GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF: BRITISH FOOD and IDENTIY THROUGH MEDIA by Xandria Lashea Outing a Thesis Submitted to the History Depart

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GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF: BRITISH FOOD AND IDENTIY THROUGH MEDIA

by Xandria Lashea Outing

A Thesis submitted to the History Department, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts in Public History

Chair of Committee: Dr. Sarah Fishman

Committee Member: Dr. Karl Ittmann

Committee Member: Dr. Mark Goldberg

University of Houston AUGUST 2020

DEDICATION

To my mom, family, and friends for their continued patience and tenacity as I entered this journey of graduate school and remaining dedicated to my dream with me!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you, Dr. Fishman, for your honesty, patience, and phenomenal editing skills. I am honored to have you as my advisor. Thank you for going out on a limb and venturing into a subject unfamiliar to you and being supportive of my work. Thank you to CLASS, and everyone involved, for the Dean’s Supplemental Grant. And to my committee, thank you for being flexible with me as my life plans changed and we had to adjust how we interacted during 2020.

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ABSTRACT

This thesis examines British food and identity through media as well as the reflection of that identity in the US through the lens of the Great British Bake Off (GBBO). It explores how British food and identity developed over time and by class. It then analyzes how a baking competition show came to define a British identity linked to baking. The thesis links the conceptualizations of British modernity to the evolution of media technology from mass-market cookbooks and newspaper recipes, to cooking shows broadcast over the radio and television and finally to the newest developments in digital/streaming media. Examining media evolution the global impact of British food and identity in the twenty-first century.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION...... i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... ii ABSTRACT ...... iii LIST OF FIGURES ...... v INTRODUCTION...... 1 I. Eating Like A Brit: Is There a British Cuisine? ...... 6 Twentieth Century Class Structure and Food ...... 7 The Twentieth Century: Rise of Dining Out ...... 9 The Changed Diet of the Working Class ...... 10 Breakfast of Champions ...... 13 The Modern British Lunch ...... 16 “Oh, Bring Us Some Figgy Pudding” ...... 19 II. British Food: The Cook, Celebrity Chef and Media ...... 24 Women, Cookery and Publication ...... 25 Radio, Broadcasting, and the BBC ...... 31 Food and Radio Broadcasting ...... 34 Food and Television ...... 39 III. Baking Competitions, Reality Television and The Great British Baking Show ...... 46 The U.S. Food Network ...... 48 The Great British Bake Off ...... 50 The Uniquely British Identity within GBBO ...... 57 The Spinoffs and Future of the GBBO ...... 65 IV. The Digital Age: The Future of Food Content ...... 69 Netflix and Baking Content ...... 70 YouTube and Food Content ...... 76 Apps & Food Content Future ...... 78 CONCLUSION ...... 83 REFERENCES ...... 85

Figure 1: Full English Breakfast ...... 15 Figure 2: Christmas Pudding Scene ...... 21 Figure 3: Cold Souchet of Salmon à la Mozart...... 29 Figure 4: Agnes B. Marshall ...... 31 Figure 5: Julia Childs at KUHT Station ...... 42 Figure 6: Great British Bake Off Series 6 Cast...... 55 Figure 7: Winner of Series 10 - David Atherton...... 58 Figure 8: Animation Drawing by Tom Hovey ...... 61 Figure 9: Nadiya Hussain’s Final Bake Animation by Tom Hovey ...... 64 Figure 10: Title card of The Great American Baking Show ...... 66 Figure 11: Nailed It Promotion Image ...... 72 Figure 12: Zumbo’s Just Dessert Factory ...... 75 Figure 13: SORTEDfood Members ...... 78

Introduction

While all humans consume food to survive, only humans adapt food from its natural state. Earliest written texts provide examples of specific foods, and eventually, food has been transformed into cuisine. Although we consume food to survive, cuisine is a style of cooking characterized by distinctive ingredients, techniques and dishes associated with a specific culture or geographic region. Throughout history and worldwide, numerous cuisines have developed to match the palate, local and regional ingredients of various places. Cuisine itself has never been static, carried with humans as they migrated and discovered new ingredients and preparations. Eventually, as Collins Dictionary defines it, “the cuisine of a country or district is the style of cooking that is characteristic of that place.”1

As I broached this topic, I was challenged to define British “cuisine,” and even to justify that name. In contrast to French cuisine, considered the top of haute cuisine that developed along with refined eating rituals, I was asked to truly think about what British cuisine was. How do people prepare food, why do they prepare certain foods, and who benefits from that preparation? That raised the biggest question: who decided that their cooking skills merited being written down and shared? I then began to think of food as always being connected to media that made food transparent and exposed it to a wider audience in simpler and easier means.

Although focusing primarily on the Great British Bake Off, my research engages at numerous points with the broader history of British food and cuisine. Suzanne Daly and Ross

G. Forman in their article on food and drink in the nineteenth century point out that until

1 “Cuisine Definition and Meaning: Collins English Dictionary,” Cuisine definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary (HarperCollins Publishers Ltd), accessed June 29, 2020, https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/cuisine.

2 recently, “[i]n many university courses in the humanities, ‘food studies’ was barely a recognized term, and one with an uncertain status, particularly within English studies.”2

However the literature on British food that has emerged since 2000 addresses a number of key areas that link to my research. In addition to Daly and Forman’s 2008 article, “Cooking

Culture: Situating Food and Drink in the Nineteenth Century,” in 2012 April Bullock published “Class, Taste, and Foreign Foods in Victorian Cookery Books” and Chris Otter published “The British Nutrition Transition and its Histories.” Together with John

Lawrence’s 2013 article, “Class, ‘Affluence’ and the Study of Everyday Life in Britain, c.

1930–64,” historians have explored issues of food, diet and class, particularly considering the working-class’s diet and nutrition in relation to its access to food.

Fish and chips in particular have been the topic of several studies. Not only have fish and chips become a key element of the working-class diet, the dish also links to broader issues: globalization, British trade, the fishing industry. John K. Walton, “Fish and Chips and

The British Working Class, 1870-1930, 2001,” argues that fish and chip shops, often run out of family shops, became an element of the working-class family economy that often began as a temporary way of supplementing the family income. This study addresses similar themes in arguing that a distinctive British cuisine developed by the early twentieth century.

Historians like Alan Warde, “Imagining British Cuisine: Representations of Culinary

Identity in the Good Food Guide, 1951–2007” from 2009, and Chris Otter have gone beyond the specifics of class and diet, examining the symbolic meanings of consumption and of specific styles of cooking and their relation to British identity. Given the current historical

2 Suzanne Daly and Ross G. Forman. "Introduction: Cooking Culture: Situating Food and Drink in the Nineteenth Century." Victorian Literature and Culture 36, no. 2 (2008): 363-73. Accessed July 26, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/40347194. P. 364.

3 emphasis on transnational and global history, historians have also explored the link between

Britain’s empire and its diet and cuisine. Globalization and empire clearly shaped British cuisine. Otter concludes that, “foodstuffs originally assembled and systematized during the

British nutrition transition have formed the raw material for a global diet which assumes many culinary guises.”3 Historians like Thomas Prasch, “Eating the World: London in 1851,”

(2008) and Elizabeth Buettner, “Going for an Indian”: South Asian Restaurants and the

Limits of Multiculturalism in Britain,” (2008) in particular consider the impact of India on

British cuisine. How have spices like curry and preparations been incorporated into British cuisine? Have they changed how the British public eats? Some scholars argue British cuisine has truly incorporated elements like Curry while Buettner and others have been more skeptical.

This study addresses all of these themes, class, diet, economic change, empire, and how they have all shaped British food and culinary traditions. Focusing on the linked development of food, cuisine and media, this thesis adds new insights. The role of print media, radio and television have all played an important role in the development of British cuisine, but the GBBO has had the largest impact. Its runaway success rested on its ability to forge a new British identity around baking and sweets. The hosts cut across social class, the contestants, drawn from across Britain, ordinary people, represent all classes and regions, including India. This thesis will examine the GBBO as the culmination of many trends in cooking, diet and the media and analyze how it redefined Britain’s relationship to food.

Food preparation and cuisine have also been shaped by the evolution of media, as publishing gave rise to cookbooks. With radio and television, food preparation, beyond

3 Chris Otter. “The British Nutrition Transition and Its Histories.” History Compass 10, no. 11 (2012): 812–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12001. P. 818.

4 instruction, became a form of entertainment that eventually merged with televised competition. The cooking instruction for most of human history has been done through verbal communication, passing information from parents to children. The rise of mass media dramatically changed how cooking instructions were shared. The rise of print media and literacy eventually led to books and newspapers sharing recipes with their readers. By the twentieth century, the development of radio and television led to the continued progression of how we share cooking instructions as a global community.

As I continued to think about the relationship between television and food, I had to trace back to the point in which food transformed from an everyday “civilian” activity to cooks becoming “A-List” celebrities. The Great British Bake Off provides a lens to better understand why food has become a pinnacle genre of television and why is it so fascinating as a mode of competition. Studying the Great British Bake Off was the perfect way to navigate food and media, and its birth, a re-sparking of long traditions of cooking competitions that were linked to local town fairs in England since the Middle Ages and revived after World War I. In parallel after World War I in the U.S. corporations sponsored competitions to increase sales. The success of the Great British Bake Off as it crossed into the United States to become the Great British Baking Show raised the topic of the trans-

Atlantic relationship of the United States and Great Britain regarding food and television. By the 1990s the two strands of media instruction and competition merged into reality television.

This thesis explores how and why cooking instruction was “dramatized” into competition television, while also trying to understand why, given the low regard for its culinary traditions, the UK took the lead, an unexpected surprise.

Chapter One will examine the history of what people in the UK ate, linking diet to class and tracing the impact of the significant changes during the nineteenth century, such as the Industrial Revolution and Empire. While Chapter One examines dishes and daily meals.

Dinner as a meal is missing because the chapter builds on the history of a few popular dishes while pushing towards the focus on desserts that inspired baking competitions. Chapter Two will explore how cooking instruction began appearing in newspapers and cookery books.

This chapter follows the natural transition of cooking instructions with the invention and rise of radio and television. There is a layered focus of cooking instruction often being undertaken or portrayed by women. Chapter Three will examine cooking competitions as they shifted from town/corporate sponsorships to televised cooking competition shows with the rise of cable television. The changes resulted in the rise of the Great British Bake Off.

Finally, Chapter Four will examine the most recent changes in television as the rise of streaming began to impact the way consumers expanded their cooking knowledge and consumption of cooking competitions. Chapter Four also considers a new mode of gathering cooking instruction, the expansion of cooking instruction through portable devices that are replacing traditional cookbooks.

Chapter One EATING LIKE A BRIT: IS THERE A BRITISH CUISINE?

We as people at the most basic level consume food to survive. As food historian

James P. Johnston notes in his preface, “Food is absolutely vital to man’s existence: without it he cannot live. It is therefore somewhat surprising to find that in the past historians have devoted only scant attention to this basic necessity of life.”4 Yet food has consistently played a dual role in which it is required to survive but is also connected to power, status, gender, and geography. For those of wealth or who could afford it, food became a source of pleasure.

Human communities around the world have developed different ways of using and preparing foods based on what is readily available to them. As history has demonstrated, travel and trade, like Marco Polo, have exposed people to new ingredients, some incorporated into local diets such as coffee, sugar, tea, potatoes, and corn. This introduction of new foods has allowed some cultures to develop an international ‘cuisine,’ like the French cuisine which has been influenced by Spain, Italy, Switzerland, German, and Belgium cultures. However,

England has not specifically been known to have an exciting culinary tradition. Yet, by the twenty-first century England, surprisingly, has become a leader in innovating a model for new culinary enterprise, the broadcast cooking competition.

Britain’s relationship with food in the twenty-first century came about in part owing to the way the English diet and relationship to food changed over the twentieth century.

Historian Thomas Prasch attributes the internationalization of British cookery to “[t]he consolidation of industrialism, and with it the shift of Britain from a self-sustaining agricultural producer to a consumer dependent upon an increasingly globalized

4 James P Johnston. A Hundred Years Eating: Food, Drink and the Daily Diet in Britain Since the Late Nineteenth Century. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1977. Preface.

7 marketplace.”5 So then, what was the English diet? Who ate what? How did that vary by social class, geography, over time? How did those changes impact preconceived cultural conceptions regarding traditional dishes, and what it meant to ‘eat like a Brit’?

Present-day Britain’s diet can be attributed to a century of social, political, technological and scientific changes during the twentieth century. Colin Tudge, a science writer who focuses on food, agriculture, genetics, and species diversity summarized the changes. “In the past one hundred years, fish and chips were born, porridge died, breakfast cornflakes and eggs and bacon acquired the status of ‘tradition’ and the middle class began to eat dinner in the evening.’”6 While the U.S. has long been seen as a “melting pot” of cuisines, the UK had similar experiences in the last century. More specifically, people in

England redesigned their daily and weekly eating routines and the types of food they cooked, influenced by new and outside cultural food traditions. Examining these dietary changes in general, as well as for various social groups will set the stage for more recent developments.

To understand the evolution of the stereotypical British diet the chapter will explore specific meals, who ate what, when and where, starting with the “traditional” English breakfast, fish and chips, the adoption of curry and Christmas pudding. By the twentieth century, these foods came to be seen as ultimately British.

Twentieth Century Class Structure and Food British society had long been deeply divided by wealth and status, with the determinants in some cases being by birth and others by economic situation.

When Edward VII ascended to the throne in 1901, Britain’s economic and social gaps were

5 Thomas Prasch. "EATING THE WORLD: LONDON IN 1851." Victorian Literature and Culture 36, no. 2 (2008): 587-602. doi:10.1017/S1060150308080352. P. 589. 6 Christopher Wardle, Changing Food Habits in the UK. London: Earth Resources Research Ltd, 1977. P. 6. (The writer quoted was Tudge C. from the World Medicine, 25 September 1975 titled “A Pea is a Pea is a Duck.”)

8 reflected in diets. At the top of the pyramid, the aristocracy set social standards that the middle-class hoped to emulate. The middle class itself was divided by wealth, ranging from rich entrepreneurs to middling shop keepers. Even the working-class encompassed a wide variation in status and income, Johnston elaborates. “At the top of the labour tree stood the

10-15 per cent of the working class who formed the labour ‘aristocracy’ or elite… Below them came the semi-skilled, typically a machine operator… Next came the unskilled, who included amongst their ranks general labourers, navvies, domestic servants and agricultural labourers.”3 Wages within the working-class varied dramatically between the labor aristocracy and less-skilled workers.4 Thus from top to bottom of the social ladder, inequalities in income separated the diets.

The aristocracy had access to large quantities of food. King Edward VII set the culinary dining trends for the Edwardian era’s aristocracy beginning in 1901. Many aristocratic families for dinner parties adopted Service à la russe. It entailed anywhere from eight to thirteen courses. Unlike the prior dining style, Service à la française in which all the dishes were served at the same time when dining Service à la russe, the butler and footman served each course sequentially. A popular recent illustration of that style appeared regularly in the popular television series Downton Abby. Based on a research project of culinary historian Emily A. Baines, she introduces Downton Abbey fans to a typical menu for Service à la russe in The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook:

• Hors d'oeuvres varies (often oysters or caviar) • Two soups (one thick, one clear) • Two kinds of fish (one boiled, the other fried) • An entrée • The joint, AKA a large piece of meat cooked in one piece • Roast and salad • Vegetables • A hot dessert

• Ice cream and wafers • Fresh and dried fruits • Coffee and liqueurs7

Baines's goal for the unofficial cookbook was to replicate some of the recipes featured in the show but adapt them to a twenty-first-century user-friendly recipe. For example, one of the

Hors d'oeuvres recipes is for mushrooms vol-au-vent and Baines indicates the recipe will yield 4-6 servings and uses frozen puff pastry dough, egg, water, unsalted butter, garlic cloves, fresh thyme, white button or cremini mushrooms, all-purpose flour, whole milk, heavy cream, kosher salt and black pepper to taste.8 While this list of ingredients does not seem overtly-complex, puff pastry dough if made from scratch requires tools, time and patience which when in a bind for time, or find making any doughs difficult at present, can be substituted with store-bought replacements.

