English TEXTS FOR READING
50 BRITISH, AMERICAN
November 2013
AND RUSSIAN CUISINE
A.Say what food is traditional in Great Britain, the USA and Russia?
Fish and chips, Coca-Cola, Sunday roast, okroshka, hamburger, bangers and mash, borsch, bread and butter pudding, beef steak, kvas, Christmas pudding, solyanka, treacle tart, trifle, pancakes, fried bacon, hotdog, cherry pie, milkshake, fried chicken, ukha, shchi.
B.Read the text ‘British, American and Russian Cuisine’ and say if they differ.
BRITISH, AMERICAN AND RUSSIAN CUISINE
British cuisine is sometimes called ‘unimaginative and heavy’. It has historically been characterized by its simplicity of approach and a reliance on the high quality of natural produce. British cuisine has been greatly influenced by interactions with other European countries and it has absorbed culinary ideas from all over the world.
Traditional British dishes include fish and chips, the Sunday roast, and bangers and mash. Fish and chips is a popular take-away food which consists of deep-fried fish in batter or breadcrumbs with deep-fried chipped potatoes. It is usually bought ready cooked at special shops and taken away wrapped in paper to be eaten at home. The Sunday roast is a traditional British main meal served on Sundays which consists of roasted meat, roast potato and vegetables. Yorkshire pudding and gravy is now often served as an accompaniment to the main course. Bangers and mash (or sausages and mash) is made of mashed potatoes and sausages usually served with a rich onion gravy. The British like puddings and desserts such as bread and butter pudding, Christmas pudding, treacle tart, trifle, apple pie and many others.
The full English breakfast also remains a culinary classic. It typically consists of fried bacon and eggs, grilled tomatoes, black pudding (or blood sausage), baked beans, fried mushrooms, sausages, bread, fruit juice or a cup of tea or coffee. Actually very few people eat an English breakfast. Nowadays, the full English breakfast has been replaced by hot and cold cereals for many people at home.
A typical British dinner consists of meat and ‘two veg’. One of the vegetables is almost always potatoes. However, today many people prefer fast food restaurants and readymade meals from supermarkets.
High tea is an early evening meal, typically eaten between 5-6 pm in the evening which usually consists of cold meats, and eggs or fish, cakes and sandwiches. In a family, it is an informal snack (featuring sandwiches, biscuits, pastry, etc) or else it is the main evening meal.
In England, tea is usually served with milk. Some Englishmen prefer coffee which is perhaps a little less common than in continental Europe.
American cuisine was primarily influenced by indigenous Native Americans who had a rich and diverse cooking style. It has been greatly influenced by the influx of international immigrants and many European and Asian ingredients. Its characteristic feature is the fusion of different ethnic or regional approaches into completely new cooking styles. Mexican, Italian and Chinese cuisines have become quite common to Americans and they eat these foods quite frequently.
Besides traditional hotdogs, hamburgers, beef steaks, cherry pie, Coca-Cola, milkshakes and fried chicken, Americans are also used to such foreign food as pizza, pasta, tacos, burritos, etc. Many American dishes have their origins in other countries. For example, hot dogs and hamburgers are both based on traditional German dishes. The USA not only absorbs other culinary ideas, American cooking, in turn, has been exported around the world. Almost every country has restaurant chains such as McDonald’s, Burger King or Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Hamburger appeared in the United States near the end of the 19th century. It is a sandwich which consists of meat placed in an open bun. The term ‘hamburger’ originally derives from the German city of Hamburg from where many emigrants came to America. Hamburgers are served in fast food restaurants. They are mass-produced in factories and frozen for delivery to the site. A hot dog is a moist sausage placed hot in a sliced hot dog bun. It is often garnished with mustard, ketchup or mayonnaise. The name ‘hot dog’ does not mean that sausage makers use dog meat. The fact is
that the term ‘dog’ has been used as a synonym for sausage since 1884. Coca-Cola is a popular American soft drink that is sold in many countries. Coca-Cola and other sweetened drinks have been widely criticized by food experts as they contain a lot of calories and caffeine so excessive consumption dangerous to our health.
