What’s what in British food (From Bucks Free Press)
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The perfect wife and mother, Rebecca runs a home, a village magazine and is working on her novel. She does not visit the gym or jog but is in amazingly good shape. She enjoys photography, playing the piano and arguing with the TV. She lives in Amersham with her husband and youngest child (aged nine). Her eldest, now 26, lives and works in Buckinghamshire.
What’s what in British food
12:40pm Friday 3rd June 2011
OK I’m not the most avid fan of British food – but maybe that’s because there’s so much bad stuff around.
Having eaten around the UK a fair bit, I think the imminent PDOs (Protected Designation of Origin) are late coming but a good thing.
I can verify that the Ship Hotel in Brighton (4*) serves cream teas with spray cream and pretty stale scones and that Beefeater (OK not renowned for quality food but still) serves Béarnaise sauce which is just mayonnaise with unidentifiable crunchy bits in it.
I think cracking down on food description can only be good.
Cream should be cream. Fresh vegetables should mean fresh, And it isn’t limited to food. You just have to browse the internet to witness language rape, mutilation even.
I ordered a ‘leather belt’ from a reputable catalogue company. When it arrived it clearly wasn’t leather.
I went back to my order to see what had gone wrong. ‘Leather belt in polyurethane’ appeared in small print. What? Leather is a material, not a vague idea of what it will feel like.
The internet and the way search engines work hasn’t helped. It just lets people write garbled ‘catch-all’ descriptions in the hope of selling their products. Ebay is notorious for it.
‘Rabbit fur wool angora beanie hat cap beret’ is what lands in my inbox having carefully specified with ebay hats I’d like to see.
And do people even know what ‘faux’ means?
I could go on.
‘New Vintage 70s Top Shop skirt’. So is it new or vintage? Or is it 70s-look? Or Vintage-style?
Eating out is a bit like a bad dating site (not that I’ve ever used one…) When you meet the chap whose profile said, ‘Sporty, 5’10”, youthful, man of the world’ for the first time and he’s wearing trainers, a baseball cap, holidayed in Gran Canaria twice and mistaken imperial for metric, your heart sinks. It’s the same with food expectations.
The article (see link below) says that regional wars may ensue but surely Britain has enough good food for everyone to claim something.
I don’t believe it will stop people visiting Cornwall just because they can’t get a Devon cream tea there. And people will still go to Wales even though they won’t get Scottish haggis there.
I await with interest how the Hamburger, spaghetti and good old English Breakfast tea will fare in this ID verification exercise.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13436963 (Cream tea wars: Does British food need protecting?)
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Comments(6)
Dandelionz
says...
2:32pm Fri 3 Jun 11
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Advertising being a word that SHOULD be redefined in the OED to be:
Advertising - Facts or details about a product, substance, or service, that are almost impossible to disprove and are claimed to reflect the real qualities of the product, substance, or service, being described.
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Short version: Advertising bullpoop
Dandelionz
says...
2:34pm Fri 3 Jun 11
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(amusing side-note, the security posting word combo thingy is "pick away"... seems oddly appropriate :))
Rebecca Leon
says...
4:58pm Fri 3 Jun 11
:
I'll stop at nothing.
:
Next stop, Kent.
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Dandelionz: Advertising is not to blame for menu lies or pub blackboard porkies.
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A Cornish pastie should have something to so with Cornwall, no?
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As for a Devon cream tea, I suppose the cream or scone should have come from Devon...
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I don't care how many calories food has in it, I can make an intelligent guess but I want it to be what it claims to be.
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'Cream', 'Welsh lamb', 'Danish bacon'.
Ahh, she's off...
NicM
says...
8:26am Sat 4 Jun 11
And is a Devon cream tea called that because of the cream, the rest of the contents or the fact that it is put together in a cafe in Devon with ingredients that can be imported from anywhere?
It is a bit mad - a whole ham made in Parma but sliced here cannot be called Parma ham.
tom.marlow2
says...
5:14pm Sat 4 Jun 11
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After all do we insist on frankfurters that only come from Frankfurt, hamburgers that only come from Hamburg or (as I had my long suffering son believe for a couple of years) cheeseburgers from Cheeseburg.
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I agree with Nic about Cornish Pasties.
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Ultimately you have to make your own judgements abut the quality of the food you buy. This depends very much on who you buy it from and how much they care about what they are selling rather than how much profit they are making. That way you can develop some trust. This is not a thing you can legislate for.
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The perfect wife and mother, Rebecca runs a home, a bad temper and is working on her novel. She enjoys photography, playing the piano and likes almost anything that's out of fashion and uncool. She lives in Amersham with her husband and youngest child (aged ten). Her eldest, now 27, lives and works in Buckinghamshire.
KentP says...
2:22pm Fri 3 Jun 11
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does this mean we can blame you for the erosion of our coastline?
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I appreciate your pedantry though... I largely agree!