In 2005, Jacques Chirac, speaking of the British, estimated that“you can’t trust people who have such bad cooking”. Until today, the cliché of the Englishman incapable of shining in the kitchen has remained tenacious. Canned beans dumped on soft slices of sandwich bread, jelly (originally made with the gelatin of beef bones) with a disturbing fluorescent color… We are a little quick to summarize the diet on the other side of the Channel as poorly made quick meals or industrial foods.
This distrust has distant roots. In his work British Food. An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History (Columbia University Press, 2003), historian Colin Spencer explains that British cuisine actually declined in the 19the century, in particular because the good Victorian, Puritan society, took a dim view of the pleasures of the table. In a monarchy hit hard by shortages after the Second World War and dependent on imports, dishes have long lacked fantasy and freshness.
But today, as Arnaud Bachelin, owner of the Thé-ritoires tea house in Paris, and who has translated a classic of English home cooking that has been popular since 1861, notes (Mrs Beeton, Les Editions de l’Epure, 2022), the younger generations already have fewer preconceptions about our neighbors’ meals. And this is thanks to the success of cultural products, books, films, series (like Downton Abbey) which promote local specialties. “In my tea room, scones have become a tea time staple, he observes. Porridge (sweetened oatmeal) no longer scares us. Soon haggis (stuffed sheep belly, a Scottish specialty) will find favor with us. »
And beyond the performances, the British gastronomic scene has made a spectacular leap forward. To be sure, all you have to do is go to London, where most of the kingdom’s great toques pass through. “When I moved here, in the 1980s, there weren’t many choices for an exceptional mealremembers Eric Treuillé, who runs Books for Cooks, a specialized bookstore in the Nothinging Hill neighborhood. We mainly went to the restaurants of large hotels. Today, there are plenty of very good establishments. Certainly, all the cuisines of the world are represented, much better than in France. But some local restaurants have achieved cult status, like St. John, created by chef Fergus Henderson, who ensures that every part of the animal is worked on, from snout to tail. There, even a simple dish like beef marrow served with a little parsley on toast is delicious! »
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