Russian cuisine is rich because of its vast and multicultural expanse. Russian cuisine is famous for its breads, soups, pancakes, mushrooms, cereals, honey, kvas, and beer. The Russians have always liked to have substantial meals. Many Russian dishes have been borrowed from other countries. Many of the foods that are considered to be traditionally Russian, actually come from the Franco-Russian cuisine of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Porridge and soup are national Russian foods. The traditional way to serve porridge is with plenty of good butter. Soups are a part of any Russian meal and they have always played an important role in this country. Ukha (fish soup), okroshka (a cold soup based on kvas or sour milk), borsch, shchi and solyanka (soups based on cabbage) are popular in Russia.
Traditional Russian pancakes (blini) date back to preChristian times. They had a ritual significance for early Slavic peoples because they were a symbol of the sun, due to their round form. Pancakes are traditionally prepared at the end of the winter during Maslenitsa (Pancake Week). They are usually served with butter, sour cream, jam or caviar.
Kvas is a traditional Russian drink. It is a mildly alcoholic beverage made from black rye or rye bread. But the most popular and wide-spread drink in Russia is tea, which was introduced to Russia from China in the 17th century. Coffee, which was introduced to Russia by Peter the Great, is also popular with many people.
1. Complete each sentence (A–H) with one of the endings
(1–8):
A.British cuisine has historically been characterized by its…
B.The British like puddings and desserts such as…
C.Nowadays the full English breakfast has been replaced by…
D.A typical British dinner consists of…
E.The characteristic feature of American cuisine is…
F.Americans are also used to such foreign food as…
G.Traditional Russian pancakes had a ritual significance for...
H.Tea, which was introduced to Russia…
1.pizza, pasta, tacos, burritos, etc.
2.simplicity of approach and a reliance on the high quality of natural produce.
3.the fusion of different ethnic or regional approaches into completely new cooking styles.
4.from China in the 17th century...
TEXTS FOR READING English
51
November2013
5.cereals for many people at home.
6.meat and ‘two veg’.
7.bread and butter pudding, Christmas pudding, treacle tart, trifle, apple pie and many others.
8.early Slavic peoples because they were a symbol of the sun.
2.Read the following proverbs and explain their meaning.
• First food, then religion. (Afghan)
• Food tastes best when you eat it with your own spoon. (Danish)
• The poor man looks for food and the rich man for appetite. (Indian)
• There is no such thing as bad food when you are really hungry. (Japanese)
• There is no bad food in a famine. (Filipino)
• God gives all birds their food but does not drop it into their nests. (Danish)
• Where love sets the table, food tastes at its best. (French)
• If you watch your pot, your food will not burn. (Mauritanian)
• The most dangerous food is a wedding cake. (United States)
• No matter how high a bird can fly, it still has to look for food on the ground. (Danish)
• If you want dinner, don’t insult the cook. (Chinese)
• You cannot cook two meals in the same pot. (Chinese)
3.Answer the questions.
1)Why do some people call British cuisine ‘unimaginative and heavy’?
2)What traditional British dishes do you know?
3)What does the full English breakfast include?
4)What was American cuisine influenced by?
5)How does American cuisine influence other countries?
6)What traditional American food do you know?
7)What is Russian cuisine famous for?
8)What national Russian food do you know?
9)Which cuisine is healthier to your mind? Why?
10)What do you know about the cuisines of other countries (France, Italy, India, Japan, China, etc)?
4.Match the name of some dishes with their definitions.
1.sushi
2.curry
3.pasta
4.pudding
5.French fries
6.foie gras
7.ravioli
8.sandwich
9.lasagne
10.pancake
11.burrito
12.tortilla
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November 2013
A.a hot sweet dish, made from cake, rice, bread etc with fruit, milk or other sweet things added
B.a type of food from India, consisting of meat or vegetables in a spicy sauce
C.long thin pieces of potato that have been cooked in hot oil
D.small pasta squares filled with meat or cheese
E.two pieces of bread with cheese, meat, vegetables, cooked egg, etc between them
F.a boiled Italian food made from flour, eggs, and water and cut into various shapes, usually eaten with a sauce
G.a smooth food made from the liver of a goose
H.a type of thin flat Mexican bread made from corn or wheat flour
I.a thin flat round cake made from flour, milk, and eggs, that has been cooked in a flat pan and is eaten hot
J.a Mexican dish made with a tortilla (=flat thin bread) folded around meat or beans with cheese
K.a type of Italian food made with strips of flat pasta, meat, or vegetables, and cheese
L.a Japanese dish that consists of small cakes of cooked rice served with raw fish
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5. Read the quotations below. Choose any quotation and comment on it.
