Fish and Chips!
Friday night supper.
As British as it gets.
It’s Friday night and that means it’s fish, chips and mushy peas! There is nothing more British than fish and chips. Freshly cooked, piping hot fish and chips, smothered in salt and vinegar, delicious!
So how, when and where did this quintessentially British dish come about?
The potato is thought to have been brought to England from the New World in the 17th century by Sir Walter Raleigh – probably from Peru(thank you!), although it was the French who invented the fried potato chip.
Both Lancashire (where I was born) and London claim to be the first to invent this famous meal – chips were a cheap, staple food of the industrial north whilst fried fish was introduced in London’s East End. In 1839 Charles Dickens referred to a “fried fish warehouse” in his novel, ‘Oliver Twist’.
The British soon decided that putting fried fish and chips together was a very tasty combination and so was born our national dish of fish and chips!
The first fish and chip shop in the North of England is thought to have opened in Mossely, near Oldham, Lancashire, around 1863. Mr Lees sold fish and chips from a wooden hut in the market and later he transferred the business to a permanent shop across the road which had the following inscription in the window, “This is the first fish and chip shop in the world”.
However in London, it is said that Joseph Malin opened a fish and chip shop in Cleveland Street within the sound of Bow Bells (making him a true ‘cockney’) in 1860.Through the latter part of the 19th century and well into the 20th century, the fish and chip trade expanded greatly to satisfy the needs of the growing industrial population of Great Britain. In fact you might say that the Industrial Revolution was fuelled partly by fish and chips!
In 1999, the British consumed nearly 300 million servings of fish and chips – that’s six servings for every man, woman and child in the country. There are now around 8,500 fish and chip shops across the UK – that’s eight for every McDonald’s, making British Fish and Chips the nation’s favourite take-away.
