FOOD
See
Also:
BEANS; BISCUITS; BREAD; CAKES & PASTRIES; CHILDREN's LITERATURE Food;
CHINESE FOOD; CITY LIVERY COMPANIES The Grocers Company; CLASS Workplace
Segregation and Prejudice, Superior Fare; FOOD BRANDS; FOOD WRITING; FRUIT;
ITALIAN FOOD; JAMS & SPREADS; JEWISH FOOD; LONDON UNDERGROUND Sausages;
MEAT; PEOPLES & CULTURES Food; PUBS Food; SOUTH ASIAN FOOD; SUGAR;
VEGETARIANISM & VEGANISM; WHITEHALL Lunches
Breakfast
See
Also: HOTELS The Connaught Hotel, Breakfast
Kippers
Queen
Victoria's endorsement of Scotland (her acquisition of Balmoral) helped to
promote the appreciation of kippers.
Porridge
Prior
to the 19thC porridge was a regional food that was eaten principally
in Scotland and the North of England.
When Queen Victoria encountered it she delighted in it and had it become
part of her regular breakfast menu.
Bubble and Squeak
Bubble
and squeak is a dish that is composed of the reheated remains of a previous
meal. The principal ingredients are
cabbage and potato. Its name derives
from the cooking sounds of the ingredients first boiling and then frying. The first known literary reference to it is
in Thomas Bridges's (c.1710-c.1775) A Travestie of Homer
(1762).
Canteens
See
Also: CLASS Workplace Segregation and Prejudice
Canteen
Culture
Peter
Middleton (1940-2014) was a Yorkshireman who trained to become a monk. However, ultimately, he concluded that he was
not temperamentally-suited to the contemplative life. He wandered through sporting, academic, and
diplomatic lives before entering business.
His intellectual gifts led employers to overlook his basic idiosyncrasy. He was hired by Lloyds, a bank.
In 1985
Midland Bank International poached Middleton so that he could sought out Thomas
Cook, which the bank owned and which was in a sorry condition. On his first day he went to the staff
canteen. This was segregated into three
zones that were used according to seniority.
He opted to dine in the lowest of these.
When he sat down, he introduced himself to the people who were already
sitting at the table. They noted his
casual attire and his northern accent.
Therefore, they were not inclined to take him at face value. He proved the matter by providing them with
post-prandial coffee in his office.
Middleton
succeeded in turning Thomas Cook around.
The company was sold for a large profit.
Location:
45 Berkeley Street, W1J 8EJ (orange, pink)
Superior
Fare
The
quality of the food that was served in the canteen of the B.B.C. Television s
North Acton rehearsal centre was distinctly better than that which was provided
in the Television Centre one. There is a
theory that this was because leading actors, such as Laurence Olivier and John
Gielgud, would spend more time in the former facility than the latter.
Compliments of The House
Compliments
of The House distributes commercially-made waste food to people who are in
need. It was founded by Sin ad
Browne after she had come across Free Store, an organisation that was operating
in a like manner in Wellington, New Zealand.
She was struck by the sense of community that it generated and acted as
a volunteer for a couple months. During
her childhood she had had periods of homelessness and had experienced food
insecurity.
Location:
International House, 6 Canterbury Crescent, Brixton, SW9 7QD
See
Also: HOMELESSNESS
Website:
www.complimentsofthehouse.org www.thefreestore.org.nz
Crisps
Golden
Wonder's Cheese & Onion overtook Smith's.
The latter responded by launching Salt & Vinegar in 1967.
Dieting
Banting
In the
1863 William Banting (1797-1878) was a successful undertaker, whose clients
included members of the royal family. In
the 1860s he found himself obese and desirous of losing weight. He bought a boat and rowed frequently on the
Thames. While he became more muscular,
the exercise made him hungry and remained overweight. He consulted the physician William Harvey who
suggested he reduced his intake of carbohydrates and raise his consumption of
fats. Over a period of months the
undertaker shed the stones he wished to be rid of. He wrote a pamphlet entitled A Letter On
Corpulence, Addressed To The Public (1863).
This sold well and came to the notice of Wilhelm Epstein, a German
physician, who devised and then promoted a more honed version. The Banting-Epstein approach became the
medically orthodox approach to losing weight in the Anglophone and
German-speaking worlds.