While they could not have indulged in that elaborate service, the middle-class sought to emulate the aristocratic dining style, hosting dinner parties in which the mistress of the house displayed her family’s savoir faire, whether she or, more likely the staff, had prepared the meal. The ability to host a proper meal displayed the family’s status and economic well- being. For these dinner parties, eight to ten courses were served with courses varying with the family’s means.

The Twentieth Century: Rise of Dining Out Dining out also became very popular for the middle and upper classes during the early twentieth century. Johnston explains that “[t]he regularity and quality of meals eaten

7 Emily Ansara Baines, The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook: From Lady Mary's Crab Canapes to Mrs. Patmore's Christmas Pudding: More Than 150 Recipes from Upstairs and Downstairs. (Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2012) P. 10. 8 Emily Ansara Baines, The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook, p.28

10 outside the home varied with income. There was, in fact, a scale of restaurants to match the various levels on the income scale. At the very top came the best London establishments such as the Ritz and the Carlton Hotel…”9 In fine dining establishments such as the Ritz and

Carlton Hotel, guests enjoyed French style, haute cuisine, in which food is meticulously prepared and presented at high prices. The middle-class rarely engaged with haute cuisine which for many was outside their means, but on occasion dined out at more moderate restaurants with reasonably priced food.

The Changed Diet of the Working Class How did dining habits link to social class? At times they emulated aristocracy, but the middle-class daily dining habits were less elaborate. To this point, historian Chris Otter argues that the “[a]rchetypal ‘British diet’ was, primarily, a working-class diet: sugary tea, white bread, margarine, condensed milk, fish and chips and Sunday dinner.” He argues that going up the social scale, “[d]iets became more diverse and richer in animal proteins while fewer calories came from bread: such diets were more ‘cosmopolitan’ and more likely to display ‘continental’ influences.” Lastly, he sheds light on a working-class trend related to nutrition. Because adult men’s higher wages were critical to family survival, Otter explains,

“Food was also consumed differentially within families: women and children ate more bread and sugar, and men more meat.”10

In contrast, James Johnston, in A Hundred Years Eating: Food, Drink and the Daily

Diet in Britain Since the Late Nineteenth Century described what became by the late

9 James P Johnston. A Hundred Years Eating: Food, Drink and the Daily Diet in Britain Since the Late Nineteenth Century. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1977. p.7. 10 Chris Otter. “The British Nutrition Transition and Its Histories.” History Compass 10, no. 11 (2012): 812–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12001. P. 813.

11 nineteenth century a more substantial middle-class diet. A typical dinner included four courses, “[p]ea and ham soup for starters, followed by braised sweetbreads, roast fillet of beef with cauliflower and mashed potatoes, then, perhaps, a savoury of sardines on toast, followed by cheese and dessert.”11 While Johnston acknowledged a middle-class diet, the working-class diet that Otter described spoke to the majority of English diets. Many working- class families still did not consume three meals a day, seven days a week. Even as late as the

1910s the weekly meal menu for the working-class only contained a small breakfast,

‘dinner,’ tea, and a light supper in the evening.

Johnston also describes typical meal patterns for working-class families. A February

1901 meal menu shows that for the working-class ‘dinner-,’ was served midday. The most common menu items for dinner included bacon and potatoes, stew or soups, bread, and tea.

Supper then became a more impactful evening ‘snack’ for the working-class by 1912 as they consumed more tea and bread and occasionally soup in the evenings.

As Johnston’s work clarifies, while the working-class diet in the 1910s was more plentiful, it still mainly consisted of staples like bread, bacon, cheese, potatoes, and tea.

Johnston’s diet reveals a lack of healthy proteins, fruits, and vegetables. For most workers, they could not supplement food by farming their own produce to sustain their daily diets.

Despite rising wages and greater food availability, the working-class still struggled with hunger and malnourishment. Families unable to afford food even at newly reduced prices, most often unable to store food without access to a refrigerator, survived on minimal, basic food staples. Many working-class families spent more than half of their weekly budget on food, and still, they were often not able to feed the whole family appropriately.

11 Johnston. A Hundred Years Eating, 1977. P. 8.

Gender also shaped dietary differences for working-class and lower-class families.

Food in poorer families varied by sex because nourishing the hard-working and higher-paid laborers was critical if they were to bring adequate wages into the home. When necessary the male head of household and working men of the family dined before women. With cycles of unemployment many working-class communities in Britain experienced hunger well into the twentieth century. In response, James Vernon explains in Hunger: A Modern History, “ [t]he politics of hunger in Britain centered on the unemployed and took the more practical form of the hunger march.”12 According to Vernon the earliest reported hunger march in Britain, in

May 1905 started with one hundred and fifteen men unemployed boot-workers unable to feed themselves or their families. “[D]etermined to march from Raund in Leicestershire to

London, to petition the War Office against undercutting the prices recommended by the

National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives.”13 The workers objected to this underhanded practice that forced them to work and live on wages that did not ensure them adequate food.

Inexpensive food changed the working-class diet, allowing working-class families to purchase more food. However, despite technological advances in refrigerators, food transportation, and working-class access to more affordable food. The working-class family’s diet remained lacking in nutrition until the late nineteenth century. While working-class families attempted to feed and nourish their bodies, the standard three meals a day guideline that was established often incorporated different dishes for each social status.

The significant difference between middle-class and lower-class meal consumption rested on what was being consumed rather than how much. In majority, the working-class

12 James Vernon, Hunger: A Modern History. London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007. P. 55. 13 James Vernon, Hunger: A Modern History, P.55

13 diet in the mid-nineteenth century consisted of bread, bacon, cheese, potatoes, and tea. Over time as wages began to rise and working-class families’ standard of living increased along with increasing imports in wheat, sugar, cheese, bacon, ham and lard brought the working- class man’s food bill down by about thirty percent.14 Lower middle-class families preferred if they could manage it, have three meals a day. From minimum to extravagant, all meals each met varying criteria during the twentieth century.

Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast looked very different for each social class during the twentieth century.

Previously few families consumed breakfast predominantly due to daily schedules or routines based upon working hours. The history of English breakfast dates to the early fourteenth century, when the gentry invented the uniquely traditional English breakfast. The gentry, holding onto traditional English country lifestyle, considered what a proper Anglo-Saxon breakfast would require alongside social hospitality. Gatherings by the gentry, replicating old

Anglo-Saxon tradition related to hospitality, provided hearty and full breakfast for visitors passing through, friends, and even neighbors. A ‘full English breakfast’ provided the gentry an opportunity to show off meats, vegetables, and ingredients from surrounding lands.

Breakfast made its earliest debut for all social classes around the seventeenth century according to TV chef Clarissa Dickson Wright.15 For the aristocracy by the nineteenth century, during the aristocracy’s extended hunting parties that lasted days or even weeks, up to 24 dishes would be served for breakfast.”16 The Industrial Revolution represented a

14 The stat of 30% and the import food list is combined with my own thoughts, in order to maintain factual numbers and historical accuracy. (Johnston. A Hundred Years Eating, P.9.) 15 Denise Winterman, “Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner: Have We Always Eaten Them?” BBC News (BBC, November 15, 2012), https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20243692) 16 Denise Winterman, “Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner: Have We Always Eaten Them?”

14 turning point for working people – it set and pushed them to rise earlier for work. To sustain the newly amended workdays, workers had to eat enough in the morning and afternoon.

Not until the Victorian era, did the ‘full English breakfast’ get a revamp because the gentry was overtaken by the new middle class that was growing wealthier. They benefited from the Industrial Revolution and the British Empire reducing costs and making foods available. Even though not gentry themselves, the middle class wanted to emulate the aristocracy, so they examined what gentry ate adopting traditions of the country home and

English breakfast as an important social event. “For aspiring and wealthy Victorians, breakfast became an opportunity to demonstrate their wealth, good taste and social upbringing. It is the Victorians who took the tradition of the Anglo-Saxon gentry breakfast and raised it up into an art form, going to great lengths to secure the more exotic and traditional ingredients and have them prepared in the right way.”17

By the Edwardian era (1901-1910) the standard ‘traditional English breakfast,’ had come into being known colloquially as a ‘fry-up.’ By now it is considered a British national institution. However, the “traditional breakfast” currently includes fried eggs, sausage, back bacon, tomatoes, baked beans, mushrooms, fried bread, and/or a slice of white with black pudding, accompanied by tea or coffee with toast. By the twenty-first century, the full

English breakfast often includes hash browns. Even the ‘traditional’ breakfast varied by region. The Scottish spin on the traditional English breakfast included a tattie scone (potato scone) or even haggis and the Welsh feature laverbread.

17 Guise Bule, “History of The Traditional English Breakfast,” History of The Traditional English Breakfast, accessed March 3, 2020, https://englishbreakfastsociety.com/full-english-breakfast.html)

Figure 1 When the Victorian era ended the Edwardian era revision regarding the ‘traditional

English breakfast’ expanded beyond the home and was served in hotels, bed and breakfast establishments, and trains. For the working-class, the English breakfast was served in greasy spoon cafe’s (a small, cheap eatery that specializes in fried foods and/or home-cooked meals). These cafes, not to be confused with coffee shops, were in industrial estates, close to ports, commercial, manufacturing, and industrial centers. Although these greasy spoon cafes have since fallen out of fashion with the decline of industrial centers, they once were the best place to get a real English breakfast cooked and served by real English working-class people.

The middle-class considered the ‘traditional English breakfast’ a standard part of the family’s meals. Unlike earlier trends that rested on copying elites, for breakfast the working- class truly made the ‘traditional English breakfast’ a national staple. The ‘traditional English breakfast’ held an important place in the working-class diet as they often previously consumed a light breakfast, dinner, and supper. Not only could they afford the foods, but the traditional English breakfast was also filling and provided a substantial meal for the working-

16 class people who often started work early and had no break. After breakfast, the next meal of the day also varied by social class.

The Modern British Lunch

Another novelty of the twentieth century was a noon-day meal called lunch, a new term. For centuries, even dating back to the Roman era, the meal eaten in the afternoon was called dinner. BBC journalist Denise Winterman explains that the word may be derived from the word "nuncheon," an old Anglo-Saxon word which meant a quick snack between meals that you can hold in your hands.”18 As it did for breakfast, the Industrial

Revolution launched lunch as a part of the daily diet. With the long workdays workers needed to eat midday. In addition to bringing food from home, increasingly midday meals came from outside the home, creating a new phenomenon that would come to be classic Brit food for the working-class.

The Working-Class Lunch – Fish and Chips

Fish and Chips, a midday meal, gained popularity in the early twentieth century.

Established during the late 1880s, affordable fish and chips came to be viewed as, the “poor man’s” meal. With new deep-sea trawlers to collect abundant cod and steam railways to transport it, prices declined. The traditional preparation of, fish and chips involved fresh cod deep-fried and soused in vinegar, served with chips (known in the U.S. as French fries) smothered in salt all wrapped in a newspaper. Historian John K. Walton describes fish and chips as “[i]n many ways the pioneer fast-food industry. It became an essential component of working-class diet and popular culture in parts of London, and over wide areas of industrial

18 Denise Winterman, “Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner: Have We Always Eaten Them?” BBC News. BBC, November 15, 2012. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20243692.

17 midland and northern England and southern Scotland, in the early decades of the twentieth century.”19

Fish and chips fueled the working-class during the Industrial Revolution. Not only was it inexpensive, but it was also an easy meal to purchase with fish and chip shops opening across Britain, often run from front rooms and street food stands. Walton points out that

“[t]his was a weekly indulgence, rather than an occasional extravaganza; and it confirms rather than challenges the impression that fish and chips was a regular addition to the diet of a large proportion of the industrial working class from Edwardian times onward.”20 Because of the abundance of fish and potatoes, even during World War II, fish and chips were amongst the few food items not rationed becoming a critical part of many working-class families’ weekly diet.

Fish and chips had not only become a key part of the working-class diet, some working-class families supplemented their income by running fish and chip shops from their homes. As Walton indicates, “Fish frying was not always, and for a long time perhaps not usually, a full-time occupation. Nor was it a male preserve, especially when it was used to augment the family budget rather than as the main source of household income.”21

Lunch, the Middle-Class and Curry

Social class clearly shaped the development of British cuisine. Yet another critical element that shaped British cuisine was the incorporation of curry into the English diet following the East India Company’s expansion. Men returning home wanted to recreate their time spent in India. “As early as 1733, curry was served in the Norris Street Coffee

19 John K. Walton. "Fish and Chips and the British Working Class, 1870-1930." Journal of Social History 23, no. 2 (1989): 243-66. Accessed July 26, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/3787879. P. 243. 20 John K. Walton. "Fish and Chips and the British Working Class, 1870-1930." P. 256. 21 John K. Walton. "Fish and Chips and the British Working Class, 1870-1930." P. 251.

House in Haymarket. By 1784, curry and rice had become specialties in some popular restaurants in the area around London’s Piccadilly.”22 A curry dish first appeared in a 1747 cookery book, The Art of Cookery Made Plain & Easy by Hannah Glasse. Her book included three recipes for Indian pilau. In an excerpt from the recipe “To make a Currey the

Indian Way,” To that Glasse added Indian spices, listing “[a]n ounce of turmeric, a large spoonful of ginger and beaten pepper together, and a little salt to your palate.”23

Early in Queen Victoria’s reign, the import of turmeric tripled, and the use of Indian spices rapidly expanded beyond the aristocracy leading to the rising popularity of dishes with

Indian spices. When Queen Victoria adopted the title Empress of India on May 1, 1876, eating curry became all the rage amongst the aristocracy. The wealthy and aristocracy found it fashionable to have a cook prepare Indian inspired dishes. Queen Victoria, Victoria employed Indian servants. One among them, a 24-year-old named Abdul Karim, known as the Munshi, became her ‘closest friend.’ According to Victoria’s biographer A.N. Wilson,

Karim impressed the monarch with chicken curry with dal and pilau.”24 Curry dishes grew increasingly popular over the nineteenth century as ginger, cayenne, turmeric, cumin and fenugreek were imported into England.

By the second half of the twentieth century, the growing number of Indian migrants in England resulted in the large-scale development of Indian inspired restaurants. Historian

Elizabeth Buettner describes the 1960s and 1970s as a “[t]ransitional phase in the evolution of Britain’s curry house culture. While working-class, café-style restaurants continued to serve Asian customers, many establishments opened or adapted their offerings to attract a

22 Debabrata Mukherjee, “History of the British Curry.” 23 Debabrata Mukherjee, “History of the British Curry,” 24 Debabrata Mukherjee, “History of the British Curry,”

19 white clientele and spread from areas with large immigrant concentrations to become a nationwide presence. The approximately 300 curry restaurants that existed in 1960 grew to

1,200 in 1970 and reached 3,000 by 1980.”25 After the 1970s, Indian restaurants incorporated a newly adapted English version of curry, a sweet and thicker version of Indian curry which is sourer. By the twenty-first century, “[f]ormer Labor Secretary Robin Cook in 2001 that

Chicken Tikka Masala was ‘Britain’s true national dish.’”26 Curry has deeply rooted itself into the English diet but curry, as a dish has been modified in each region of the world curry, is consumed.