•‘Every country possesses, it seems, the sort of cuisine it deserves, which is to say the sort of cuisine it is appreciative enough to want.’ Waverley Lewis Root
•‘The art of the cuisine, when fully mastered, is the one human capability of which only good things can be said.’
Friedrich Durrenmatt
•‘The English contribution to world cuisine – the chip.’
John Cleese
•‘I love food and I love everything involved with food. I love the fun of it. I love restaurants. I love cooking, although I don’t cook very much.’ Alma Guillermoprieto
•‘Men do not have to cook their food; they do so for symbolic reasons to show they are men and not beasts.’ Edmund Leach
Read and translate the recipe below. Give the recipe of your favourite dish.
Christmas Pudding
By Lesley Waters
Description
You’ll need two 1.2-litre pudding bowls
Ingredients
900g/2lb mixed dried fruits, such as figs, apricots, sour cherries, raisins, dates, cranberries or sultanas
150ml/5fl oz brandy or whisky 1 large orange, zest and juice
225g/8oz butter, softened, plus extra, melted, for greasing
225g/8oz dark brown sugar 4 large eggs, beaten 110g/4oz self-raising flour 110g/4oz fresh breadcrumbs
85g/3oz chopped nuts (almonds, hazelnuts or pecans) 1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 heaped tsp cinnamon
To Serve
brandy, for flaming fresh cherries
custard, thick cream or ice cream
Method
1.Place the dried fruit in a large bowl (cut up any large pieces of apricot or fig so that all fruit pieces are about the same size). Pour over the brandy or whisky.
2.Grate the zest of the orange and add to the bowl of fruit.
3.Juice the orange and pour the juice over the fruit. Mix the fruit and juice together well. Cover and leave in a cool place overnight.
4.The next day, lightly butter two 1.2 litre/2 pint pudding bowls with the melted butter and place a disc of parchment paper into the base of each.
5.In a very large mixing bowl cream together the softened butter with the sugar until light and fluffy with an electric mixer (about five minutes).
6.Beat in the eggs, a little at a time, incorporating each addition into the batter before adding the next. If the mixture curdles, just add a spoonful of flour.
7.When all the eggs are mixed in, add the soaked fruit with all their juice and stir well.
8.Add the flour and the breadcrumbs to the mixture.
9.Add the nuts and spices and mix gently until well combined. The mixture should be of dropping consistency.
10.Spoon the mixture into the prepared pudding bowls and cover with a double piece of parchment paper and a single piece of foil. Tie with string.
11.Prepare a steamer and steam the puddings for four hours. You can eat the puddings at this stage, or you can cool them completely and store them, in their bowls, for 2-3 months, in a cool dark place, re-steaming them for two hours before serving.
12.Carefully remove the puddings from the bowls and turn out onto a plate.
13.Garnish the top of the puddings with cherries. Carefully flame the brandy and pour over the puddings.
14.Garnish each serving with a few extra cherries and serve with custard, thick cream or ice cream.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk/food
Светлана Юнёва, Губернский профессиональный колледж
TEXTS FOR READING English
THE AMERICAN FAST FOOD INDUSTRY. 53
November2013
An Agent of Regimentation in Postindustrial Times
There are many recognizable examples of American food and drink, yet there is no consistent American cuisine. Instead, the cultural diversity that has formed this nation has also led to a melting pot of Mexican, Chinese, Italian and German cuisine as well as dozens of other styles of cooking. It is in this context that the American culture has managed to break from a set of traditional dishes to promote an eating style matching the lifestyle of 21st century postindustrialism. Fast food is by far the most characteristic and predominant feature of eating habits in America. It is constantly enhanced by the Americans’ need to save time, their mistrust of sophistication and their preference for eating out.
