England
Article pending while I research if the English cook anything edible
beyond fish and chips (which they got from the Italians). The Indians and
Pakistanis may have completely taken over food service in England by time
I finish.
Ireland
Ireland has been inhabited for roughly 10,000 years. Almost nothing is known
of the people before the Celts, and almost everything we know about Celtic
culture is fiction - first made up by the Romans, then by Christian
propagandists, and later by a slew of romantic pseudo-historians. Much has,
however, been learned about food in those times by picking through ancient
garbage heaps, latrines and peat bogs. Photo by U.S. NASA =
public domain.
BP (Before the Potato)
Until the Neolithic, the Irish were hunter-gatherers, living on the
indigenous wildlife, harvesting shellfish and seaweed along the coast and
fresh water fish from lakes and streams.
In the Neolithic (4000 to 2000 BCE), keeping livestock and farming
oats and barley were practiced, with occasional unexplained reversions to
hunter-gatherer mode. Cattle became of great importance during this time and
have remained so even into our own day. From them was produced milk and
cream, and their blood was tapped to make black pudding. Later butter and
cheese were also produce.
Meat was very important, but producing Cows were seldom killed for food -
a man's wealth was measured in cattle. Bulls damaged from fighting and elderly
cows were slaughtered, and of course nearly all male calves before maturity.
Dairy cows need to get knocked up and drop a calf once a year or go dry, and
half the calves are male - becoming dangerous, ill tempered bulls at
maturity.
Pigs, which fed on acorns in the oak forests, were slaughtered in the
autumn and their meat preserved with salt and smoke. Sheep were kept mainly
for wool and other domestic animals were scarce, but there was still an
abundance of game.
Along the coast fish and shellfish were important and seal was much liked.
Unlike other European regions, bread never became important in Ireland. Only
oats and barley could be grown with any certainty. Oats became widely used
for gruels and porridges, and remained very important even after introduction
of the potato. Vegetables were mostly foraged but some onions, garlics,
carrots and celery were grown.
By 500 BCE the Celts had invaded Ireland and soon completely supplanted
the pre-Celtic culture. They are thought to have brought chickens and other
domestic fowl, and to have added whale and dolphin to the menu. Otherwise
the cuisine didn't change much. Oats, barley, wheat and rye were now grown
on a small scale but the Celts were not really agriculturists. Cattle remained
of utmost importance.
All through this early era small game and fish were spit roasted and
larger cuts were roasted buried among hot rocks, or they were boiled. Pottery
cauldrons had been in use since about 1500 BCE but were small and fragile.
The main method of boiling meat was in a hollowed out log. The water was
brought to a boil by dropping red hot rocks into it.
Fowl were encased in clay, with head, guts and feathers. They were baked
buried in hot coals, and when the hardened clay was broken off it took the
skin and feathers with it.
The arrival of metal cauldrons, about 500 BCE, first of bronze, later
of iron, made boiling more practical. From that time forward boiling became
increasingly dominant.
Table service was notably primitive. Whole joints of meat were gnawed
on and a small dagger was used to scrape off the tough parts. Some salads
were probably eaten but condiments for the meat were little more than salt
and honey. Mead (honey wine) and some forms of beer were available for
drinking.
The Vikings invaded around 794 and introduced advanced fishing and boat
building methods. Fish from the sea became prominent on the menu, but it's
not likely the Norwegians brought anything like refined cuisine - lutefisk,
anyone? They did introduce the idea of settled towns, though.
The Anglo-Norman invasion around 1171 brought herbs and vegetables from
as far away as the Mediterranean, but these didn't really take hold in Ireland
and declined as Norman influence declined.
The English invasion around 1500 was totally disastrous for the Irish
people. The English took all the good land and cut down the oak forests to
build ships for their wars with the French. Crops were exported to England
and game was reserved for wealthy English sport hunters. The Irish people were
driven to the boggy regions of the southwest, largely landless, unemployed
and suffering from malnutrition. The English, though fully responsible for
this state of affairs, disdainfully described the Irish as
"a nation of beggars".
AP (After the Potato)
The English would like you to believe it was Sir Francis Drake who
introduced the potato to Ireland, from plantings on his (no doubt stolen)
Irish estate. Qualified food historians believe it more likely potatoes were
salvaged from the 24 ships of the Spanish Armada wrecked on the western coast
of Ireland in 1588. Spanish and French ships carried large quantities of
potatoes to ward off scurvy.
The Irish adopted the potato out of necessity - and became even less
interested in "cuisine". The typical garden in the 1700s consisted of oats,
peas, a few cabbages and lots of potatoes - pretty much nothing else. The
favorite dinner of the people was a pile of potatoes in the middle of the
table, eaten with some milk and butter - day in and day out - if there was
food.