“Oh, Bring Us Some Figgy Pudding” Although the British, imitated French pastries and desserts, Britain had its own traditional desserts dating back to the middle ages. Starting with older English baking traditions, those desserts eventually reflected the influence of the British empire. One specific recipe, Plum Pudding, reflects Britain’s history and culture. In its medieval form pudding traditionally included, spices and fruits mixed with meats, grains, and vegetables, packed into an animal stomach and combined to make a savory “plum pottage.” Plum Pudding’s ingredients represented the British Empire and reflected Victorian conceptions about the world. Freelance writer Nate Barksdale describes it as, “[a] globelike mass, studded with

25 Elizabeth Buettner. "“Going for an Indian”: South Asian Restaurants and the Limits of Multiculturalism in Britain." The Journal of Modern History 80, no. 4 (2008): 865-901. Accessed July 26, 2020. doi:10.1086/591113. P. 879. Statistics from: “Curry Statistics,” in The Cobra Indian Lager Good Curry Restaurant Guide, ed. Pat Chapman (London, 1991): P. 18.

26 Emily Ansara Baines, The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook: From Lady Mary's Crab Canapes to Mrs. Patmore's Christmas Pudding: More Than 150 Recipes from Upstairs and Downstairs. (Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2012)) P. 68 (This page follows with a recipe for Edwardian Chicken Tikka Masala).

20 savory bits from distant colonies, bound together by a steamed and settled matrix of

Englishness.”27

Barksdale explains that the term plum, from the medieval era to the present was “[a] generic term for any dried fruit—most commonly raisins and currants, with prunes and other dried, preserved or candied fruit added when available. By the end of the 16th century, dried fruit was more plentiful in England and plum pudding made the shift from savory to sweet.”28 Plum Pudding which had been prepared throughout the year became a part of

Christmas tradition around the late-1830s, hence Christmas Pudding becoming another pseudonym for plum pudding. Historian Lizzie Collingham explains in The Taste of Empire,

“From the 1830s, specially written Christmas books, short stories, and periodical pieces were published every December; in them, the Victorians reinvented Christmas as a cozy celebration of Englishness. Families were portrayed gathered together to overindulge in roast beef and most particularly in plum pudding.”29

27 Nate Barksdale, “The History of Christmas Pudding,” History.com (A&E Television Networks, December 19, 2014), https://www.history.com/news/the-holiday-history-of-christmas-pudding) 28 Nate Barksdale, “The History of Christmas Pudding,” History.com (A&E Television Networks, December 19, 2014), https://www.history.com/news/the-holiday-history-of-christmas-pudding) 29 E. M. Collingham, The Taste of Empire: How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World (New York: Basic Books, 2017)) P. 263.

Figure 2 The Holiday Book for Christmas and the New Year, published in 1852, targeted the middle-class who had more leisure time and income.30 The book was meant for entertainment but also provided Christmas etiquette and customs.31 Figure two shows a mother alongside her children preparing to make a Christmas pudding while the daughters attempt to help prepare but watch in earnest while their mother mixes the pudding and their younger brothers are causing chaos by being rowdy. An article from publication 1848, published in the

Illustrated London News, bragged, “… the French have no idea how to make a plum pudding, but some friendly genius instructed the English in the art … the plum pudding symbolizes so much English antiquity – English superstition – English enterprise – English

30 This image was accessed via, public domain, from the British Library webpage. www.bl.uk 31 “A Holiday Book for Christmas and the New Year,” The British Library (The British Library, November 30, 2017), https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/a-holiday-book-for-christmas-and-the-new-year)

22 generosity – and above all, English taste.”32 This in part, represented the English belief that this particular dessert was uniquely British and could not be replicated in its true form by the

French. Plum pudding, something England’s working-class could afford, became an important symbol for England’s family-friendly Christmas tradition.

This important symbol of Victorian Christmas became affordable to England’s poor because of the development, of the Christmas Club. Advertised in markets and pubs, local

Christmas Clubs allowed working-class people to deposit a small amount into an account that they could use by Christmas to pay for the ingredients for a Christmas pudding. During the century and half of their use, “Raffle prizes [were] also associated with the custom. ‘Goose clubs’ provided a goose and a bottle of spirits. ‘Pudding clubs’ provided a way to save for the

Christmas pudding.”33

The British Empire brought to the British diet a melting pot of colonial recipes, spices, meats, fruits, and vegetables. The influence of non-English food traditions transformed English taste and sparked interest in new and fresh food ideas. Dishes like curry eventually came to be incorporated into Brit food culture. By the late nineteenth century, the

Industrial Revolution increased the overall accessibility of foods and lowered food prices.

Those changes altered the diet of both the middle-class and the working-class. Parallel to

Empire and the Industrial Revolution, another key element that also profoundly reshaped food culture in Britain was the advance of media. Cooking and cuisine intersected with new forms of media. Cooking adapted from books to radio and television intersecting in each

32 Illustrated London News 1848 – Cited in Simon Callow, “Dickens and the Victorian Christmas Feast,” The British Library (The British Library, November 30, 2017), https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and- victorians/articles/a-victorian-christmas-feast) 33 G. Q. Bowler, The World Encyclopedia of Christmas. McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.30000077068165.

23 media domain to further spread to the public the dichotomy of foods’ simplistic yet complex transformation that to the present day expands the universal inclusivity of food.

Chapter 2 British Food: The Cook, Celebrity Chef and Media

When we consider the era in which cooking information and recipes first became an element of public entertainment, we must contemplate why it evolved outside the aristocracy and upper-class. The rising rate of literacy in the middle-class in parallel with the creation of regular periodicals can be linked to this rise of cooking information and recipes becoming a form of public entertainment. Early newspapers, political or satire, were consumed primarily by wealthy, educated men. However, by the nineteenth century, when the Industrial

Revolution had reached its peak, the growing literacy related to middle-class women made them a new demographic target for periodicals and newspapers that presented advice about domesticity, household management, and entertainment. While some middle-class women cooked or cleaned themselves, it was more likely that upper-middle-class women oversaw a staff of maids and cooks. Magazines began to include a wide variety of advice and information about cooking and, eventually, recipes. Historian April Bullock argues that cookbooks played a large role in “[c]reating and perpetuating distinctions between English and foreign, exotic and familiar, upper class and lower. As cookbook publication proliferated in the nineteenth century, general works that sought to instruct women from a variety of classes about cookery and household management became bestsellers, as did books written by celebrity chefs.”34

Cooking advice and recipes from the 1850s until the end of the 1980s as a source of public entertainment transitioned from books and newspapers to radio then to television. The changes will provide a broader understanding of why over almost a century and a half,

34 April Bullock. The Cosmopolitan Cookbook, Food, Culture & Society, 15:3 (2012): 437- 454, DOI: 10.2752/175174412X13276629245966 P. 437.

England had yet another revolution that changed England’s relationship to food consumption.

This chapter will analyze specific publications, starting with England’s most popular household management books in the nineteenth century. It will then move to the twentieth century to look at later cookbooks, cookery schools, radio and television. “For middle-class

Victorians,” as Bullock points out, “cookbooks supplied all kinds of domestic advice, much of it aimed to teach women how to entertain in a socially acceptable way while not damaging either budget or health.”35 This chapter will elaborate on how, both domestically and in relation to the U.S., England’s cuisine evolved when radio and television became the main source of distributing cooking advice, information, and recipes.

Women, Cookery and Publication

Published in 1861 with highly structured recipes and illustrations with monochrome and color plates, the Book of Household Management was aimed at a growing class of women who for the first time were moving away from their mothers into new cities or towns and had no one to turn to for advice on household management. In the preface of the first edition, Beeton writes, “I have always thought that there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife’s badly-cooked dinners and untidy ways. Men are now so well served out of doors, – at their clubs, well-ordered taverns, and dining-houses, that, in order to compete with the attractions of these places, a mistress must be thoroughly acquainted with the theory and practice of cookery, as well as be perfectly conversant with all the other arts of making and keeping a comfortable home.”36 One piece of advice that Beeton gave to the mistress regarding a family dinner at home was, “[t]hat for both mistress and servants, as

35 April Bullock. The Cosmopolitan Cookbook, Food, Culture & Society. P. 438. 36 Isabelle Mary Beeton. The Book of Household Management. London; New York: Ward, Lock and Co., 1880. Nineteenth Century Collections Online (accessed April 8, 2020). p.III.

26 well in small as large households, it will be found by far the better plan, to cook and serve dinner, and to lay tablecloth and the sideboard, with the same cleanliness, neatness, and scrupulous exactness, whether it be for the mistress herself alone, a small family, or for

‘company.’”37

The entire Book of Household Management had information and advice for the mistress of the house, housekeeper, cook, kitchen-maid, butler, footman, coachmen, valet, upper and under housemaids, lady’s-maid, maid-of-all-work, laundry-maid, nurse and nurse- maid, monthly wet and sick nurses, as well as sanitary, medical and legal memoranda with a history of origin, properties and uses of all things connected with home life and comfort.38

For example, addressing the housekeeper, Beeton states, “As second in command in the house, except in large establishments, where there is a house-steward, the housekeeper must consider herself as the immediate representative of her mistress, and bring to the management of the household all those qualities of honesty, industry, and vigilance in the same degree as if she were at the head of her own family.”39 Although Beeton’s Book of

Household Management, included many recipes, some scholars have challenged Beeton’s recipes, questioning, whether they were Isabella’s creation because it was rumored that she was not a keen cook. Kathryn Hughes states, “Some of her sources date back to the mid-17th century, although she also copied work from more recent cookery writers including Mrs.

Raffald and Eliza Acton. She was able to do this because copyright law was weak, and it was

– and still is – hard to prove originality in a cookery recipe.”40

37 Isabelle Mary Beeton. The Book of Household Management. p.16. 38 Isabelle Mary Beeton. The Book of Household Management. Title-page. 39 Isabelle Mary Beeton. The Book of Household Management. p.19 40 Kathryn Hughes, “Mrs Beeton and the Art of Household Management,” The British Library (The British Library, March 7, 2014), https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/mrs-beeton-and-the-art-of- household-management).

The Book of Household Management in its first edition sold over 60,000 copies within the first year. By 1868 the number of copies sold was close to two million.41 After

Beeton’s death on February 6, 1865, due to complications from childbirth, her book continued to sell steadily. One year after Beeton’s death, Samuel Beeton sold all his copyrights to his publications to pay off debt, selling the Book of Household Management to

Ward Lock & Co. Under this new publishing company in 1907, the book reached its peak with seventy-four chapters and over 2000 pages. Between 1875 and 1914 Beeton’s book was the most popular book to go to for consultation on household management. Revisions of

Beeton’s book have continued through present day, with varied abridged and edited versions.

Agnes B. Marshall, born in 1855 in England, at the age of 30 with her husband purchased the National Training School of Cookery in London (1883) and renamed it

Marshall’s School of Cookery. As a businesswoman, Marshall sold skillets, ice cream molds and cooking ingredients such as branded food coloring, baking powder and gelatin.42 After

Marshall opened her cookery school she published her first cookery book Ices Plain and

Fancy: The Book of Ices with an excess of 24,000 copies in 1885. As a cook and teacher,

Marshall was also an inventor. In 1885 she was granted a patent for an improved ice cream machine that would freeze a pint of ice cream in five minutes. The following year Marshall contributed weekly to the magazine The Table that ran from 1886-1939. In a 1901 issue of

The Table, Marshall suggested using ‘liquid air’ to freeze the ice cream for dinner parties.

41 BBC Archived, “History - Mrs Beeton,” BBC (BBC, N.d.), https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/beeton_mrs.shtml. 42 Erin Blakemore, “Meet the Martha Stewart of the Victorian Era,” History.com (A&E Television Networks, August 22, 2017), https://www.history.com/news/meet-the-martha-stewart-of-the-victorian-era)

In her second cookbook, Mrs. A B Marshall’s Book of Cookery (1888), Marshall insists, “Neither have any of the recipes herein been learnt or gathered from any books, but they are the result of practical training and lessons, through several years, from leading

English and Continental authorities, as well as a home experience earlier than I can well recall… no perfect cook was ever yet made from mere book study.”43 Marshall’s creation of complex and intricate dishes were designed for elaborate tables filled with many dishes the household staff would prepare. Bullock suggests that although “[o]ne strategy for selling cookbooks to the middle classes was to limit expense and the time and labor involved in food preparation,” beyond cheap food, “[u]nfamiliar foods that could take considerable time and resources to prepare also had some appeal.”44 Marshall published complex cookery books while managing multiple publications and an entrepreneurial career.

One of Marshall’s dishes for fish, ‘Cold Souchet of Salmon à la Mozart’ is a three- part dish that requires the preparation of salmon, stock for Souchet, and vegetables for

Souchet. The ingredients and number of steps to prepare the dish would require at minimum a small staff and a generous food budget. The entire dish as Marshall dictates to the preparer in Mrs. A B Marshall’s Book of Cookery:

Take a nice piece of fresh salmon and cut from it some neat fillets not quite a quarter of an inch thick, bat them out with a cold wet chopping knife, season them lightly with salt and Marshall’s coralline pepper, curl each piece up into a round, and tie each little band of buttered paper; place these in a stewpan with a little lemon juice and about half a gill of cold water, cover with a buttered paper, and cook in a moderate oven for about fifteen minutes; then set them aside till cold, remove the papers, and place each fillet in a little glass or china cup; cover them with some clear fish stock prepared as below, let this cool, then sprinkle each with some little cut pieces of

43 A. B. Marshall. Preface to Mrs. A.B. Marshall’s Cookery Book. Marshall’s School of Cookery: -- Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1887. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.31822031037997. 44 April Bullock. The Cosmopolitan Cookbook, Food, Culture & Society, 15:3 (2012): 437- 454, DOI: 10.2752/175174412X13276629245966 P. 438.

truffle and the vegetables prepared as below. Serve one cup to each person for dinner, luncheon, or any cold service.45

Figure 3 Dishes such as this one were then taught at her cookery school and provided a way for middle-class women to not only show off their social status but also their good taste. The school offered daily, monthly, semester or year-long courses for women cooks wanting to increase their skills, middle-class women “[d]esiring to run a tip-top household,” and even for aristocratic women who cooked as a hobby.46 The school’s curriculum included, as author

Evangeline Holland notes, “[s]pecialty instruction in cooking, including lessons in curry from an English colonel who served in India and classes in French haute cuisine taught by a

Cordon Bleu graduate.”47 Marshall’s cooking school helped housewives expand their knowledge of cooking, and provided servants with the ability to aid in the complexity of haute cuisine that was being served in aristocratic households. Marshall’s National Training

School of Cookery not only provided instruction, but she also ran an employment agency that assisted students seeking employment in wealthy households. The cookery school at its peak had nearly 2000 students.

Dubbed Queen of Ices by her community due to her specialty in making ice cream and other frozen desserts, some scholars argue that Marshall may have invented the edible ice cream cone since the recipe appears in her second cookbook, Mrs. A.B. Marshall's Book

45 A. B. Marshall. Preface to Mrs. A.B. Marshall’s Cookery Book. p.83 46 Evangeline Holland, Edwardian England: A Guide to Everyday Life, 1900-1914 (Plum Bun Publishing, 2014)) Chapter Cooking & Eating. p.28. 47 Holland, Edwardian England: A Guide to Everyday Life, 1900-1914. p.28.

30 of Cookery (1888). The recipe cornet à la crème as described by Marshall once prepared,

“[t]hese can be kept any length of time in a tin box in a dry place. Ornament the edges with a little Royal icing by means of a bag and pipe, and then dip the icing into different coloured sugars; fill them with whipped cream sweetened and flavoured with vanilla, using a forcing bag and pipe for the purpose, and arrange them in a pile on a dish-paper or napkin. These cornets can also be filled with any cream or water-ice or set custard or fruits, and served for a dinner, luncheon, or supper dish.”48 Made with finely chopped almonds, flour, castor sugar, an egg, salt, and orange flower water, once the ingredients are mixed and baked for three to four minutes in the oven, the paste is then pressed between two cornet tins to create the shape of the cone.