Following
the Second World War a quantitative calories in, calories out approach that
originated in the United States became the predominant approaching to dieting.
Location:
c.145 Kensington High Street (4 The Terrace), c.W8 6SU. Home. (orange, black)
27 St
James's Street, SW1A 1HA. Business
premises. (red, purple)
22 Pall
Mall, SW1Y 5EW. Business premises.
(orange, pink)
Byron
The poet Lord Byron
had body issues. He went on numerous
diets.
Eggs
It was
the use of electric lights that enabled egg production to become
year-round. Prior to that, eggs had been
cheapest during the spring. It was an
element in the seasonality of food.
See
Also: IAN FLEMING Scrambled Eggs; LIGHTING Electric Lighting
The
Golden Egg
The
Golden Egg chain was an egg-centred restaurant chain. It was founded in 1958 by the brothers Philip
and Reginald Kaye (n Kropifko), who had run Wimpy franchises. Eggs had been rationed until 1954.
J.
Lyons bought Golden Egg in 1970. Six
years later the business was sold on to United Biscuits.
Extreme Obesity
See
Also: CATS Working Cats, Lavatorial Cat; THE NAVY Admirality House,
Furniture, Elephantine Accommodation
Francis
Grose
Francis
Grose (1731-1791) was a noted antiquary.
It was said of him that he grew to be so obese that he had to have a
servant strap him into bed each night.
Supposedly, this was because once his belly moved the rest of him would
follow.
Location:
Clement's Inn, WC2A 2AZ (blue, yellow)
Feasting
Boar's
Head Dinner
The
Cutlers Yuletide Boar's Head Dinner involves the beast's head being born into
the dining room in a sedan chair.
Location:
Cutlers' Hall, Warwick Lane, EC4M 7BR (blue, turquoise)
See
Also: CITY LIVERY COMPANIES The Cutlers Company
Whitebait
Feasts
Whitebait
are the small, translucent or silver-white fry of members of the herring
family. In 1780 Richard Cannon of
Blackwall persuaded local tavern keepers to start serving whitebait feasts. These became highly fashionable. They were held from February to August.
Fishfingers
In 1955
fish fingers went on sale. Seven years
later they were placed on the Retail Price Index.
The
widespread consumption of fish fingers in the United Kingdom may have been a
factor led to Britain taking to frozen convenience food in a way that the rest
of Europe was slower to do.
Food Adulteraion
Friedrich
Accum
In the
19thC the German-born chemist Friedrich Accum exposed some of the
food adulterations that food processors and retailers were engaging in such as
placing red lead in Double Gloucester cheese and greening vegetables with
copper. His work had little lasting
impact.
Arthur
Hassall
Arthur
Hassall studied food under a microscope.
In 1850 he published a paper that caused a sensation. He associated himself with Thomas Wakley, the
founding Editor of The Lancet.
Wakley backed Hassall, enabling the latter to publish a series of
articles that vendors of adulterated foods.
These prompted the establishment of a Parliamentary committee. It confirmed his findings.
The
Food Adulteration Act of 1860
In 1858
twenty people died as a result of poisonous lozenges having been sold in
Bradford. The incident led to the
passage of the Food Adulteration Act of 1860.
The Food & Drink Federation
The Food
& Drink Federation represents the global food brands and the U.K.'s big
food manufacturers. The organisation was
founded in 1913.
Location:
10 Bloomsbury Way, WC1A 2SL
Website:
www.fdf.org.uk
Food Processing
Women
who worked in food processing factories would let their hair down on a
Saturday night, it having been confined within hairnets during their workdays.
Health Food
The
Ryder Cup
Golf s
Ryder Cup derives its name from Samuel Ryder, a pious Lancashire
businessman. His business activities
included setting up in 1922 a company called Heath & Heather, which sold
seeds and herbs. This developed into
Britain's principal health food retailer.
In 1970 the business was renamed Holland & Barrett.
Website:
www.hollandandbarrett.com www.rydercup.com
The Impact of Industrialisation
During
the Napoleonic Wars the British Army required that recruits should be at least
5ft., 6in.-tall. A century later, during
the Boer Wars, the requirement had to be lowered to 5ft. in order to secure
enough men. Of those who were over that
height, 40% were rejected because their diets had rendered incapable of meeting
the physical demands that might be made of them.