Cooking methods continued to simplify and by the mid 1800s boiling was
pretty much the only method used to prepare food. The food prepared became
increasingly just potatoes. The Irish didn't have ovens, so bread, the
"staff of life" in other regions, was little made. Bread had to be baked on
hot stones with the cauldron inverted over them, and the cauldron was
generally needed for boiling.
The potato was productive and highly nutritious, enabling a very large
expansion of the population - though the people were poor, landless, largely
unemployed and starvation was always near. Then came the potato blight in
1845. Nearly half the population starved or emigrated. About a million
starved and another million emigrated, but about 30% of those who emigrated
died in transit or in quarantine.
Throughout the famine years the English continued to export large
amounts of food from Ireland, both meat and grains, and the British
government sent more and more armed soldiers to protect shipments from
mobs of desperate starving Irish.
The British resisted any attempt by other countries to aid the Irish.
The Sultan of the Ottoman Empire wanted to send £10,000 for food
relief but Queen Victoria demanded he send only £1000 because she
had sent only £2000. The Sultan sent £1000 but also sent three
ships full of food. The British Government tried to prevent delivery and
Turkish sailors had to unload the food themselves.
The British government would have been more than happy if all the Irish
starved to death, but this was just practice. A few years later they
starved to death somewhere between 7 and 10 million in India, again while
holding massive amounts of food for export to England. Really nice folks,
the English.
There were, of course, abundant fish off the west coast of Ireland,
but due to changes in the weather they remained too far off-shore for
the primitive hide covered boats of the Irish fishermen. On top
of all this came the worst winter in living memory, burying normally snow
free Ireland up to the rafters.
American church groups distributed a lot of food in Ireland during the
famine but managed to generate ill will by trying to tie food to conversion
to Protestantism. About the only thing good about the whole affair was it
finally forced the Irish to appreciate vegetables other than the potato.
Leeks, onions and cabbages increased in importance, carrots re-appeared
along with parsnips, celery. Turnips (rutabagas) became widely eaten in
some counties.
Soon after the potato famine Irish soda bread became popular. The
method, imported from North America where it had long been used, was found
suitable for the low gluten soft wheat available in Ireland. It also matched
the Irish need to produce a lot of food by simple means, with few
ingredients and under very primitive conditions.
The potato, though, continued to dominate the Irish table, but new
varieties like the Russet Burbank were developed to be resistant to
the blight.
Modern Irish Cooking
The cuisine we think of as "Irish" today began to develop in the second
half of the 1800s, but was not the food of the common people. The common
people were lucky to have a few potatoes to boil. Irish cooking developed
in the kitchens of the well-to-do landowners and was, and remains
to this day, centered on dairy and potatoes.
Meat remained an item for special occasions - mutton and beef for the
well-to-do and salted pork for the less well off. Households kept chickens
mainly for production of eggs, which the housewife could trade for
merchandise at the newly established town stores.
The excellent Irish cookbooks in my collection emphasize lamb, with beef
a minor item, sometimes hardly mentioned. Veal isn't mentioned at all, but
a region so dependent on dairy would produce a lot of veal. Every milk cow
must be "refreshed" about once a year by dropping a calf, and half the calves
are male. These need to be slaughtered before maturity. Of course in Ireland
veal calves would not be like our formula fed white veal - but like the
"grass fed" veal recently in demand by gourmet chefs. So maybe food writers
just call it "beef", or perhaps it's still all being shipped to England.
Cooking methods were very primitive even for the well-to-do, and until very
recent times. Typically, there was a large fireplace in the kitchen with
chains from which to hang the big iron cauldron. A really well equipped
kitchen would also have a kettle, an iron griddle, an iron frying pan and
a bastable oven for baking soda bread and bastable cake. The photo shows a
type of bastable oven still available in North America. The legs hold it up
over hot coals and the rimmed lid holds more coals on top (photo borrowed
from Lodge
Manufacturing).
The English having cut down all the forests, the fires themselves were
built of peat cut from the bogs and dried. The fires were kept low,
appropriate for cooking over coals and hot ashes.
Food prepared in these kitchens was simple and had to be made in
large quantity due to the traditionally large size of the Irish family
- a result of playing Vatican roulette without understanding the rules. On
the other hand it is mostly quite edible, filling and enjoyable, though
high in calories.
From the early 20th century onward, efficient iron stoves with ovens and
ring tops for heating pots started to appear, and later became common. Today
the cauldron has been largely retired in favor of sauce pans, skillets and
ovens.
Recently, Ireland has become more prosperous, so enterprising restaurants
have been developing a new Irish cuisine. This new cuisine brings back many
of the pre-invasion and pre-potato ingredients, melds them with the more
recent potato based cuisine and incorporates foods and techniques from
foreign lands.
The future of this cuisine is uncertain as the technology companies
that brought this prosperity have been moving their operations to Poland
and the current international economic climate is not good - but at least
the potato crop hasn't failed.
Scotland
Article pending while I try to figure out how to make a traditional
haggis in California where it's illegal to sell sheep lungs.
Links
|