Marshall’s third published book, Mrs. A B Marshall’s Larger Cookery Book (1891) was followed by her final book Fancy Ices in 1894 which sold 5000 copies. By this time

Marshall had risen to the level of a celebrity cook as she revolutionized home cooking, taught lectures, and participated in charity work. Fancy Ices was a follow up to the first Ices Plain and Fancy: The Book of Ices but was her most popular book. Described by food author John

Deith the appeal for Fancy Ices was drawn from “The cover, in blue on a silver background, depicts a polar bear standing on an ice floe holding a tray of ices. There is a familiar clear prose and superb illustrations. In particular, a lovely drawing of a woman standing on a chair spinning sugar. The recipes are as ever clear, crisp and accurate.”49 Upon Marshall’s death in

1905 her husband attempted to maintain the business she operated, but without her, the business failed. The rights to her books were sold in by 1928 to the same publisher Beeton’s

48 A. B. Marshall. Mrs. A.B. Marshall’s Cookery Book. p.403. 49 Deith, John S. Cooks & Other People: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, 1995. Edited by Harlan Walker. Totnes, England: Prospect Books, 1996. p.108.

31 books were sold to, Ward Lock & Co.50 The cookery school closed at the outbreak of World

War II.

Figure 4 Radio, Broadcasting, and the BBC Given the popularity of cookery books, publications, and newspapers the next medium to share cooking advice was naturally the radio; a new media outlet that was able to access a much larger audience. Cookery books, publications and magazines were often only accessible to the wealthy and middle-class who were able to read and afford published cookbooks. According to Ahmet Ziyaeddin, operator of London’s oldest fish and chip shop, for the working-class newspapers were used to wrap up fish and chips at no extra cost.51 The radio granted the working and lower classes the ability to participate in daily news and receive information once only available in newspapers.

50 Deith, John S. Cooks & Other People. p.110. 51 “What Happened to Newspaper Wrapped Fish and Chips?” The Food Chain (blog). BBC Sounds, November 1, 2017. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p05lq6yq.

The nineteenth-century invention of the radio brought with it three distinctive phases: electromagnetic waves and experimentation; wireless communication and technical development; and radio broadcasting and commercialization. The third phase, radio broadcasting and commercialization, by the 1920s was distinctly clear and beyond the simple transmission of information and messages. As a result, companies began to form broadcasting programming. The British Broadcasting Company began on October 18, 1922, and broadcast its first-ever radio broadcast on November 14, 1922. The BBC was created by a group of leading wireless manufacturers, including Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, a credited inventor of the radio.52 During the early 1920s, the BBC broadcast primarily out the

London studio 2LO, in the Strand (a major thoroughfare in the City of Westminster, Central

London). When the BBC opened its doors and began daily radio service most programming centered on news, supplied by local stations in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff,

Newcastle, and Glasgow. By September 1923, the BBC was publishing the Radio Times a magazine that listed the programs they offered. Each station provided their daily list for a week worth of news, music, drama and “talks” that made up only a few hours of daily programming and submitted it to the Radio Times for a weekly publication.

Following the BBC, many other companies began to apply for licenses to broadcast throughout England and Northern Ireland. In 1926 the British Broadcasting Company applied for their first charter to become a corporation. The British Broadcasting Corporation was established under a charter in January 1927. In the charter under King George V states:

[A]fter the expiry of the existing Licence on the 31st day of December 1926, has after sufficient enquiry and due deliberation recommended that the Broadcasting Service hitherto carried on by the British Broadcasting Company, Limited, should after the expiration of the Company’s Licence on the said 31st day of December 1926, be

52 The British Broadcasting Corporation, “1920s - History of the BBC,” BBC News (BBC), accessed February 19, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/timelines/1920s)

conducted by a public corporation acting as Trustees for the national interest… And Whereas in the view of the widespread interest which is thereby shown to be taken by Our People in the Broadcasting Service and of the great value of the Service as a means of education and entertainment, We deem it desirable that the Service should be developed and exploited to the best advantage and in the national interest.53

The British Broadcasting Corporation’s 1927 charter defined its objectives, powers, and obligations. The BBC included a Chairman, Vice-Chairman, Chief Executive Officer

(Director General), committees and governors. The first Director-General, Sir John Reith, had worked for the BBC since 1922 as the general manager. Reith strongly advocated for public ownership of the BBC. He worried, despite the boards giving him a high degree of latitude, that future committee and board members might try to restrict his freedoms.54 Reith, until his departure from the BBC in 1938, played a huge role in shaping the BBC’s growth and broadcasting styles. Reith had developed the BBC’s broadcasting style during crises like the 1926 United Kingdom general strike and Edward VIII’s abdication.

Reith’s articulated the BBC’s broadcasting principles, to inform, educate, and entertain. The 2011 Oxford Dictionary of Media and Communication stated that Reith also strongly believed that public service broadcasting was based on four principles, “[f]irstly, it should be protected from commercial pressures; secondly, it should serve the whole nation, not just urban centres; thirdly, it should be under the control of a single unified body; and fourthly, it should be a monopoly.”55 His beliefs, eventually described as Reithianism, were adopted by many broadcasters around the world, including the Public Broadcasting Service

(PBS) in the United States. As Reith left the BBC in 1938, it had already survived its first

53 The BBC, “1927 Charter,” BBC Royal Charter archive (BBC), accessed February 21, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/research/royal-charter) 54 The BBC, “Face to Face - Lord Reith, 1960 - BBC Archive,” BBC News (BBC, October 29, 2019), https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/face_to_face_reith/zrf8cqt) 55 “Reithianism.” Oxford Reference, November 3, 2019. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100412419.

34 charter, from 1927, for the duration of 10 years and had gained a second charter, prior to the first charters’ completion. The BBC charter has been renewed nine times since 1927, most recently in 2017 with renewal set for 2027.

Food and Radio Broadcasting It did not take long for radio’s potential to grow into the realm of cooking. As

Kathleen Collins, researcher and librarian explains, “When radio programs were first broadcast in the early 1920s, suddenly there was a new channel for transmitting culinary advice… Radio cooking programs combined the informality of the verbal and the formality of the recipe, creating a virtual coffee klatch.”56 The 1920s radio programming on the BBC offered food “talks.” Miss E. G. Clarke: Food Values in Cooking ran for about a month, from

June 13th until July 18th, 1928. Radio Times advertised the first talk in issue 245 on June 8,

1928.

It was a six-part talk with each episode taking a different approach to preparing food.

The synopsis for the first talk (Part One), broadcast at 3:45 pm explained:

The science of the home is being much studied nowadays, and there has been a general welcome for such a series of talks as those by Professor Mottram and Professor Winifred Cullis on fresh air and food. Today Miss Clarke, the Principal of the National Training School of Cookery, starts a new series on food values in cooking, in which she will explain all about dietetics and digestion, proteins and vitamins, the theories of vegetarians and fruitarians, and how the weekly menu may best be composed.57 The program lasted fifteen minutes and broadcast throughout the UK’s six different BBC radio studios. Part Two: proteins, discussed what proteins are, their usefulness, and where they are found while discussing their place in the culinary scheme. Part Three: fuel foods and

56 Kathleen Collins, Watching What We Eat: The Evolution of Television Cooking Shows (London: Continuum, 2010)) p. 15 57 Radio Times, “Issue 245, Southern,” BBC News (BBC), accessed February 19, 2020, https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/page/c11ef3be593242e494be6c1ec400a6e5?page=22)

Part Four: water did not have descriptions in the Radio Times. In Part Five: food theorists discussed theories about food, and how old-fashioned cooks had their own theories whilst they planned the order of courses in the ordinary meal. Part Six: the weekly menu, discussed how a British housewife might learn about food values in less expensive dishes. Miss Clarke reiterated the importance of good cooking as well as the faults typical of British cooks.58

Across the Atlantic, the United States was simultaneously having a Golden Age of

Radio, from the start of commercial radio broadcasting in the early 1920s through the 1950s.

Prior to the 1920s, radio in the U.S. was largely unregulated until the federal government took full control of the radio industry. Civilians were banned from possessing an operational radio receiver until 1919. In 1920 small broadcast had occurred across the United States, but in December 1921 the Department of Commerce adopted new regulations establishing a broadcast station category for stations. Following the new regulation that provided a license for stations to transmit only news, concerts, lectures, and such matters hundreds of stations blossomed across the United States.59 The size of the U.S. provided flexibility to broadcast regionally rather than nationally.

The development of radio broadcasting in the United States resulted in the creation of many stations, like the BBC, meant to inform listeners of news and entertain them. Two popular radio segments in the U.S. for cooking were Betty Crocker’s Cooking School of the

Air and Aunt Sammy. Both fictional characters, Betty Crocker predated Aunt Sammy, designed not as a civil servant, but a commercial mascot. A flour company, the Washburn-

58 “Search Results: Miss E. G. Clarke: Food Values in Cooking,” BBC Genome (BBC), accessed April 10, 2020, https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?adv=1&q=Miss+E.+G.+Clarke:+Food+Values+in+Cooking&media=ra dio&yf=1923&yt=1935&mf=1&mt=12&tf=00:00&tt=00:00#search) 59 "Amendments to Regulations", Radio Service Bulletin, January 3, 1922, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/osu.32435066705633?urlappend=%3Bseq=200 page 10.

Crosby Company, later to become General Mills, for Gold Medal Flour, ran a contest in newspapers to engage female consumers to win a pin cushion prize from Gold Medal Flour.

The 1921 advertisement as food blogger Tori Avery depicts, “[f]eatured a puzzle of a quaint main street scene. Contestants were encouraged to complete the puzzle and send it in for the prize of a pincushion in the shape of a sack of Gold Medal Flour. The response was overwhelming; around 30,000 completed puzzles flooded the Washburn-Crosby offices.

Many of the completed puzzles were accompanied by letters filled with baking questions and concerns, something the Washburn-Crosby Company hadn’t anticipated.”60

To respond to the numerous questions, the Washburn-Crosby Company created a reassuringly confident woman named Betty Crocker. From 1921 until 1924, Betty Crocker answered by letter the questions from concerned bakers. In 1924 the, Betty Crocker Cooking

School of the Air aired on WCCO in Minneapolis voiced by Marjorie Child Husted who hosted and wrote for the show. Due to the popularity of the show, NBC picked up the program taking it nationwide.61 Betty Crocker also addressed household problems like food preparation. The immense popularity and long run of the Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air (1924-1953) led to the name Betty Crocker adapting into a brand for General Mills.

They used Betty Crocker to sell cookbooks, flatware, and grocery items such as the first branded Betty Crocker boxed cake mix (1950).

However in parallel, the United States Department of Agriculture Bureau of Home

Economics created their own radio program, Aunt Sammy for two specific purposes: first to

60 Tori Avey, “Who Was Betty Crocker?,” PBS (Public Broadcasting Service, February 15, 2013), https://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/who-was-betty-crocker/) 61 Betty Crocker Kitchens, “Betty's Roots in Radio,” BettyCrocker.com (Betty Crocker, October 1, 2013), https://www.bettycrocker.com/menus-holidays-parties/mhplibrary/parties-and-get-togethers/vintage- betty/bettys-roots-in-radio)

37 target farm housewives during the popular cooking radio show Housekeeper’s Chat, and second as history professor Justin Nordstrom summarizes, “[a]dvertise USDA publications and to promote its Bureau of Home Economics by providing advice about food preparation.”62 The persona of Aunt Sammy was inviting because, “[H]er homespun and vaguely patriotic persona encouraged women to embrace not only radio but a host of modern consumer household products,” while including regular characters such as her family, friends and neighbors.63 The show broadcast for the first time in October 1926. Aunt Sammy’s primary purpose according to librarian and researcher Kathleen Collins was to:

“[c]ommunicate with farmers in various parts of the country… For nearly a decade, she doled out advice on pest control, floor care, laundry, nutrition, vitamins, and uses for leftover pickle vinegar, and assured listeners that garlic is eaten by respectable people and that onions do not cause drowsiness.”64

When the show was created, there was no standard voice for Aunt Sammy as there had been for Betty Crocker. There was a standard script that hundreds of women read at their local stations to emulate the speech and regional accents. In 1927, three women working at the USDA collaborated to prepare each show's content. Fanny Walker Yeatman, hailing from

Washington D.C., tested recipes and conducted research on foods; Josephine Hemphill, originally from Kansas, wrote the chatty portions; Ruth Van Deman, also from Washington

D.C., coordinated the menus and recipes.65 The trio of women worked alongside radio

62 Ruth Van Deman and Fanny Walker Yeatman, Aunt Sammy’s Radio Recipes: The Original 1927 Cookbook and Housekeepers Chat, ed. Justin Nordstrom (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2018)) p.6. 63 Ruth Van Deman and Fanny Walker Yeatman, Aunt Sammy’s Radio Recipes. p.6. 64 Kathleen Collins, Watching What We Eat: The Evolution of Television Cooking Shows (London: Continuum, 2010)) p. 13. 65 “Aunt Sammy Help Housewives Over Radio.” Moline Daily Dispatch, December 29, 1927, Thursday Evening edition. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/18086018/aunt-sammy/. p.11.

38 service chief Morse Salisbury, credited for “[L]ivening up the show so that Aunt Sammy would deliver her tips with more levity and less lecture. He believed it was important that the audience felt ‘talked to’ and ‘visited with.’”66 The Moline Daily Dispatch figured that more than one million women were listening to Aunt Sammy by the end of 1927.67

The most popular segment, “What Shall We Have for Dinner?!” was designed to answer the daily question plaguing housewives through suggesting new combinations of familiar foods and new ways of cooking them in order to make them appear different. This segment provided recipes for standard dishes like apple turnovers and meatloaf with mashed potatoes. On the November 18, 1926, Housekeeper’s Chat broadcast this except about advice for eggplant suggested:

“Second question: I have a neighbor who always salts eggplant, and puts a heavy weight on it before cooking, to draw out the juice. Is that necessary?” No. Eggplant may be sliced, pared, dipped in batter and fried at once. Some eggplant is slightly astringent, but letting it stand in salt doesn’t take out the pucker.68

In the 1927 cookbook Aunt Sammy’s Radio Recipes, one recipe for stuffed eggplant called for:

• 1 medium sized eggplant, 1 pint finely cut cabbage, ½ teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon butter, ½ cup chopped peanuts and 1 cup of fine breadcrumbs. • Per the instructions: “Cut an eggplant in half. Remove as much of the white portion as possible without breaking the shell. Cut in small pieces. Cook the cabbage and eggplant in a small amount of water for 10 minutes. Drain and add the other ingredients. Fill the eggplant shells with the stuffing; place buttered crumbs on top. Pour around the stuffed eggplant a little of the water in which the vegetables were cooked. Bake half an hour, or until golden brown.”69

66 Kathleen Collins, Watching What We Eat: The Evolution of Television Cooking Shows (London: Continuum, 2010)) p. 14. 67 “Aunt Sammy Help Housewives Over Radio.” Moline Daily Dispatch, December 29, 1927, Thursday Evening edition. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/18086018/aunt-sammy/. p.11. 68 Ruth Van Deman and Fanny Walker Yeatman, Aunt Sammy’s Radio Recipes: The Original 1927 Cookbook and Housekeepers Chat, ed. Justin Nordstrom (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2018)) p.41. 69 Ruth Van Deman and Fanny Walker Yeatman, Aunt Sammy’s Radio Recipes: The Original 1927 Cookbook and Housekeepers Chat, ed. Justin Nordstrom (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2018)) p.41.

Aunt Sammy’s Radio Recipes from its first publication was sent to listeners in a loose-leaf format. Aunt Sammy told listeners, “A couple of notebook rings will hold the pages together nicely. From time to time I shall send you additional pages to add to your cookbook.”70 As the demand for Aunt Sammy books increased a bound volume was supplemented during the

1928-29 radio season. More than 205,000 copies had been sent to listeners for the 1928 radio season.71 In the new bound cookbook, housewives could write down menus and recipes that were given over the air. Aunt Sammy continued to broadcast until 1994.

Throughout the 1920s in both the U.S. and the UK, radio food programs continued to provide a verbal source of information from food health, to food preparations, and cooking techniques or style. Radio continued to broadcast cooking well into the 1930s but a new medium, television, began to appear that would eventually strip radio from the top position of broadcasting news and entertainment into American and British homes.