Giants like Burger King, McDonalds, Yum! Brands (which includes Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silvers, A&W and KFC) have turned all issues related to food into pieces of a high-tech system of standardized precision.
Production of meat has developed along such standardized lines. Traditional societies once involved a relation between farmers and animals which, while ignoring the latter’s rights, at least implied treating them as partners or simply as God’s creatures rather than mere objects. Conversely, the American agriculture has now become extremely efficient particularly because it managed to eliminate people’s involvement almost completely, in favor of machines dealing with animals as products.
In the meatpacking industry, this has led to entrepreneurs being willing to do anything to produce more meat, as well as tastier and more tender one to suit fast food chains. This is why cattle are often fed waste products from poultry plants such as chicken manure and even sawdust and old newspapers. Although the outbreak of mad cow disease has led to outlawing the use of dead cows and sheep or their wastes for feeding cattle, it is still legal to feed dead pigs, horses and poultry to livestock.
Furthermore, the practical need to cut expenses causes meatpackers to keep cattle in crammed feedlots where they get little exercise and live amidst pools of manure, much unlike the happy cows in some commercials. Even in slaughterhouses, cost efficiency leads to poor sanitation, excessive workloads and the use of poorly trained workers. All this would still lead to e-coli and other pathogens being transmitted to humans through hamburgers if the meatpacking industry had not decided to use irradiation of meat as it goes through slaughterhouses so as to disrupt the DNA of germs and thus prevent their reproduction.
The people themselves who work in fast food outlets get ef- ficiency-driven treatment too. Fast food is the most affordable in America, which is at least in part due to the fact that, if we leave aside Hispanic migrants’ earnings, salaries in the fast food business are the lowest in the entire US economy. Such cost efficiency can only be achieved at the expense of the young, who are willing to put in the required amount of energy for so little money. Thus, more than half of the nation’s fast food workers are under the age of twenty. Many of these are teenagers who work hard to raise money for a car, which is a must-have in the suburban sprawl of American cities. While working is credited with teaching teenagers self-disci- pline and a sense of responsibility, some of them gladly work over twenty hours a week, which puts out all enthusiasm for school and even earns them a lifelong aversion to work. Additionally, the pressure of working directly with customers is more than any of these children can safely take.
Children and all youth are also the target of the fast food industry when it comes to customers. Advertising campaigns create an image of non-conformity and freshness for businesses such as McDonalds, while, in fact, they reproduce with robotic accuracy the same few recipes in thousands of outlets. Here the cooking process
mainly consists of taking bags out of the freezer and heating the contents or adding hot water in the case of dehydrated products. Finally, by targeting children, fast food chains are, according to many, partly responsible for the growing number of overweight young people in the US.
One trend in the fast food industry that particularly contributes to obesity is giving in to the all-American preference for big things. Thus, portions at many restaurants in the US are said to have increased lately in an effort to beat competition. For example, a typical hamburger in 1957 weighed 1 ounce (28 grams) and contained 210 calories, while a typical hamburger today weighs 6 ounces (170 grams) and contains 618 calories. Moreover, producers have come out on the market with products whose selling point is none other than size: there is Big Mac from McDonald’s, Extreme Gulp from 7-Eleven, Biggie Fries from Wendy’s, Big Grab Frito-Lay (a brand of chips), Whopper from Burger King, Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger from Jack in the Box and, finally, The Beast – an 85oz./2.5 liter drink from ARCO convenience stores.
Admittedly, frozen food like that offered by fast food outlets has the advantage of not requiring the addition of preservatives to prolong its shelf-life, but it still requires additives to gain the taste it had when it was fresh, which is what customers naively expect and demand. Producers even add chemicals to give a fish or beef burger the pleasant aroma of pork. Consequently, customers, whether fans of fast food or not, will admit that it is particularly tasty, but do not suspect how little that has to do with a kitchen and how much it depends on a chemical factory.
