Spicing up Britain: Multicultural History of British

THE MULT CULTURAL HISTORY OF BRITISH FOOD PANIKOS PANAYI Spicing Up Britain Spicing Up Britain The Multicultural History of British Food Panikos Panayi reaktion books For my wife Mundeep Published by Reaktion Books Ltd 33 Great Sutton Street London ec1v 0dx www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published 2008 Copyright © Panikos Panayi 2008 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wiltshire British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Panayi, Panikos Spicing up Britain : the multicultural history of British food 1. Food habits – Great Britain – History 2. National characteristics. British 3. Hybridity (Social sciences) – Great Britain – History I. Title 394.1'2'0941 isbn–13: 978 1 86189 373 4 Contents Preface 7 part i: introduction 1 British and Foreign Food 12 part ii: the first ripples of change, circa 1850–1945 2 Immigration and the Emergence of ‘Ghetto’ Food 40 3 The Birth of the Foreign Restaurant 65 4 Changes in British Eating Habits 95 part iii: the culinary revolution since 1945 5 The Multiculturalization of Migrant Food 124 6 The Victory of the Foreign Restaurant 151 7 The Revolution in the Home 181 part iv: conclusion 8 Food and Multiculturalization 212 References 221 Bibliography 251 Acknowledgements 265 Photo Acknowledgements 267 Index 269 Preface This book has deep roots in my own personal and academic life. Born to Greek Cypriot immigrants in London in 1962, I could not speak English until I went to school in 1967. During the next few years of my life I negotiated the path from child of Cypriot migrants to fully paid up member of multicultural British (or perhaps London) society by quickly learning to speak the language of the ethnic majority (as happens with children). The food I ate in my new environment played a central role in my under- standing of the differences between the two cultures I encountered. As I grew up, my own domestic consumption increasingly became anglicized as my parents backed down from forcing me and my two sisters, Myllia and Rodothea, to eat pulses cooked either in Mediterranean-style tomato flavouring or simply boiled, with olive oil and lemon juice poured on to them. Instead we chose to eat processed food such as fish fingers, baked beans and sausages, which our peers would have sampled. However, we did not offer much resistance to other Greek products such as stuffed vine leaves, pastichio or kebabs, so that we ate a variety of foods at home, while at school we tried the meals available which, in the 1960s and much of the 1970s, remained healthy. While this book does not focus upon cakes to any great extent, they have played a central role in my life because my father, Nestoras, worked as a pastry cook from the age of twelve, initially as an apprentice to his uncle, who owned the most famous patisserie in Nicosia, Halepi, and then for various Greek Cypriots in London, where he became a leader in his trade, producing thou- sands of wedding cakes over four decades. For my father and his children cakes did not mean doughnuts and Mr Kipling cream slices but black forest gateaux, fresh cream éclairs and a variety of Middle Eastern delicacies made with filo pastry, which we ate (and still eat as far as possible) on a daily basis. More recently, coinciding with the research and writing of this book, I have married Mundeep, an Indian Sikh, which has made my domestic food consumption increasingly interesting. If I had not already understood the complexities of multicultural and globalized Britain, then making food choices for a London-born couple with different ethnicities would have introduced me to them in a rewarding way. This book has academic as well as personal roots. I have spent my career focusing on the history of migrants and ethnic minorities. While much of my 7 work initially looked at racism, following the dominant research agenda of the 1980s, at the end of the 1990s I put together a collection of documents on the impact of immigration on post-war Britain:1 I realized that migration had played a central role in the development of the country both before and after 1945. While some scholars had carried out work on the importance of newcomers, nobody had tackled their impact on British food, which I suspected was quite profound. My own personal history, as the son of a Greek Cypriot pastry cook in London, therefore moved me towards this study. While the book focuses on the impact of immigration on the transforma- tion of British food since the Victorian period, it also pays attention to two other equally important structural social and economic developments: the increasing wealth of the British population over the past 150 years and globalization. During the middle of the nineteenth century the majority of the population was concerned simply with eating enough food to stay alive. While some critics of contemporary consumption might make the same point about eating patterns in twenty-first century Britain2 (although by this time many Britons eat far more than they need to stay alive), choice has become bewil- dering. Just as importantly, globalization has also transformed British eating habits since the Victorian period, as new products have entered the country either as a result of the British Empire, increasing international trade or the influence of multinational companies, especially since 1945. Despite the title of the book, the introductory chapter discusses the prob- lems of assigning nationalities to food. Before 1950, in an age of Total War and before the spread of affluence, concepts of British – as opposed to foreign – foods hardly existed. This situation changed as a result of post-war immigration and brand labelling. From the 1960s increasing numbers of Britons visited Chinese and Indian restaurants to sample foods vastly different from the dishes they had eaten during the ‘Age of Austerity’. The migrants did not serve the foods which they ate in their own homes. Instead, they created a commodity geared to increasingly affluent Britons. Commodification continued when supermarkets and multinationals manufactured ready-cooked meals based on those available in ‘foreign’ restaurants. Behind these developments, cookbooks focusing on different national cuisines increasingly appeared. While books on curry certainly existed before 1945, volumes on Italian, Chinese, Greek or any other food according to nationality have only surfaced in the past six decades. Although eating has increasingly become categorized along national lines since 1945, many foods in Britain before that time had international origins. This applies to many staples including potatoes, chocolate, curry (which appeared in virtually every British cookbook before 1945) and even fish and chips. Such products had become domesticated, as would others which were introduced to the country after the Second World War. Food since the middle of the nineteenth century has therefore followed previous patterns. Increasing 8 wealth, internationalization and immigration have accelerated earlier developments. After an introduction on concepts of British and foreign food, the book has two major sections. Part ii examines the century before 1945 while Part iii tackles the period since then. The extent of dietary change since the Second World War exceeded that of the preceding century. Since 1945 a culinary revolution has taken place in Britain. Within the entire period since the middle of the nineteenth century, the book tackles three basic themes. First, it examines the food of migrants themselves – from the European arrivals of the nineteenth century to the newcomers from all over the world after 1945. Virtually all migrants wished to eat the foods of their homelands and therefore established shops to supply them. In the initial stages of the migration process they could often not obtain such foods but as settlers and, especially, their descendants, became accustomed to their new environment, they increasingly adopted the foods of their neighbours and often created their own variations of locally available dishes. The book also looks at the development of eating out since the Victorian period, where foreign influences have been profound. These are most obvious in the evolution of Chinese, Indian, Italian and other nationally defined restaurants after 1945. However, since the late nineteenth century, migrants have played a central role in the establishment of all places for eating out (whether or not they define themselves as foreign) as owners, waiters and chefs. Such eateries range from the Ritz to the local fish and chip shop. Furthermore, in the post-war period, multinationals, above all McDonalds, have also introduced foreign foods, symbolized by the hamburger, into Britain. Attention is also focused on changes in the domestic eating habits of the population as a whole. By the middle of the nineteenth century, many staples certainly had foreign origins and had already become domesticated. Until 1945 the improvement in diet represents the main change which occurred, although even during the interwar years some sections of the population still suffered from nutritional deficiencies. Foreign influences manifested themselves in a variety of ways, including the increasing dependence of Britain upon imports, the adaptation of middle-class dining habits from the Continent and the role of migrant cookery writers and entrepreneurs. After 1945 a revolution occurred in the domestic consumption patterns of the British. While the quality of food may not have improved drastically for much of the population,3 increasing wealth and growing consumer choice means that Britons have an enormous range of products available to them, marketed in a variety of ways, including nationality and ethnicity.

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