Food and Television The British Broadcasting Corporation, by the 1930s a major source for news for the nation, had outgrown its studios at Savoy Hill. The BBC commissioned and built the

Broadcasting House that opened its doors in May of 1932. Radio remained critical through the 1930s when the BBC for the first time broadcast an English monarch, King George V. He addressed the empire under the BBC Empire Service, known at present as the BBC World

Service. Unlike the U.S., rather than acquire lots of private/local television broadcasters, the

BBC expanded to include the new medium of television. In November 1936 the BBC started the BBC Television Service, the first broadcaster in the world to provide a regular “high

70 “Aunt Sammy's Radio Recipes, 1927,” National Archives and Records Administration (National Archives and Records Administration), accessed April 11, 2020, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/5710000) 71 Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture 1928. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O. 1929. (https://archive.org/details/yoa1928/page/n693/mode/2up) p. 513–514.

40 definition” television service.72 In the United States, radio stations dominated broadcasting into the 1930s, only shifting into television in the 1940s.

Inevitably when World War II began, television viewing ceased in both the United

Kingdom on BBC and in the United States on stations newly formed. In the UK, the BBC began measures to prepare for the conflict. “On 1 September 1939… Shortly after noon the television service was unceremoniously shut down, following the cartoon Mickey’s Gala

Premiere. It was said that the strong signal from the transmitter at Alexandra Palace would provide a navigational aid for enemy aircraft.”73 In the U.S. material shortages halted the production and expansion of television.74 In the aftermath of World War II, the UK and the

U.S. had different experiences with television expansion. In the UK, “Television started again on 7 June 1946, with a brief opening ceremony and a repeat of the Mickey Mouse cartoon that preceded the closedown. The post-war television audience was almost non- existent and - although the service was a monopoly – the BBC had to work hard to convince sceptics it could offer an alternative to the radio, which had proved so successful during the war.”75 In the U.S. the demand for televisions grew like a tidal wave and as journalist Erin

Blakemore describes, “Americans had scrimped and saved since the Great Depression, and when men returned home from war, many families were ready to start spending… Between

1947 and 1953, the number of people living in suburbs grew 43 percent. Since these newly

72 The British Broadcasting Corporation, “1930s - History of the BBC,” BBC News (BBC), accessed February 19, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/timelines/1930s) 73 “Close down of Television Service for the Duration of the War - History of the BBC,” BBC News (BBC), accessed April 11, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/anniversaries/september/closedown-of- television) 74 Erin Blakemore, “How TV Killed Hollywood's Golden Age,” History.com (A&E Television Networks, January 3, 2018), https://www.history.com/news/how-tv-killed-hollywoods-golden-age) 75 “Close down of Television Service for the Duration of the War - History of the BBC,” BBC News (BBC), accessed April 11, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/anniversaries/september/closedown-of- television)

41 built areas weren’t close to downtown movie palaces and often lacked mass transportation options, people began to seek entertainment inside their homes.”76

The post-war years for the BBC dramatically affirmed its dominance in British television and radio programming as it expanded to become an international corporation. By

1946 the BBC hosted a new and groundbreaking television service. One of its earliest successful programs was a puppet character Muffin the Mule, staring in a For the Children program targeted to children of school age. Muffin the Mule aired on the BBC from 1946 until the host Annette Mills’ death in 1957. During the show, Muffin would dance atop a piano while Mills played it, often based around a lesson and featured other animal friends of

Muffin. By 1948 the BBC expanded to news coverage with the BBC Newsreel. Another invention, televised sports, started with the BBC’s televised 1948 London Olympics.

It was not long after the war ended that the BBC expanded broadcast to cooking programs. Post-war rationing continued for some time in the U.S. and UK. In the U.S. sugar continued to be rationed until 1947. Rationing continued well into 1954 in the UK with meat and bacon becoming the final items to be released from rationing. The BBC’s first televised cookery program, Cookery starred Philip Harben who had previously been successful as a radio cookery host. At twenty-minutes for the show, Harben became the first TV celebrity chef in the UK. He hosted Cookery from 1946 to 1951. In the U.S., the first TV program hosted by chef James Beard broadcast in I Love to Eat. A fifteen-minute program aired on

NBC from August 1946 until May 1947. However, the most revolutionary television cooking show started with chef Julia Child, who would become the first female celebrity chef in the

1960s. Her show The French Chef, first aired in February 1963 until January 1973. Julia

76 Erin Blakemore, “How TV Killed Hollywood's Golden Age,” History.com (A&E Television Networks, January 3, 2018), https://www.history.com/news/how-tv-killed-hollywoods-golden-age)

Child represented another first by bringing the American audience a television show dedicated to French cuisine. The French Chef aired on WGBH (now a member of PBS).

Even after her show ended, Julia Child continued a long career as a celebrity chef, making an appearance at KUHT-TV (Houston) to celebrate Channel 8’s tenth-anniversary auction on

March 12, 1980.

Figure 5 In 1962 the UK and U.S. formed a transatlantic media broadcasting relationship. The launch of NASA’s Telstar, a communications satellite, provided live broadcast of television images between the United States and Europe. “It was not possible to connect the entire world in a live broadcast by satellite until the end of the 1960s. The BBC was the first broadcaster to attempt such a programme. Our World consisted of live, non-political

43 contributions from participating countries. The BBC commissioned the Beatles to sing “All

You Need is Love” for its contribution.”77

Through the 1990s, food programming in the UK and U.S. were similar because programs were designed to be instructional, televised, video programming to teach new cooks or refresh the most skilled chefs with ideas for cooking dishes. The transition to television continued the principles of radio cooking broadcast that were instructional, but the visual appeal of television added depth to the foundation of cooking instruction. For example, in the UK, the show Two Fat Ladies starred Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer

Paterson who enjoyed traveling by motorcycle to various destinations to prepare large meals, often with unusual ingredients based on where they were. Two Fat Ladies aired October

1996 through September 1999. In the U.S. Alton Brown, hosted Good Eats where Brown explores the science and technique behind cooking whilst exploring the history of different foods and the various advantages to different cooking equipment. Good Eats aired July 1999 through February 2012.

New food programs in the UK and U.S. created a new style of celebrity by raising regular chefs to the state of celebrity. Reality tv chefs and celebrity chefs filled networks like the U.S.’s Food Network and the BBC Worldwide international channel UK Food (Good

Food). In 2004, UKTV Food aired BBC archived programming on food and other food programs that were domestic and international. Ace of Cakes and Barefoot Contessa from the

Food Network made an appearance on UKTV Food, strengthening the television relationship between the U.S. and UK. Ace of Cakes stars Duff Goldman who creates extravagant and

77 “1960s - History of the BBC,” BBC News (BBC), accessed April 12, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/timelines/1960s)

44 often large cakes from request and must deliver them to customers. Barefoot Contessa stars

Ina Garten sharing her tips for foolproof entertaining.

By the early 2000s, something new took off, the rise of reality television. Shows like

Big Brother (contestants live in a house together and compete to win a cash prize and are watched continuously) and Survivor (contestants must survive on an isolated island while competing in challenges until only one contestant remains and is deemed the sole survivor) were syndicated globally. Television consumers of food programs were no longer watching just educational programming as reality tv hit food programming. One of the first reality tv cooking competitions, Top Chef, aired in 2006 on Bravo (U.S). This program gained popularity in the UK and was adapted in a few foreign countries like Chile and Canada.

From this point forward during the 2000s popular chefs often crossed between the

United States and the UK. Some chefs became world-renowned. Gordan Ramsay for example has multiple shows in the United Kingdom and the United States including Hell’s

Kitchen and Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. The former show, Hell’s Kitchen, which aired in

May 2005, placed 12 to 20 aspiring chefs on two gendered teams and had them compete down to one winner through challenges and dinner services for $250,000 and the chance to be head chef at one of Ramsay’s restaurants. Hell’s Kitchen is still currently airing. The latter, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, which aired September 2007 through September 2014, followed as Ramsay was invited to spend one week in failing restaurants attempting to revive the business.

As the early 2000s progressed and television consumers continued to enjoy reality television that was entertaining rather than educational, food programs were digging into the niche world of competition shows. Some shows highlighted the whimsical side of cooking

45 with shows about bad, tragic cooks while many shows celebrated good, highly skilled chefs.

Food Network’s Worst Cooks in America (2010) hosted by celebrity chef Anne Burrell and another Food Network chef each season, splits contestants into two teams. Each chef teaches the “worst cooks” how to cook, eliminating the contestants who can’t pick up the skills down to the final two contestants who must complete a three-course meal in order to win the grand prize. Eventually, the continued popularity of cooking shows and rise of food TV led to the creation of baking dedicated programming and baking competition which began to appear in the 2010s both in the United States and England.

By the turn of the twenty-first century, the distribution of educational food information through the mediums of print, radio, and television shows, cooking no longer was something being done solely at home for a family or guest. The competitive sport of cooking intrigued and was watched by millions of viewers. One of the most popular started in England: The Great British Bake Off.

Chapter 3 Baking Competitions, Reality Television and The Great British Baking Show

Prior to 1949, cookbooks and food information distributed to the masses via cookbooks, radio and television had achieved precisely what it intended; sharing with women how to prepare new meal ideas, plan weekly menus, and explore the nutritional value of food. During the early twentieth century, a new trend would reshape food programming.

Village fêtes in the UK grew popular replicating medieval village fairs. The earliest village fêtes dated back to the 1920s. They included a local baking competition that did not award prize money to a single winner, rather the funds were donated to a charity of the community’s choice or used to help the community. During the 1950s, village fêtes reached their peak in popularity as many communities linked them with the May Day holiday, a celebration of the spring that includes singing, dances, and cake as part of the festivities. At these celebrations, a May queen was crowned with either a tiara or crown and she would open the festival before the dancing began, more specifically around the Maypole, a tall wooden pole with numerous strings attached that children would dance around to celebrate youth and springtime.

Baking competitions had a different origin in the U.S. Outside of holiday and special event baking, companies sponsored baking contests for promotional purposes. For example, the pineapple upside-down cake, unknown origins, began when the pineapple packaging company Hawaiian Pineapple placed an advertisement in 1925 for American housewives to submit their own pineapple recipes.78 Some 60,000 entries were generated, and 2,500 were for pineapple upside-down cake. The recipe that won was a pineapple upside-down cake that

78 PJ Hamel, “American Baking Down the Decades, 1920-1929,” King Arthur Flour, March 9, 2015, https://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2015/03/09/american-baking-decades-1920-1929)

47 featured maraschino cherries which had also been introduced to the American market in the

1920s.79

In 1949, Pillsbury launched its Bake-Off® Contest and invited American homemakers to share their favorite recipes and the stories that went with them. “Originally called the “Grand National Recipe and Baking Contest,” 1949’s inaugural Bake-Off received thousands of entries from across the country. Pillsbury Best flour was a required ingredient in all recipe submissions. There were six categories that participants could enter: breads, cakes, pies, cookies, entrees, and desserts. If participants submitted a seal from the Pillsbury Best flour they used in the recipe, their prize money could be doubled.”80 Although there were six categories, only one grand prize winner was picked from amongst the category finalists. The first contest was held at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt presenting the grand prize winner, Theodora Smafield her award for No-Knead Water-Rising

Twists. The pioneering link between cooking, television, and competition allowed the 1970

Pillsbury Bake-Off® to be televised with Bob Barker as the host. However, televised cooking competitions remained rare until the early twenty-first century.

Developments in television at the end of the twentieth century would solidify the audience for shows about cooking. Between 1970 and 1990, food and television was slowly growing with instructional cooking programs airing on PBS. As professor of communication and media, Hugh Curnutt explains, “Culinary television has been part of the television landscape for most of the medium’s existence. It has fared particularly well with television’s transition into the ‘post-network era,’ a period characterized by niche programming, small

79 PJ Hamel, “American Baking Down the Decades, 1920-1929.” 80 Pillsbury Kitchens, “The Incredible True History of the Pillsbury Bake-Off® Contest,” Pillsbury.com (Pillsbury, August 15, 2017), https://www.pillsbury.com/bake-off-contest/history-of-the-pillsbury-bake-off-contest)

48 homogenous audiences, non-linear viewing practices, and multichannel landscapes.”81 The accelerant for the modern celebrity chef grew in the U.S. with the creation of the Food

Network.

The U.S. Food Network The U.S. Food Network since its inception in 1993 has been the principle long- standing cable channel that airs food programming.82 On Food Network, one of the earliest food competitions to air came from Japan and Iron Chef (1993-1999) was dubbed in English.

In this Japanese television stylized cooking show, professional guest chefs challenge one of the show’s “iron chefs” during a timed battle built around a specific themed ingredient. The

“iron chefs” were professional chefs held in the highest regard in their respective countries that usually had competed on numerous other competitions shows or owned multiple successful restaurants. Hosted by Chairman Takeshi Kaga, whose real name is Shigekatsu

Katsuta, a well-known stage and movie actor in Japan, the show is set in a kitchen stadium with the visiting chef choosing one of the “iron chefs” to compete against. The host unveils the secret ingredient and the visiting chef and iron chef must include the secret ingredient some way in a multi-course meal. Iron Chef was adapted in the U.S. with Iron Chef America

(2005-2018) following a similar premise with chef Alton Brown being the commentator for the show. Although a more distinct level of competition on the Food Network, the network continued to grow their competition shows at the turn of the twenty-first century. At present,

Food Network dedicates its morning time slots to instructional cooking shows, many hosted

81 Peri Bradley, Food, Media and Contemporary Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016)) p. 144 82 In 2010, the Cooking Channel became the sister channel to Food Network that currently replays the older episodes of Food Network television programs as well as original Cooking Channel content.

49 by female chefs, but the afternoon and evening slots are dedicated to competitive shows which often have male hosts even for baking competition shows.

The sports-style design for U.S. cooking and baking reality competitions generally follows this template: Four chefs/pastry chefs, three timed rounds, one elimination after each round until there is a winner for the grand prize. To become a contestant for example with

Food Networks Chopped (2009) the applicant must fill out an online application similar to a job application with personal information, responses to legal questions, a “more about you” section, submitted along with a resume and a photo. According to writer for Thrillist Julianne

Feder, her experience auditioning for Chopped included a confirmation call to discuss her application, a 50-minute on-camera interview that was packaged into a few minutes and sent to show producers, and a callback. Applicants could also be selected to be a back-up.83

Filming an episode takes twelve hours, and the judges are comprised of Food Network’s most popular and respected chefs, including Alex Guarnaschelli (Iron Chef), Geoffrey

Zakarian (restaurateur), and Marc Murphy (restaurateur). Only in 2018 did Martha Stewart join as an outside Food Network celebrity chef in a recurring role.

An early baking competition with this sports-style was Cupcake Wars (2009-2018).

The competition template started with the first round, 45 minutes, being judged based on taste rather than presentation because contestants were given unusual ingredients, like seaweed and sea salt, to incorporate into their cupcake batter. Round two, 75 minutes, based on taste and presentation allowed contestants to make three cupcakes of their own choice and create a unique presentation based on the episode's theme, such as the SeaWorld birthday

83 Julianne Feder, “What It's Really Like Trying Out for 'Chopped',” Thrillist (Thrillist, January 4, 2017), https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/chopped-food-network-tv-show-try-out)

50 bash episode when they celebrated the orca.84 Round three, the most challenging round, at

120 minutes, featured all four cupcakes created during the competition with improvements, presented upon a 1,000-cupcake display reflecting the episode's theme. The winner of the episode was awarded $10,000 and presented their display and cupcakes at an event for guests to enjoy. Cupcake Wars was judged by the show’s three main judges Candace Nelson

(founder of Sprinkles Cupcakes), Florian Bellanger (French pastry chef), and Waylynn Lucas

(author and executive pastry chef). Although highly entertaining, the formula became repetitive with predictable errors made by professional bakers such as overbaked cupcakes, melted icing because of hot cupcakes, or missing baking ingredients such as baking powder to help it rise.