The London Food Studies Centre
The
London Food Studies Centre is an interdisciplinary centre that studies food and
its context.
Location:
The School of Oriental & African Studies, Thornhaugh Street, WC1H 0XG
Website:
www.soas.ac.uk/foodstudies
Lunch
S.G.
Warburg
The
merchant bank's.G. Warburg was famed for having two lunches every weekday. This was so that its employees could double
the number of clients they stayed in close contact with.
See
Also: THE CITY OF LONDON & FINANCE Investments Banks, etc.'s.G.
Warburg
Market Gardening
Battersea
Battersea
bundles - the name for asparagus that had been grown in Battersea's market
gardens.
Greenhouse
During
the 19thC the increasing air pollution from burning coal made it
harder to grow plants in many cities.
However, greenhouses, which were themselves a highly industrialised
product, made it possible to cultivate more sensitive plants. London's market gardeners became dependent
upon them.
The
Lea Valley
The Lea
Valley used to contain the largest acreage of glass in the world.
Neat
House Gardens
Neat
Houses was a 200-acre series of market gardens that covered much
Location:
Neathouse Place, SW1V 1EJ (orange, purple)
Nutrition
Sir
Jack Drummond
At the
age of 31, (Sir) Jack Drummond (1891-1952) was appointed to be a Professor of
Biochemistry at University College London.
During the Second World War he worked closely with Lord Woolton in the
Ministry of Food. His work helped to mass
starvation in The Netherlands and he created a gruel that was fed to the
concentration camp survivors that enabled them to start returning to a normal
diet. After the war he worked for Boots,
a pharmacies and medicines company.
In 1952
he, his second wife, and their ten-year-old daughter were murdered while on
holiday in France. Gaston Dominici, a
local peasant farmer, was convicted of the murders. Seven years later President de Gaulle ordered
Dominici's release on humanitarian grounds.
Location:
Gower Street, WC1E 6BT (purple, red)
See
Also: WEST GERMANY's MIDWIFE
Nuts
Tax
In 2024
it was the case that 20 %V.A.T. was charged on roasted and shelled nuts. All other nuts were zero-rated unless sold as
bird food.
See
Also: BIRDS Bird Food, Tax
Organic Food
The
Soil Association
The
Soil Association certified organic standards in Britain. It was founded by Balfour in 1946.
Pancakes
A
difference between the British and the Americans is that the former tend to
only eat pancakes on Pancake Day, whereas for the latter they are an everyday
breakfast food. This is thought to
derive in part from the fact that the Brits tend to weigh ingredients, whereas
the Yanks tend to measure them.
Sandwich
The
Earl of Sandwich's invention of the Sandwich while gambling.
See
Also: GAMBLING
Mama
Cass
In 1974
the American singer Mama Cass died in a flat at No. 9 Curzon Place. According to urban legend she choked on a ham
sandwich. This was not the case. She had had a fatal heart attack. The story is supposed to have derived from
the coroner noting that there was a half-eaten ham sandwich on the night table
next to her bed.1
Location:
9 Curzon Place, W1J 5HQ (blue, red)
1. Four years later Keith Moon, The Who s
drummer, also died in the flat.
The Second World War
Puberty
In Girls
In 1948,
at the request of the Ministry of Health, James Tanner (1920-2010), a
physiology lecturer at St Thomas's Hospital, began a longitudinal study
childhood growth. He was assisted by
Regimental Sergeant-Major R.H. Whitehouse.
They studied children who lived in the National Children's Home orphanage
in Harpenden. He set down the average
age at which puberty started in girls.
However, his study was flawed by the fact that the children had lived
through the Second World War and were experiencing the post-war food
shortages. However, his findings went
unchallenged for decades. In 1956 he
moved to the Institute of Child Health.
The project ended in 1971.
Location:
The Institute of Child Health, 30 Guildford Street, WC1N 1EH (purple, yellow)
Website:
www.ucl.ac.uk/child-health/great-ormond-street-institute-child-health-0
Soup Kitchens
In the
1790s Count Rumford developed soup kitchens.
Both William Cobbett and Karl Marx had a profound dislike of them.
David
Backhouse 2024