How Did Fish & Chips Become England's National Dish?

with a sprinkling of salt and vinegar. At the dish's peak popularity. In the late nineteen twenties, there were thirty five thousand fish and chip shops in the United Kingdom that is England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Today there's still ten thousand, five hundred chippies in the UK, serving three hundred and sixty million meals of fish and chips every year, the equivalent of six servings of fish and

chips for every man, woman and child. The golden fried combo is so deeply entrenched in British culture that it's hard to imagine a time when there wasn't a fish and chip shop in every neighborhood, but travel back a mere two hundred years and you'd be hard pressed to find fried fish or chipped potatoes anywhere in the British Isles. The delicious duo came together in the mid nineteenth century, thanks in large part to the culinary contributions of immigrants.

The practice of breading and frying fish is credited to Jewish communities originally living in Spain and Portugal noticed Sphardic Jews. The Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula thrived there since the eighth century, much of it under Muslim rule. The situation changed dramatically in the fifteenth century. The first the Spanish Inquisition, outlawed Judaism, sending Spanish Jews fleeing to the

neighboring Portugal. Then, in nineteen forty six, the Portuguese King Manuel the First married Isabella of Spain, who insisted on the conversion or expulsion of Jews from Portugal to Some Jews chose to remain in Spain In Portugal, many of them feigning conversion but continuing to practice in secret, but others chose to flee to other parts of Europe where they could live freely and Wherever the Sphardic Jews travel,

they brought their rich culinary traditions. The Jewish immigrants to England took to selling fried fish in the streets from trays hung from their necks by leather straps. As early seventeen eighty one, a British cookbook author refers to the Jews way of preserving salmon and all sorts of fish, and Thomas Jefferson, after a visit to England, wrote about sampling fried fish in the Jewish fashion. Even today, some hints of the Jewish origins of British fried fish remain.

The sign hanging above Buba's Fish and Ships outside of London advertises varieties of fish in mazzomel, batter and grilled. But it wasn't until the mid nineteenth century the Jewish style fried fish fully made the cultural transfer from the streets of East London to the broader British populace. And for that, says historian panicoas Panayi, you can thank the railroad. He said. The Internet is revolutionary, but the railway changes everything. Now you can transport fresh fish from the sea to

anywhere in Great Britain within a few hours. That's when fried fish really takes off. Meanwhile, nobody is entirely sure how fried potatoes became a staple part of the European diet. We do know that it took a really long time for fried potatoes or potatoes of any kind to make their way to England. The exotic tubers, first brought to Europe by explorers and conquerors coming back from South America

in the fifteen hundreds, were considered inedible for centuries. In Belgium, the story is that fried potatoes also originated in Spain in the sixteenth century and were brought north to a region called These Spanish Netherlands, which is near modern day Belgium. There in the seventeenth century, fishermen who struck out at sea would carve potatoes into fish shapes and fry them up for a stand in supper. Panaii is the author

of Fish and Chips, a history. During his research, he wasn't able to pinpoint the precise arrival of fried potatoes to England, but it was definitely much later than the Belgian accounts. He believes that frying potatoes didn't really take off in Great Britain until the eighteen sixties, which is right around the time that we see the very first fish and chip shops, so when exactly these two fried friends get together. There are competing claims for being the

first British fish and chip shop. A Jewish immigrant named Joseph Mallins is believed to have opened his chippy in a London neighborhood in eighteen sixty after selling the classic combo in the streets for years. And up north near Manchester, the fish and chip stand owned by John Lees in the town of Mossley was already doing brisk business by eighteen sixty three. Panayi says that by nineteen hundred fish

and chips were a staple food in the UK. Their widespread appeal was about cost and convenience as much as flavor. The advent of industrial scale troll fishing in the North Sea meant inexpensive fresh fish could be sent by rail to all corners of Great Britain to feed hungry factory workers and their families. By nineteen ten, there were twenty five thousand fish and chip shops in the UK, and they even stayed open during World War One in an

effort to boost morale at home. Prime Minister David Lloyd George made sure that fish and chips stayed off the rationalist. The same practice was observed during World War Two, when Winston Churchill famously referred to a hot meal of fish and chips as the good companions. According to the National Federation of Fish Fryers, which is a real thing. British soldiers storming Normandy beaches on D Day would identify each other by yelling out fish and waiting for the response chips.

In the modern multicultural UK, there's plenty of competition for the national dish. Chicken Tica Masala makes a strong claim, but London born Panyani says that fish and chips is still regarded as a culinary symbol of Britishness. Some chippy traditions have changed over the years. For example, during the war years, paper rations meant that fish and chips were served in cones of yesterday's newspaper, and that practice went

out of favor in the nineteen eighties. And traditionally fish and chips were accompanied by salt and malt vinegar, but younger generations have turned to curry, sauce and even ketchup, which Panayi says he't dream of doing. In northern England.

The classic side dish at the chippy is mushy peas, a gray green concoction of well boiled field peas that tastes much better than it looks or sounds, and any chippy worth its salt will throw in a sprinkling of scraps for customers savvy enough to ask, those, of course, are the crispy bits of loose batter floating around in the fryar. Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler clayg. Brain Stuff is a production of

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