The competitive nature surrounding food competition in the United States has considerably influenced the outline for British food competition shows. Across the pond in

England, influenced by cooking competitions like Top Chef and Food Network programs, one baking competition show featured amateur bakers. Set to a slower and more enchanting template, The Great British Bake Off, became England’s most popular baking competition show.

The Great British Bake Off

In August 2010 BBC Two aired the first episode of The Great British Bake Off, hosted by comedic duo Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc with judges Mary Berry and Paul

Hollywood. The show would change the relationship the UK had with desserts for years to come. Cookbook author and columnist for The New York Times, Melissa Clark explains, “In the six years it has been on the air, ‘The Great British Bake Off’ has fundamentally changed

84 Cupcake Wars Season 1 Episode 2.

51 the way the British regard baking, dessert-eating and even their own culture of sweets. The

‘Bake Off Effect,’ as it is known, has manifested in a resurgence in home baking, a noticeable increase in the quality of baked goods sold all over the country, and a growing number of people pursuing careers as professional pastry chefs.”85

The original host and judges of the Great British Bake Off each uniquely brought their own talents to the show while also exemplifying Britishness. Judge Mary Berry is a highly esteemed British pastry chef with more than sixty years of cooking experience. Berry was born in 1935. Her passion for baking began in high school, and she went on to study at

Bath College of Domestic Science and trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris at 25 years old.

Berry’s first cookbook. The Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook was published in 1970 and soon thereafter she became a leading cookery writer and broadcaster having published more than seventy cookery books since her career began. In 2012, due to her unique contributions to the culinary arts world recognized by Queen Elizabeth II, Berry was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honors. Mary Berry, British food writer, and chef, “[s]tands in as a signifier of the monarchy. With her received pronunciation and being almost as old as the Queen, she possesses a similar bearing of power and authority.”86

Judge Paul Hollywood is one of the UK’s leading artisan bakers. Hollywood was the son of a baker but originally trained as a sculptor. By combining both skillsets Hollywood established himself as an innovator amongst his peers and worked in many exclusive hotels such as The Dorchester in London. As a Master Baker, Hollywood is trained in culinary arts,

85 Melissa Clark, “'The Great British Bake Off' Changes the Way the British Bake,” The New York Times (The New York Times, October 18, 2016), https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/dining/great-british-bake-off- recipes.html) 86 Peri Bradley, Food, Media and Contemporary Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016)) p.19

52 sanitation principles, management, and retail sales. A Master Baker must be certified by their respective country after completing two tests, a practical test of baking skills and a written exam of the candidate’s knowledge of bakery science and sanitation. Hollywood further cemented his reputation by becoming a leading authority on bread making. His best-selling book 100 Great Breads has been translated into seven languages and named the “Top Bread and Pastry Book” of 2005. Hollywood, as Bradley describes, “[b]rings a regional touch of the common people to the programme with his tempered Merseyside accent. Having earned his place beside Mary Berry as a celebrity chef and baker on TV, he therefore transitions his original signified class position to become part of the professional middle class.”87

Host Sue Perkins, a writer, presenter, and broadcaster, has been a favorite British television personality for more than fifteen years. Alongside her host partner Mel Giedroyc, a writer and performer, their witty exchange from their previous comedy show Light Lunch

(1997-1998) spurred the Great British Bake Off into further distinction. Light Lunch was a popular talk show centered around making and eating a luncheon. A guest chef would prepare the meal and be interviewed and then Mel and Sue, along with two celebrity guests, would eat the meal. One project Perkins is well known for is her collaboration with food critic Giles Coren on “The Supersizers.” This show was a six-part series commissioned by the BBC that aired in 2008 on BBC’s UKTV channel Good Food. Hosts Coren and Perkins dress in the garb of the period they were ‘visiting’ to eat, explore and learn about the diet of

England during six different periods. The show covered Wartime, Restoration, Victorian,

Seventies, Elizabethan, and Regency era and the hosts were aided by a chef who would prepare the period meals.

87 Peri Bradley, Food, Media and Contemporary Culture. p.19

The Supersizers Go… was a spin-off of the 2007 Edwardian Supersize Me that itself was in reference to the 2004 American show Super Size Me. Morgan Spurlock ate only

McDonalds for 30 consecutive days then went to get a medical exam to see the effects of only eating fast food on his body. The Edwardian Supersize Me special followed a similar format, but the hosts only ate like a wealthy Edwardian couple for one week. Copious amounts of offal, game, red meats and eggs were consumed with each host consuming over

5,000 calories a day. For example, on their Monday menu, the breakfast consisted of porridge, sardines on toast, curried eggs, grilled cutlets, coffee & chocolate, bread & butter, and honey.88 Only Giles Coren was examined to see how an Edwardian diet affected his body. He went into the show displaying signs of gout but after the week of Edwardian dieting, his blood work showed that he was much closer to getting gout that it made him reevaluate his regular diet. In, The Supersizers Go… series both hosts are examined for the effects the diet has on their bodies. In 2011, a one-off royal wedding-themed episode aired the week of Prince William’s marriage to Catherine Middleton in part of royal wedding celebrations. The six-part series also aired in the U.S. on The Cooking Channel in January

2012, and the Food Network – Canada.

The show’s creator Anna Beattie conceived the idea for the GBBO after speaking with a friend who had seen “bake-offs” in the U.S.89 Beattie is the Joint Creative Director for

Love Productions, the company that produces the Great British Bake Off. In a behind the scenes article Guardian writer Louise Carpenter describes the judges and presenters by

88 “Edwardian Supersize Me,” The Edwardians — the Birth of Now (BBC Four, April 16, 2007), https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1337883169577193) 89 Sarah Stephens, “Behind the Scenes at the Great British Bake-Off,” The Telegraph (Telegraph Media Group, August 14, 2012), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9411189/Behind-the-scenes-at-the- Great-British-Bake-Off.html)

54 asking, “Who'd have known that this eccentric group of judges and presenters would gel as well as it has? A bit of a geezer from Liverpool, an upper-class lady from the shires, and a comedy act of a gay woman and a mother-of-two who re-formed for the job?” Beattie responds that in fact, “It doesn't sound like a winning formula… nothing about the show sounded like a success when it first aired in 2010: ‘It took us four years to get anybody at any channel to take any notice. Nobody wanted it. Nobody liked it. We just kept on with it because we knew it was a good idea. I loved that idea of village fetes and an old-fashioned baking competition with people who only wanted to bake a good cake. It was as simple as that.’”90

Avid fans who have continued to watch over the years were met with new a new judge and two hosts when judge Mary Berry along with host Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc left the cast because the show no longer aired exclusively with the BBC. Only Paul

Hollywood remained with new judge Prue Leith, a highly regarded chef in the UK known for her culinary expertise and distinguished career as a restaurateur, food writer, novelist, television cook and radio cook. The new hosts' Noel Fielding and Sandi Toksvig, another comedic duo, rounded out the show’s witty charm to enhance the show's relatability while being reminiscent of Perkins and Giedroyc and their interactions with the bakers.

90 Louise Carpenter, “Behind the Scenes at The Great British Bake Off,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, July 20, 2013), https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/jul/20/bake-off-behind-the-scenes)

Figure 691 The GBBO, as it is abbreviated, captures the quintessential nature of the contemporary British identity. Within the last sixty years, the identity of the UK has expanded into a multicultural nation that has incorporated many immigrant dishes into their own repertoire of dishes. The formula for the GBBO is uniquely designed to highlight the contestants and demonstrate the uniqueness of British identity while exploring variations in race, class, gender, identity, representation, and hegemony. The show’s popularity spiked so greatly that about 8,000 bakers apply for each season. “After sorting out the best of the bunch, the producers then narrow down that group to arrive at a mix that represents a range of ages, races, and professions from different parts of Britain.”92 Peri Bradley, lecturer in media theory at Bournemouth University explains that:

In the case of The Great British Bake Off, this recognizes the diversity of multicultural Britain, which can be seen with its representatives from the majority of

91 Above: The judges, hosts, and contestants of THE GREAT BRITISH BAKING SHOW, Season 3 (PBS). Contestants (back, l-r): Dorret, Alvin, Ian, Ugne, Paul, Stu, Marie, Tamal, Nadiya, Flora, Mat, Sandy. Judges/Hosts (front, l-r): Paul Hollywood, Sue Perkins, Mel Giedroyc, Mary Berry. 92 Melissa Clark, “'The Great British Bake Off' Changes the Way the British Bake.”

the UK’s ethnic, immigrant populations from the last 60 years and their culinary contribution to British ‘cuisine.’ Through the baking of national dishes and those we have taken and adapted from other cultures but which have now entered the epicurean experience of most people in the UK, the programme manages to weave together and present a unified and cohesive image of contemporary British identity.93 In the U.S., the GBBO is known as the Great British Baking Show because ‘bake-off’ is trademarked for the Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest. Furthermore, as PBS editor Madhulika

Sikka wrote in an article discussing the difference in the show name, “In the case of The

Great British Baking Show the answer lies in the reality of global markets and copyrights. Americans are probably most familiar with something called the Pillsbury Bake-

Off ®… What started off as the “Grand National Recipe and Baking Contest” became the Pillsbury Bake-Off ®. And that is where the name Bake Off resides, in the U.S. So that’s how we got to The Great British Baking Show on PBS. Apparently, Pillsbury was not open to the show using its original British name.”94 For U.S. viewers British television shows also change their names before airing in the U.S. as Sikka explains because, “despite what we think, the U.S. and the U.K. are not always united by a common language. For American fans of the espionage show MI5, they may not know that the show aired in Britain as Spooks – a common term to describe a spy in British parlance but a derogatory racial term in the U.S.”95

This is just one way that British culture is transformed for the U.S. market, for example,

Harry Potter and Sorcerer’s Stone was created as, Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone but that did not translate well into the U.S. market, therefore, the former title was used to sell the books in the U.S.

93 Peri Bradley, Food, Media and Contemporary Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016)) p. 18 94 Madhulika Sikka, “What's in a Name?,” PBS (Public Broadcasting Service, October 12, 2017), https://www.pbs.org/publiceditor/blogs/pbs-public-editor/whats-in-a-name/) 95 Madhulika Sikka, “What's in a Name?,” PBS.

The Uniquely British Identity within GBBO From series one, the GBBO has highlighted the overwhelming sense of nostalgia that is the act of enjoying dessert in a leisurely manner. Cooking is a demanding act that requires attention to many details, but baking is considered more of an act of repetitive creation of tried and true desserts. Baking is a hobby for many as well as a professional career. As Sikka describes, “If you wanted to conjure up an image of a show called The Great British Baking

Show, this would probably be it – a filigree pattern, a beautifully decorated cake, a sense of calmness and refinement. It probably also sounds a little sleepy; something quaint and cozy and reminiscent of a bygone Britain.”96 The juxtaposed setting of a white bunting-draped marquee against the background of a neoclassical inspired nineteenth-century house in the

English countryside is uniquely British. “The situating of the programme in a large marquee, which is usually reserved for expensive weddings (middle to upper class), on the grounds of a stately home immediately conjures up a sense of luxury and occasion. Its visual aesthetics alone return the audience to a time when Britain was ‘Great’ and British identity was structured and stable with its foundation firmly rooted in the class system.”97 Even the theme song for the show’s opening sequence, an upbeat string piece, with a visual montage of baked goods, cooked and being cooked, a child tucking into the sweets all nestled within the backdrop of a kitchen that has a wash of sunlight and littered hand-written recipes and fresh ingredients enacts the feeling that the GBBO is a family show meant to be viewed in the home.

96 Madhulika Sikka, “What's in a Name?,” PBS (Public Broadcasting Service, October 12, 2017), https://www.pbs.org/publiceditor/blogs/pbs-public-editor/whats-in-a-name/) 97 Peri Bradley, Food, Media and Contemporary Culture. p.19

The show’s inspiration was the classic English village fête that incorporated a baking competition with desserts such as a Victorian sponge cake, games, and entertainment which are traditionally elaborate public festivals held outdoors and organized to raise funds for a charity. The raising of funds is done by the community ad hoc committee or a religious leader. The charity of choice is either a local charity that benefits the community or local school needs. An English village fête is very similar to American fairs, in which food, games and entertainment are meant to raise funds for various purposes such as local vendors being able to sell their goods to add to their income. Just as no one wins a sum of money for a reward for being the best baker at the fête, the GBBO series winner is not awarded a cash prize but rather a bouquet of flowers and a cake stand.

Figure 798 Seen with series ten winner David Atherton in figure two, Atherton is one of four men who have won the GBBO alongside the six female amateur bakers that won the series they competed in. The GBBO is evenly mixed between female and male contestants with no

98 Credit Mark Bourdillon/Channel 4

59 series being distinctly uneven. Only a few times did women outnumber the men contestants by one or two contestants. This tightly balanced mixture of the sexes should make the show seem fair in its assessment that both men and women enjoy baking as a leisure activity. The contestants are often warned by the show’s producers that once the show airs there may be backlash from viewers and to be prepared for the handful of disproportionately peeved viewers as it still a competition show. As series four runner-up Ruby Tandoh wrote in an opinion piece for The Guardian, “The criticism ranged from the gently cynical to the downright obnoxious, but as the series went on I noticed an increasing degree of personal vitriol and misogyny. We (female) finalists are supposedly too meek, too confident, too thin, too domestic, too smiley, too taciturn … If I see one more person used the hackneyed

"dough-eyed" pun I will personally go to their house and force-feed them an entire Charlotte

Royale. I am tired of defending myself against the boring, inevitable accusations of flirting with Paul Hollywood, of emotionally manipulating the judges and of somehow surfing into the final on a tidal wave of tears. I'd rather eat my own foot than attempt to seduce my way to victory, and even if I had any intention playing that card, it's insulting to both the judges to suggest that they'd ever let their professional integrity be undermined in that way.”99 Of course, there are a few men who have had their fair share of nasty comments over social media. Dan Beasley-Harling, a series eight contestant that identified as a “gay-at-home dad” received a bulk of that series’ negative harassment due to his sexual orientation and the continued homophobia that questions the suitability of queer people being parents.

99 Ruby Tandoh, “The Great British Bake Off: Why Did Our Show Attract so Much Vitriol?,” The Guardian, October 22, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/22/great-british-bake-off-ruby- dandoh)

The GBBO show format is simple. Over the course of ten weeks, the contestants compete in three themed rounds each episode with one contestant leaving at the end of each episode. The themes are based around certain items like bread week, or Henry VIII’s favored dinner items like a game pie which challenges the bakers on pastry and fillings. “[T]he series follows the trials and tribulations of the competitors, young and old, from every background and every corner of Britain, as they attempt to prove their baking prowess. Each week the bakers tackle a different baking skill, which become progressively more difficult as the competition unfolds.”100 The judges can decide on a non-elimination week because the bakers are evenly matched in their successes or failures in each round of baking. If so the following week two contestants go home. The first of the challenges is the Signature Bake. In the Signature Bake, bakers show off their tried-and-true recipes that they share with family and friends. This challenge tests the baker’s personality, creative flair and baking ability.101

The second challenge the Technical Challenge is designed to test the baker’s versatility when they are given a recipe chosen by one of the judges but given limited information about such things as measurements or bake time. The judges try the finished product blindly and rank them from worst to best. This challenge is tested by the show’s food researcher to ensure that the challenge is achievable with the adjustments to the full recipe. The third challenge the Showstopper is designed for bakers to show off their skill and talent. In this challenge, the bakes are meant to be done on some elaborate and large scale depending on the episode theme. Each starts with the chant “On your mark. Get set. Bake!” At the end of each episode, one contestant is named “Star Baker” and this contestant has impressed the judges

100 “About the Show,” The Great British Bake Off, accessed May 15, 2020, https://thegreatbritishbakeoff.co.uk/about-the-show/) 101 “About the Show,” The Great British Bake Off.

