a bad lot. No Lincolnshire sausages discovered as of yet, mind.
By a stroke of sheer serendipitous happenstance, my neighbour across the road, hails from Cliviger in Lancashire. Every week she knocks on my door bearing gifts such as meat and potatoe pie with home made pastry and a jug of thick hot brown beef gravy, cheese and potatoe pie, Lancashire hot pot, bread and butter pudding and other delightful dishes. It's a real taste of home.

Should I now move on to Australia's Fish &'Chip' Shops, that I so dearly miss from back in Britain? The fact that in Australia the chips they serve look like the humble chipped potatoes' alien relatives who are suffering from a bad case of jaundice - They're phosphorescent yellow and cooked from frozen, too. A sin almost too iniquitous to countenance. Hot Lard or dripping is the only thing to cook a 'raw' chip in. And for the love of Jehova, no bloody chicken salt! Also, nowhere in Australia have I seen vinegar offered in a chippy. It must be a very British thing as my Fiance (Kiwi) thinks vinegar is a bizarre choice, she prefers fresh lemon. The fish, however, is wonderful, choices: King George whiting, Snapper, Flake, Gummie shark, Barramundi all are as good as I've ever eaten. My mum would find it difficult to not be able to order cod or haddock.
I'd love to be able to buy a saveloy, potatoe fritter, battered sausage or a pukka pie, mushy peas or curry sauce even, to have
with my fish and chips, but no; Chicken salt, ketchup and no vinegar must suffice.

I use a British butcher for everything I miss from home (bacon, pork pies, pasties, cheese, scotch eggs, cured hams, Walkers Crisps) his products are amazing but very expensive.

English Dairy products are amongst the best in the world and I sorely miss the milk, cream, cheeses, butter etc

I still regularly make shepherds pie, toad in the hole/Yorkies, fry-up/full English, stew, sausage and mash & peas, or w/bakedbeans, or onion gravy, steak and ale pie, cauliflower cheese, chicken tikka masala and other much loved British curries (another U.K classic and, coming from Leicester, Curry is amongst the best to be found in the U.K)

I am not bashing Australian attempts at a providing a lot of British fare without reason, they are just hard empirical facts.

I, just yesterday, discovered that a 'Stick of rock' was not a known thing for Australians! There's a humorous note on which to end.

Bionic Jean wrote: "My grandma made the best Yorkshire pudding in the world! She made a well, as George Orwell says, and took a very long time sitting in her chair by the oven range, to incorporate all t..."

My stomach is positively rumbling, - they sound delicious!

Talking of puddings, how can we forget Rhubarb Crumble with Custard! - my absolute fave.

Oh Tom, what a marvellous post you wrote. I enjoyed it quite as much as George Orwell's original - and that's saying something! I think it is probably what he would like to write today, were he still alive :)

I had no idea other countries' fish and chip shops were so deficient. No traditional fish cakes made with layers of cod and and sliced potato deep fried in batter? No scallops (sliced fried potato) or the staple of kids with just a few pennies, scraps (end bits of batter)? Mushy peas are my favourite, but I know plenty nowadays love deep fried Mars Bars!

And you can't get lemon curd? I can imagine lemon cheese (a more subtle flavour made with fresh eggs and lemon but sold the same way in jars) might be an English speciality, though. Your post was a real eye-opener! Thank you :)

I've leave it current for the first week of the new month too, to give others chance to read this fabulous post! You've really entered into the spirit of it, and I for one would love to know what you ate when you'd finished writing ...

I really enjoyed reading your post, Tom. I'm in Canada and they do offer vinegar with chips, white generally but in pubs you can get malt.
A lot of people from British Isles have come here over the centuries, along with people from just about everywhere else in the past 75 years, so you can whatever you like, at least in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal (for sure).
This is a random side note: my husband and I live in a reasonable walking distance from lots of Ethiopian restaurants, but the first time we had Ethiopian food was in a restaurant in Yellowknife Northwest Territory-where you probably couldn't find that much variety, but we learned about the restaurant on the flight there.

And we have excellent cheese in Canada, and great dairy products and bread as well.

The idea of "Red Lancashire" rather than "Red Leicester" made me laugh! And it's odd as I thought there was some legislation so that you couldn't call a cheese by a certain name, unless it was made there. So "Cheddar cheese" has to be made in Cheddar, "Cheshire Cheese" in Cheshire, and so on, but "Dorset Cheddar" (which I was told there, was the most popular English cheese in the USA) is made in Dorset.

The only English food I know is what my mother cooked. But she was from Scotland. She liked fish and chips, these she cooked, she always kept marmalade, it reminded her of home. She always had mince pie for holidays, not popular in the states. There was a small town in north New Jersey that had been settled by Scots where they would go to buy mutton pies.

I actually cooked a chicken Tikka Masala, Jean! I was thinking about it for the rest of the day after I wrote my bit, it was lovely.