61 throughout all three challenges. One unique feature of the show is an animated version of the contestant’s bake created after each episode has finished filming. Tom Hovey illustrates the bake with animated graphics as the contestants describe the flavors and techniques they will use during each round. Hovey has drawn every animation for the GBBO since 2010 and published The Great British Bake Off Colouring Book in 2016.

Figure 8 Prior to the show’s ten to thirteen bakers being selected as the main competitors, applicants are narrowed down from thousands. There are twenty-two rules for entry before an application can be submitted. A few rules of entry are that contestants must be aged 16 or above, a resident of the UK (including Isle of Man and Channel Islands), and can never have been employed as a baker, cook or chef. The applicants must fill out an eight-page form that details their baking style, types of baked goods, hobbies, lifestyle, and level of experience.

As well there is a 45-minute telephone call with a researcher, an audition in London with two bakes, a screen test, and an interview with the show’s producer. Following that process,

62 applicants undergo a second audition involving baking two recipes for the judges in front of a camera. Finally, the selected contestants undergo an interview with the show’s psychologist to make sure the contestants can cope with sixteen-hour film days. The final contestants have included “[u]ndergraduates, professionals and retired professionals, a vicar’s wife, a male nurse, a civil servant, a builder, an architect, etc., who are also representative of the target demographic.”102 The range of middle-class representation is valuable to the audience because it helps viewers see themselves on television.

To connect the audience with the contestants, the information gathered from the applications helps the producers weave a storyline to follow about who the contestants are weekly while incorporating filmed moments of the contestants in their homes or daily lives while either baking or being with family and friends to shape their relatability. Week to week, viewers become more attached to their favorite contestants and are invested in the show to the very end. As Bradley explains, “[a] sense of community and comradeship is built amongst the contestants and the presenters that has its foundations in the trials and adversity that they face together. Although they are in competition with each other, they are brought together as a unified group who are working towards the same aim and who respect each other as skilled practitioners.”103 Even if the viewer has a favorite competitor and that person goes home early in the series, later contestants are able to reel in viewers with their personality and baking techniques. After the winner is celebrated in the finale, the GBBO updates viewers about all of the contestants, which of them have remained friends, and what they have been up to since the show ended.

102 Peri Bradley, Food, Media and Contemporary Culture. p.19 103 Peri Bradley, Food, Media and Contemporary Culture. p.22.

In Great Britain, baked goods have been associated with the middle and upper-class pastime of tea and connecting with family and friends. The lack of working-class bakers as

Bradley notes, “[t]he class habitus, where the lower class accept their economic position and status as natural, means they are unlikely to enter into a baking competition… With the supply of plentiful and inexpensive versions of the original home-crafted products, it is now cheaper and less time-consuming for the de-skilled and hard-working lower class to buy rather than bake.”104 Recipes use ingredients middle-class people could afford such as cheap spices and fruit.

Nadiya Hussain, one of the most successful winners of GBBO, a first-generation

British Bangladeshi citizen, during the series was also a full-time mom. As a journalist for

The Guardian Remona Aly states:

Nadiya’s popularity has demonstrated how the vast majority of people in Britain embrace diversity and inclusivity and are certainly not going to dismiss her based on religion, race or attire. That an Asian Muslim woman in a headscarf can win a thoroughly British competition proves that “Britishness” is a broader and more open concept than some would like us to think. It proves that whether you choose to wear a headscarf, a turban or a bowler hat, Britain is not limited by homogeneity but strengthened by diversity.105 In series 6 episode 7 Victorian, the bakers had to create classic Victorian dishes, raised game pie, fruitcake and a charlotte russe (aka an icebox cake, usually sponge cake lines the mold then fruit puree or custard fill the middle) for the showstopper challenge. Nadiya’s raised game pie combined orange, star anise, ginger, fennel, and cassia bark (Chinese cinnamon) into a Chinese five-spice which is not traditional to Victorian-era cooking. Nadiya experimented with the spices to bring forth the aromatic flavor to her raised game pie of

104 Peri Bradley, Food, Media and Contemporary Culture. p.20. 105 Remona Aly, “Nadiya Hussain Has Won so Much More Than the Great British Bake Off.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 8 Oct. 2015, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/08/nadiya-hussain- has-won-so-much-more-than-the-great-british-bake-off.

64 pheasant, venison, and duck. In episode 10, Nadiya created a multi-layered lemon drizzle cake. She explained it would be a celebration cake as she never had a cake when she got married in Bangladesh. Her cake’s appearance reflected her Bangladeshi heritage and her

British heritage by incorporating the Union Jack colors of red, white, and blue while also adorning the cake with jewelry she wore on her wedding day and gold that would highlight the traditional sari’s elaborate decorative nature that is worn for weddings.

Figure 9 Nadiya was well received by the British public following her series 6 win as Britain’s best amateur baker and became a revered public figure. She pursued a culinary career but also continued to appear on television. From 2016 onward Nadiya appeared on or hosted four shows with the BBC, she made many appearances on other shows, judged the fourth series of

Junior Bake Off on the Children’s BBC (CBBC). Confirming her reputation, Buckingham

Palace commissioned Nadiya to bake Queen Elizabeth II’s cake as for her 90th birthday celebrations. She made an orange drizzle cake with orange curd and orange buttercream.

Nadiya has also published cookbooks, created a homeware collection, and serves as a

65 contributing editor for the UK’s largest food media brand, BBC’s Good Food. It is apparent that by her success, Nadiya represents the diversity of contemporary British identity.

The Spinoffs and Future of the GBBO The Great British Bake Off has collectively spawned several new shows since its creation. Love Productions, a UK-based independent television production company is responsible for The Great British Sewing Bee, The Great Pottery Throw Down and many other shows following GBBO’s success. The Great British Sewing Bee airing in 2013, currently at five series, features three challenges within an overall theme as amateur sewers compete to be Britain’s best home sewer. This show has been broadcast in Australia and has international versions in Denmark, France, Sweden, and Germany to name a few. The Great

Pottery Throw Down airing in 2015, currently at three series, is about ten home potters who compete to become Top Potter. Beyond GBBO regular series is the Great Christmas/Festive

Bake Off. Airing since 2016, Great Christmas/Festive Bake Off is a mini-series airing two episodes for Christmas and New Year. The episode features favorite past competitors from

GBBO, and each episode’s winner receives a ceramic white cake plate engraved with the show title. The GBBO has also been well received internationally with broadcast in many countries and the show's format has been sold to nearly 20 territories.106

In the U.S., the GBBO now streams on Netflix as does The Great British Baking

Show Holidays with only series three (2018) and four (2019) currently on Netflix. American viewers love the Great British Baking Show for many reasons, but primarily, as Vicky Baker of BBC News, Washington states, “Many US viewers have said that they decompress

106 Tara Conlan, “Great British Bake Off Recipe Has Proved a Sweet Success for BBC Worldwide.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 4 Aug. 2015, www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/aug/04/great-british-bake- off-recipe-sweet-success-bbc-worldwide.

66 watching the show, and they like that it is the antithesis of the nation's fraught politics.”107

For many American viewers, the contestants’ camaraderie and their willingness to help fellow contestants take something out of the pan or give a hug and even a simple suggestion on how to improve a recipe draws people in. The craving for feel-good television is what

Americans desire when many U.S. television shows, including the food competitions, are

“cut-throat” or “hyper-competitive” and no one is willing to be supportive to fellow competitors. The U.S. version, The Great American Baking Show, produced by ABC, has had five seasons since 2015. The show on ABC has had a rotating number of hosts and judges but Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood did make appearances as season judges in separate seasons of the show. In Baker’s BBC article, Charles Skinner, a U.S. government auditor, interviewed about why he loves GBBO said, “I watch them all, The Great British

Bake Off, the Great American Baking Show, Zumbo's Just Desserts [an Australian desserts competition]. He likes the American version, but not as much. "It's less technical. You wouldn't get a bread lion.”108

Figure 10 These two opposing styles of sports-like competition versus the love-of-baking type competition show merely suggest that in some ways there is a growing desire for shows with

107 Vicky Baker, “Why Americans Love the Great British Bake Off,” BBC News (BBC, January 27, 2019), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46846771) 108 Vicky Baker, “Why Americans Love the Great British Bake Off.”

67 competitions that are designed to be fulfilling and rewarding. This is not only for the competitors, who grow and advance their skills but for the viewer as well who is seeking to connect to the nostalgia of simpler times when baking was a hobby and pastime that brought warmth and pleasure into the lives of the consumer. Even though baking competition shows are still popular on Netflix and television channels on their respective country's network, the digital platform of YouTube has broken the barrier of borders that existed with how food is shared globally.

The GBBO is the BBC’s third-highest replicated show after Dancing with the Stars

(Strictly Come Dancing) and The Weakest Link. The success of the Great British Bake Off led many media companies around the world to purchase a license to recreate the show in their country or in many cases they purchase the format of the show and created their own concept shows. Making It (2018), with host Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman, replicates the

GBBO’s format. Skilled craftspeople compete to be named Master Maker and win a cash prize of $100,000. Although Making It has only two rounds, otherwise the format resembles

GBBO. The two rounds, “fast craft” and “master craft” are based on a theme. The competitors earn a patch after each round and the weakest craftsperson goes home at the end of each episode. In an article for RadioTimes Ben Allen acknowledges that “The pastel- coloured barn where the challenges take place, the rows of work stations inside, the weekly awards of a sew-on patch for those who have mastered a skill and the general supportive, feel-good vibe are all very reminiscent of the UK’s own Great British Bake Off – even if the

68 show’s ultimate Master Maker prize of $100,000 slightly outstrips the Bake Off’s trophy and bouquet of flowers.”109

The rise of cooking and baking competitions transformed viewers’ relationship with cooking. During the twenty-first century, digital media has transformed television, in particular the rise of digital streaming. Viewers no longer have to watch their favorite shows on a particular schedule. They can watch from their smartphones and tablets. Television shows digitize rapidly allowing fans to watch almost as soon as broadcasting is done.

Furthermore, shows are being designed to be immediately streamed by interested audiences.

Digital media and the growth of streaming are surging and have further reshaped the relationship of media, cooking, and viewers.

109 Ben Allen, “Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman's New DIY Show Is like Parks and Recreation Meets Bake Off,” Radio Times, August 1, 2018, https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2018-08-01/amy-poehler-and-nick- offermans-new-diy-show-is-like-parks-and-recreation-meets-bake-off/)

Chapter 4 The Digital Age: The Future of Food Content

The merger of cooking and competition has drawn in new audiences. From the beginning of media, newspaper recipes and cookbooks, to radio and television, cooking has adapted and taken advantage of ever the changing media. Rapid changes since the internet first connected the world in the 1990s have also provided new platforms for food and cooking. For instance, in the past decade, radio and newspapers have gone digital. Television now includes streaming platforms and applications that allow consumers to view their favorite or popular television shows and movies without having to rent, purchase or record the shows themselves. Although those features are still used on many platforms, streaming has provided consumers with the ability to access their preferred content instantly. Platforms like Netflix and YouTube, while not created for it, adapted to streaming content, which in the last decade has become more accessible and created a continuous loop between the presenter and the consumer.

The cultural connectivity of streaming has allowed people to read, listen, and watch content at their leisure and experience different cultures. Making it even easier are cloud- based voice services like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google’s Personal Assistant.

These services enable users to stream music and ask for daily information like the weather, local, national, and global news once only accessible on periodic news segments or newspapers. For example, an advertisement on Houston’s popular pop radio station 104.1

KRBE instructs users to, “Tell Alexa to enable 104.1 KRBE to listen to our station.” Radio, newspaper, and television have not become obsolete because each still serves a specific purpose and creates much of the media content that consumers access via the streaming platforms. The uncoupling of television broadcasts and specific channels has sparked a great

70 competition of content all over the world, with Netflix bridging the transatlantic relationship between the UK and U.S. viewership.

Netflix and Baking Content

Netflix started in 1998 as a DVD delivery service. By 2007 Netflix was streaming content online. Starting in 2012, Netflix merged streaming content for viewers in the US and the UK, pulling together cultural connections with its launch in the UK. That same year Netflix’s launched its first original production, House of Cards, inspired by the 1990

UK House of Cards. While not all shows can be viewed in both the U.S. and the UK, Netflix, viewers have become savvier, gaining access to watch international content through virtual private networks (VPNs). Netflix combats this behavior by uploading international content as quickly as it can while adhering to license and content rights regulations to stave off the influx of streaming services in the U.S. marketplace. All of these changes have reshaped the relationship between cooking and the media.

Since 2018, Netflix Originals has both created and acquired many foods and baking shows, both domestic and international. One of the biggest changes, media companies have shifted away from focusing on gaining as many viewers as possible. Greg Morabito, and editor at Eater, an online food and dining network, explains Netflix’s unusual production style. “Instead of acquiring and creating content to fit demographics – an old TV term used to describe groups of people categorized by age, race, and gender – Netflix aims to appeal to niche audiences that the company refers to ‘taste clusters.’”110 Netflix acquired The Great

British Bake Off (Baking Show) in 2018 to appeal to viewers who had watched the show on

110 Greg Morabito, “2018 Was the Year That Netflix Ruled Food TV.” Eater. Eater, December 28, 2018. https://www.eater.com/2018/12/28/18158159/netflix-food-tv-ugly-delicious-salt-fat-acid-heat-queer-eye- 2018-entertainment.

PBS. But it also created content for different kinds of niche viewers, for example, a show that specifically appealed to amateur bakers, Nailed It, released in 2018.

When Pinterest, an app to “pin” content to online boards and share, became popular in the 2010s, home bakers began trying to replicate technical and difficult bakes they saw posted on Pinterest, usually resulting in spectacular failures they some of them shared with family or friends. A Netflix Original reality baking competition, Nailed It, built on that craze, inviting amateurs with demonstrated proof of poor baking skills to recreate complicated cakes and confectionery for a $10,000 cash prize and a “Nailed It” trophy. The show is hosted and judged by Nicole Byer, an American comedian and actress, and Jacques Torres, a

French pastry chef well known for his chocolatier work. Nailed It’s baking department creates complicated items that the contestants must replicate. Netflix released all six episodes at the same time, allowing the viewer to “binge” all the episodes at the same time. Three competitors attempted to replicate specific professional cakes and confectionary in two rounds, without any eliminations, over the course of a thirty-five-minute episode. In round one, “Baker’ Choice,” contestants attempted to recreate one of three existing confectionery treats. Once the first-round timer ran out, the contestants, one at a time, lifted a lid hiding their creation and shouted “Nailed It” to the show’s hosts/judges, Nicole Byer and Jacques

Torres. The winner of the first challenge won a prize and the golden chef’s hat to wear during the second challenge.

The second challenge, “Nail It or Fail It,” involves a large-scale replication of a complicated cake made from scratch. Each contestant received a “Panic Button” they could use for three minutes to get help from one of the judges. The worst baker from round one got a second button that enacted a creative distraction for the other two contestants to prevent

72 them from focusing on their bake. One example of a creative distraction from season one, episode one, Nicole was sent to annoy both contestants by moving around their workstations, making noise, getting in their way, calling their names often talking loudly. Once the time was called, the contestants each pressed a button on their display stand that dropped the cover to show their replication as they shouted, “Nailed It!” Judges awarded the prize to the person with the best overall “presentation” and taste. As the illustration makes clear, contestants rarely nailed the replication.

Figure 11 Nailed It is a unique show that combines many of the elements of GBB. The bakers are of middle-class backgrounds and share information about their lives that make them more relatable. Some of the contestants on Nailed It have been teachers, police officers, nurses, a stay-at-home parent, and even grandparents. Each amateur baker on the show has a packaged interview with producers that details their level of poor baking skills, with at-home footage provided to show their lack of baking skills. For Netflix, the relatability has translated well, resulting in multiple international versions. Netflix released Nailed It Mexican, French,

Spanish (Spain) and German versions to viewers over the 2019 calendar year. The German version aired in January 2020. Nailed It is a reality television show that caters to a specific audience. But Netflix created other baking competition shows such as Sugar Rush that follow more typical cooking competitions like the ones on Food Network.

The Netflix Original reality competition show Sugar Rush, released 2018, has four teams of professional bakers that compete in three challenges to win a $10,000 prize. Similar in nature to Food Network’s Cupcake Wars, Sugar Rush comprises three rounds in which all teams begin with the same amount of time for rounds one and two. The judges are Candance

Nelson (American pastry chef) a judge previously on Cupcake Wars, Adriano Zumbo

(Australian pâtissier and chef) also a judge on Zumbo’s Just Desserts (Netflix), and a third guest judge. Each team must bake themed cupcakes for round one, and a themed confection for round two. The catch is that the quicker the contestants complete their bakes, the more time they have for the next round. In total for rounds one and two, the contestants have three hours. As the four teams compete to finish round one, the quickest bakers buzz in when they are ready to be judged. The judges go in order of who buzzed in first. Teams that have already been judged can begin their next confection while later the teams are being judged.

The judges then eliminate one team, who must stop work on their confection and leave the kitchen, but the clock persists for the other three teams. As the remaining three teams complete their confection, they buzz in to be judged. The remaining time they have left from round two is added to their total time for round three, the cake portion of the competition. Again, the weakest team is eliminated, and the final two teams go head-to-head.

Unlike Nailed It, which expanded outside of the U.S., Sugar Rush has remained in the United

States but has brought over content from Australia via Adriano Zumbo. A master pâtissier in

Australia, Zumbo was the key reason for the explosion of French macaroons in Australia.

Highly regarded as a pastry chef, Zumbo has a growing fan base in Australia who enjoy the desserts he creates.

In Australia, Zumbo’s Just Desserts, an Australian reality dessert competition tests amateur baker trying to make Adriano Zumbo’s own creations.111 The contestants on

Zumbo’s Just Desserts vary in age and come from different work backgrounds. In its two seasons, there has been one student along with a mix of bankers, a stay-at-home parent, salesmen, airline personnel, and even a bricklayer. Like GBBO, Zumbo’s Just Desserts at two seasons follows ten to twelve contestants over the corresponding weeks until one winner is chosen and wins the grand prize of $100,000. One theme runs through the entire season, based on Zumbo’s whimsical and intricate designs, described as steampunk Willy Wonka.

Steampunk, defined as “a style of design and fashion, combines historical elements with anachronistic technological features inspired by science fiction.” Willy Wonka inspired preparation draws on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory creations like a “three-course dinner” chewing gum flavor that tastes like tomato soup, roast beef, baked potatoes, and blueberry pie. Although fictional Wonka’s creations were complex and layered to create memorable “dishes. The steampunk aspect is incorporated by how Zumbo’s desserts are not only aesthetically pleasing to the eye and palate but include the use of both modern and standard baking techniques. Zumbo’s desserts are often layered in both textures and flavors while being highly detailed and pristinely executed. To replicate Zumbo’s desserts, a baker must be moderately skilled to understand Zumbo’s techniques. Contestants are given two themed, timed challenges.

111 Originally this show aired in Australia in 2016 for one season, but season two is a Netflix Original production commissioned in 2018 but was released in 2019 for Netflix.

In Challenge one, “The Sweet Sensations Task,” the contestants created a dessert that follows the theme and rules given by the judges. Adriano Zumbo and Rachel Khoo (British chef and broadcaster) judged the desserts and crowned one contestant with the dessert of the day then selected the remaining desserts down, eliminating two contestants that were not successful for the day. The bottom two contestants compete in the “Zumbo Test” recreating one of Zumbo’s complex and intricate desserts that are challenging to complete.

Figure 12

Both the GBBO and Zumbo’s Just Dessert share passion and camaraderie. Even while competing the atmosphere is warm and easy-going. No contestant is dismissive of another’s skill or potential but rather focused on how to step up their own baking to the next level in order to beat the competition. The contestants view each other as equals, or ‘the person to beat.’ This contestant’s mindset of gratitude and humility GBBO and Zumbo’s Just

Desserts directly contrast with how contestants behave on American baking competitions.

While some U.S. competitors display gratitude and humility for getting the chance to compete, others are often dismissive of the judges’ opinions or the other competitors’ creations, bragging and flexing their own superiority.

Netflix as a platform has made British cuisine more accessible to a global audience interested in the cultural aspects of Britain. Historian Otter agrees with Claude Lévi-Strauss,

“[f]ood has become an excellent way to think about, or rethink, the history of Britain.”112

Because food competition and reality television have continued to create ample opportunity for professional chefs and pastry chefs to demonstrate their skills as well as provide amateurs bakers a place to test their level of knowledge and skills and hopefully to grow as a baker, the digital platform of YouTube has broken the barrier of borders that contained how food is shared globally.

YouTube and Food Content

YouTube, first launched in 2005 as a video-sharing platform, has a standard mix of videos uploaded by individuals but also by media corporations such as BBC and PBS.

Originally created as a platform for people to create and post their own videos, other media outlets began sharing their content to retain viewership. It has become a massive domain where viewers watch content from many broadcast sources at their own leisure. Streaming platforms are an extended branch of video-on-demand which began in the

1990s. Currently, YouTube is estimated to reach over a billion users globally a month, according to a Business Insider article from 2018.113 PBS’s main YouTube channel as of

112 Chris Otter. “The British Nutrition Transition and Its Histories.” History Compass 10, no. 11 (2012): 812–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12001. P. 819. 113 Ben Gilbert, “YouTube Now Has Over 1.8 Billion Users Every Month, Within Spitting Distance of Facebook's 2 Billion,” Business Insider (Business Insider, May 4, 2018), https://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-user- statistics-2018-5.

March 2020 has 809,000 subscribers with twelve secondary channels. The BBC’s YouTube channel is much larger with 8.21 million subscribers and many millions more combined on their twenty-five secondary channels. The BBC's main channel has an eight-video playlist titled BBC Nadiya’s Time to Eat that has short three to six-minute videos of Nadiya Hussain

(GBBO Series Six winner) instructing and demonstrating how to make a specific recipe.

Chefs and bakers who do not compete on reality television cooking competitions can take their passion and craft to YouTube to share with the broader public their love for food.

Creators can create vlogs (video blogs) and original productions to share their journey with food, allowing viewers to watch not only stunning food creations but also watch some huge cooking fails that people are willing to share.

In addition to competition and small-scale videos, new channels make cooking accessible to ordinary people. In 2008, four old friends from Hertfordshire, chef Benjamin

'Ben' Ebbrell and three food lovers, Michael 'Mike' Huttlestone, Jamie Spafford and Barry

Taylor, self-published, a cookbook, A Recipe for Student Survival. In 2010, they created a

YouTube channel called SORTEDfood taking their love of simple food recipes to a new level. SORTEDfood, both a YouTube channel and a website, is dedicated to accessible cheap and simple recipes, not designed for chefs but for ordinary people with limited time and money. By 2013 SORTEDfood, according to food writer J Salter, attracted “[m]ore than 347,000 subscribers and 5,000 hours of their content are watched globally every day, making them the largest YouTube cooking channel in Europe.”114 In 2014 James Currie joined as SORTEDfood’s developmental chef, also became an on-camera personality.

114 Jessica Salter, “SortedFood: Your Dinner's on the Smartphone,” The Telegraph (Telegraph Media Group, June 21, 2013), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/10130914/SortedFood-Your- dinners-on-the-smartphone.html.

Figure 13 SORTEDfood’s large culinary acclaim has gone international. In 2015, the

SORTEDfood creators went on a three-month tour of the U.S. taking recommendations from their fans on their social media platforms, on where and what to eat. The tour kicked off in

Los Angeles, California, and concluded in Virginia. They uploaded videos to YouTube, for a series they called #LostandHungry, detailing which restaurants they went to and what they ate. This YouTube channel series was so popular that in 2015 NBC’s “Today” show asked them to produce it as a TV segment.115 By March 2020, SORTEDfood had 2.3 million subscribers on YouTube and more than 500 million views on YouTube. SORTEDfood’s following differs from television series that are aimed at a specific audience and usually only accessible in the home country.

Apps & Food Content Future Application software, App for short, is a program or group of programs that are created for an end-user. Apps can be used on many different platforms of media such as

115 Lara O'Reilly, “4 British Guys with Terrible Diets Started a YouTube Cooking Channel and Now It's a Real Business That's about to Open a Cookery School,” Business Insider Malaysia, June 16, 2017, https://www.businessinsider.my/sortedfood-to-launch-cookery-schools-2015-10.

79 computers, game consoles, tablets, and cell phones. Everyday people download apps that will provide them with an easier way to access their necessary or desired content. Everyday apps have made end-users’ lives simpler by providing easy access to shopping, banking, and business. Media apps like YouTube have allowed end-users to move beyond the computer and view content mobile.

SORTEDfood also developed its own paid subscription-based mobile app. Its information tab “about us” states, “Sorted is your best friend in food! The club was created from a global network of foodies aiming to live the ultimate food lifestyle. We come together to find new food solutions to help each other cook, eat, and travel smarter. Members can access the club’s app-based tools to help learn, explore and change food routines and lifestyles for the better.”116 The SORTEDfood app is accessible on a global level, allowing for more connectivity around the preparation and the consumption of food. SORTEDfood’s content on YouTube is free, but viewers do not have to pay to watch it and can choose to subscribe to their app to support SORTEDfood’s operation. SORTEDfood by 2019 had partnered with Kenwood, Brand USA, Nestlé, Global Knives, and Google, making their app accessible and easy to use while striving for global connectivity pertaining to food.

YouTube has become a good place to go to for how-to cooking demonstrations in the kitchen that make visual learning simple. Accessible via both a computer and mobile app, it has developed new subcategories such as YouTube TV and YouTube Music. YouTube provides the mobility that traditional television companies struggled to attain before they become obsolete.

116 SORTEDfood. “About Us.” Sorted, November 19, 2019. https://sorted.club/about-us/.

To maintain its foothold as the go-to food source in the US the Food Network has created and launched its own app for U.S. consumers. In October 2019, the Food Network launched Food Network Kitchen, a U.S. application available on Android and iOS (iPhone and iPad) devices. The app was developed with a collaboration including Amazon to be accessible on Amazon devices such as Amazon Alexa, Amazon Echo Show, and Amazon

Fire tablets and streaming services. Food Network Kitchen, a paid, subscription-based app, is an interactive cooking platform with access to top Food Network chefs and global culinary leaders. It advertises twenty-five live cooking classes each week, five daily cooking classes every weekend and over eight hundred on-demand cooking classes.117 As President and CEO of Discovery Inc David Zaslav stated, “Through Food Network Kitchen’s proprietary streaming technology and our foundational partnership with Amazon, we believe this is a truly differentiated product that will make customers’ lives better. With hundreds of the world’s leading cooks offering live and on-demand classes every day, we want to be the trusted partner to everybody who wants to cook and loves to cook. No one needs to be alone in the kitchen again.”118

Accessibility to weekly live classes and on-demand cooking classes have brought into the home instructional videos of various chefs’ meals that focus on formal cuisine. There are meals and desserts from Michelin-star and James Beard award-winning chefs. The recipes can be ingredient and step heavy. While Food Network Kitchen is only currently available in

117 Discovery Inc. “Discovery, Inc. Re-Imagining the Direct-to-Consumer Experience with First-of-Its-Kind Product Offering.” Discovery Inc, September 27, 2019. https://corporate.discovery.com/discovery- newsroom/discovery-inc-re-imagining-the-direct-to-consumer-experience-with-first-of-its-kind-product- offering/. 118 Discovery Inc. “Discovery, Inc. Re-Imagining the Direct-to-Consumer Experience with First-of-Its-Kind Product Offering.” Discovery Inc, September 27, 2019. https://corporate.discovery.com/discovery- newsroom/discovery-inc-re-imagining-the-direct-to-consumer-experience-with-first-of-its-kind-product- offering/.

81 the U.S, it remains to be seen if the Food Network Kitchen app will launch globally to include access in all countries that have Food Network channels. Meanwhile, there are many apps available to foodies both in and outside of the U.S. to learn recipes and get instructional videos. 119

Apps, YouTube, and streaming services like Netflix have changed the way people gain access to cooking instruction. As the world continues to flood the market with food programs that explore international cuisine it has become daunting to choose which programs to watch, which are of interest and which are not. A strong element of the visual attraction of food also plays into the most recent developments. Food programs are about preference, but also about what catches the eye in advertising. Encouraged by websites like Pinterest (2010) and Instagram (2010), the image of food became an object of desire, drawing on the attractive and appealing presentation of food. Erin Metz McDonnell, assistant professor of sociology at the Notre Dame argues that “[f]ood in the age of digital reproduction continues to be a status-laden arena of social demarcation, ripe for the conspicuous display of particular aesthetic taste of which food porn is the contemporary dominant expression. There exists a demarcation between those who eat for sustenance, and those who eat for something more – whose class position puts them beyond the exigencies of calories for cost, thereby enabling expressions of alternative logics imbricated with cultural taste.”120 Reality food competition shows built on the sense of desire that food photography developed. Viewers want to watch the fruition of a “perfect” bake for the visual experience. They watch for the pleasure of

119 The Food Network is available in Canada, New Zealand, Asia and the UK. The UK Food Network channel took the place of the Good Food channel which ceased airing programs in September 2019 when Discovery Inc announced its merge of the programs its sister channel Food Network. 120 Peri Bradley. Food, Media and Contemporary Culture: The Edible Image. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. p.264.

82 watching, not so much to be able to create the food or desserts on their own since it usually is easier to purchase the food in question than spend hours recreating it themselves.

Food apps have given people the ability to expand their cooking and baking skills further without having to attend the traditional cooking school. There will continue to be a need for the professional training for restaurant industry jobs that it, but for home cooks, apps, media content and other easily accessible information have provided inspiration. From passing recipes along verbally or written by hand, to newspaper recipes and cookbooks, to a voice on the radio, visual instruction on television, cooking instruction followed media development. With televised cooking competitions, viewers could watch the food be prepared in high stakes competitions, serious or whimsical. The latest development of

YouTube and apps make cooking instruction even simpler. To learn how to make any dish the heart desires, there is a world-wide-web of instructional recipes everyone can download and watch.

Conclusion

The most significant and compelling reason why cooking competitions have become a sport, a form of entertainment and watched by millions around the globe is that cooking is something almost all of us do every day. For many of us, we cook what we know. We may try to explore new cuisines then revert to what we know how to make. We enjoy the expertise and knowledge we can gather from food programs and competitions on television.

It is easy for us to watch Nailed It and think, as a contestant adds wet ingredients to dry ingredients, “that isn’t how you do that, you add dry to wet ingredients!” As simple as that indication is, it is also ingrained in our mind that that is the correct order because we have been instructed to add dry to wet ingredients repeatedly as cooking instructions have been relayed on television.

As time passes, cooking will change, what and how we eat will change as will the rise and evolution of cooking competitions. Many shows focus on highlighting rare ingredients, exotic game, expensive produce, and even the combination of each. The rise and evolution of cooking competitions have reflected the evolving social, cultural, and gender roles that denote the difference between home cooks/bakers, amateur cooks/bakers, and professional cooks/bakers. The differences between each group rest, not their backgrounds, introduced in the packaged 5-minute introductory segments, but their distinct difference in skill. Television cooking competitions and food programs also speak to the globalization of cuisine that has opened the world to the experimentation of combining regional and international foods together for the development of “fusion” cuisine.

Fusion cuisine is the combination of elements of different traditions that originate from different countries, regions, or cultures. This balance in combination is breaking down

84 the walls of certain foods belonging to just one region, country, or culture. Food, by definition, is meant to nourish an organism and food has had a mixed history of being the catalyst for many troubled histories, but food has also had the ability to not only flourish in the face of adversity but to transform and bring together people as we explore not only our own places in history but the impact of our fusion on the future.

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