I loved getting a bag of 'scratchings' from the chippy when I was a kid. My Mum used to work at a chip shop, owned by an Italian family, called "The Codfather". The few nights a week she brought selections of the unsold pies, sausages and saveloys back from the chip shop were always good eating for me and my siblings. I do miss a 50p cone of chips, too.

Also, the mis-labelled blocks of cheese were only on the supermarket barcode, the actual blocks were wrapped and sporting Red Leicester!

The Ethiopian restaurants sound lovely Josephine. My fiance and I ate in one a few years back. delicious.

I'm late to this Tea and just read the essay.

I enjoyed it quite a bit. Orwell is, I think, defending his Country's food, while (in a way) lusting for the delicious memories he has of pre-War foods.
This essay sounds mostly like a delicious trip down memory lane for him, with a tiny wish (perhaps) that "foreigners" could appreciate the foods he so enjoys remembering.
Also, he defends the authenticity of foods in his Country, stating that when cooked elsewhere, it's not like Home.

Like him, I love Stilton cheese. Thank goodness for the English for discovering how to make such a delicious food.

In general, I could probably live on European breads and cheeses. While I can't state that English breads are as good as Mainland European breads (not having had the opportunity to try them), I would bet that they must be and, if so, English breads would be divine.

Tom, around here, we can even occasionally find packages of Walker's Shortbread, mostly around Christmas.
I also make shepherd's pies and pork pies. If I ever travel to England, I would try these dishes and compare them to mine, and amend the recipe, if I can, trying to get to the original taste.

Is "dark plum cake" made with Italian plums? I come from a German background and plum cake is one of the most delicious treats I know. Made with Italian plums, on a yeast base, with streusel on top. So yummy!

I have never tasted a pudding or a treacle tart.

I think I would like horse radish sauce. Horse radish is a wonderful condiment, especially with beef, so a sauce would add to a meal.

Red currant jam on melted brie is delicious and, from that taste, I could see it pairing with a stronger meat such as mutton and perhaps lamb. It's something I would try if the opportunity arose.

I have had kippers and they aren't bad. But I don't see them as a breakfast food and they aren't on the weekly shopping list. LOL.

I'm a bit of a Foodie and will try anything once (and usually more than once). I like a wide variety and find that indulging in the foods of a Country when travelling is one of the high points of any trip.
This essay made me hungry, curious and nostalgic, all at once.

I found this essay touching. It's Orwell's way of going down Memory Lane and hoping for the return of his favourites after the War ends. It's a nostalgic and loving look back in Time.

Petra, my mother made the best plum cake, as well as lots of other yummy treats, but that was my favourite.

Plum cake is a favourite of mine, too, Rosemarie. That may be because it's only available a few weeks of the year, when Italian plums are in season.

I recently found my mom's recipe for the yeast dough for plum cake. It warmed my heart to see her hand-writing again. I'll keep that paper, whether or not I ever make the dough.

The thought that comes back to me when thinking of this essay is that the War was near it's end, so rationing had been on-going for a number of years when this essay was written. It must have been a depressing time, perhaps it felt, to the people, as if "normal" would never return and these foods were gone (or rare) forever. Orwell gives hope that "normal" will return one day.
It's a little bit like our pandemic World right now.

So true-there are some food items that are hard to get at times, like breakfast cereal.

Would anyone else like to comment here, before it goes into our Essays folder?

Petra. I am also a big foodie too, and plan entire holidays simply around eating food. A 5 week trip across India was pretty astonishing, bar the almost fatal food poisoning in the Kashmir.

Tom, how wonderful that you could take a 5 week trip to India! Sorry about that awful food poisoning. But what a terrific and wonderful trip that must have been, except for that.

Jean, I just saw (or noticed) the post with all the food recipes (post 11).

Why is plum cake called plum cake when there are no plums in it?

I had no idea Petra! I assumed that it used to have plums in - or that "plum" was used generically. That seems closer. Here's what wiki says:

"The term "plum cake" and "fruit cake" have become interchangeable. Since dried fruit is used as a sweetening agent and any dried fruit used to be described as "plums", many plum cakes and plum puddings do not contain the plum fruit now known by that name. (Plum pudding is a similar, richer dish prepared with similar ingredients, cooked by steaming the mixture rather than baking it.)"

I've always known it as "fruit cake", and if it's particularly dense with dried fruit, we call it "rich fruit cake". In a slice of the best fruit cake, you can barely see the cake between the luscious dried fruit and glace cherries, but what cake there is should be bright yellow :)

Thanks, Jean.
That's a good definition you posted.

I was thinking, after I posted, that plum cake might be named in the lines of plum pudding. That's also a fruity steamed cake, isn't it? (I've never had any)

I've seen that rich fruit cake around Christmas. I've never had that either, not being a fan of peel or candied fruit. But I have wondered at the amount of fruit in it. There's hardly any cake; just enough to bind the fruit together.