Under such circumstances, it is natural to wonder why fast food is so hugely popular. As suggested above, speed and eating out are customary in the US and regional specificity is a feature going extinct in the era of highways and mass communication. Furthermore, predictability and safety are the aspects of fast food which millions of Americans appreciate the most about fast food, especially since it caters for a basic human need, that of security, compared to which originality and personal preference seem pointless. Finally, statistics show that most visits to a fast food outlet are made out of impulse rather than according to a plan. Therefore, it is simply by being so omnipresent that fast food restaurants manage to be so successful. People choose McDonalds simply because its two golden arches are always near when they feel hungry.
By Ovidiu Aniculăese „Al. I. Cuza University”, Iaşi, Romania
Bibliography
Luedtke, Luther S. (ed.) – Making America. The Society and Culture of the U.S., U.S. Information Agency, Washington D.C., 1987
Shafrity, Jay M. – Dictionary of American Government and Politics, The Dorsey Press, Chicago, 1988
Schlosser, Erich – Fast Food Nation. The Dark Side of the AllAmerican Meal, Perennial, New York, 2002
Stevenson, Douglas K. – American Life and Institutions, Enst Klett
Verlag, Stuttgart, 1987
Wheen, Francis – How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World. A Short History of Modern Delusions, Harper Perennial, London, 2004
Ovidiu Aniculăese won a PhD from „Al. I. Cuza” University in 2004 with a paper on American popular novels (Books for the Many. A Cultural Study on Popular Novels in Postmodern America, Institutul European, 2004) and published an American culture and civilisation coursebook (Life in America. An Introduction to the Study of Contemporary American Culture, Taida, 2008). He has also worked for the British Council as an IELTS and Cambridge ESOL examiner for all levels as well as a Cambridge presenter. He is on the board of the Moldavian Association of Teachers of English and volunteers as the managing editor of the ELT journal RATE Issues.
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54 FOOD RULES |
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by Kate Fox |
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In 1949, the Hungarian George Mikes famously declared that ‘On the Continent people have good food; in England they have good table manners.’ Later, in 1977, he observed that our food had improved somewhat, while our table manners had deteriorated. He still did not, however, seem impressed by English food, and he acknowledged that our table manners were still ‘fairly decent’.
Nearly thirty years on, Mikes’s comments still reflect the general international opinion of English cooking, as the travel writer Paul Richardson discovered when he told foreign friends that he was going to spend eighteen months researching a book on British gastronomy. His Spanish, French and Italian friends, he says, informed him that there was no such thing as British gastronomy, as this would require a passionate love of food, which we clearly did not have. They implied ‘that our relationship with the food we ate was more or less a loveless marriage’.
Among the litany of complaints, which I have also heard from my own foreign friends and informants, was the fact that we regard good food as a privilege, not a right. We also have no proper regional cookery; families no longer eat together but instead consume junk food in front of the television; our diet consists mainly of salty or sweet snack foods – chips, crisps, chocolate bars, ready-meals, microwave pizzas and other rubbish. Even those with an interest in good food, and able to afford it, tend to have neither the time nor the energy to shop for and cook fresh ingredients in what other nations would regard as a normal or proper manner.
These criticisms are largely justified. But they are not the whole truth. The same goes for the opposite extreme
– the current ‘Cool Britannia’ fashion for proclaiming that English cooking has in recent years improved out of all recognition, that London is now the gastronomic capital of the world, that food is the new rock’n’roll, that we have become a nation of gourmets and ‘foodies’, and so on.
I am not going to spend too much time here arguing about the quality of English cooking. My impression is that it is neither as awful as its detractors would have us believe, nor as stupendous as its recent champions have claimed. It is somewhere in between. Some of it is very good, some is quite inedible. On average, it’s probably about fair to middling. I am only interested in the quality of English food in so far as it reflects our relationship with food, the unwritten social rules governing our foodrelated behaviour, and what these tell us about our national identity. Every culture has its own distinctive food rules – both general rules about attitudes towards food and cooking, and specific rules about who may eat what, how much, when, where, with whom and in what manner – and one can learn a lot about a culture by studying its food rules. So, I am not interested in English food per se, but in the Englishness of English food rules.
Photo by Dmitry Davydov.
THE AMBIVALENCE RULE
‘Loveless marriage’ is not an entirely unfair description of the English relationship with food, although marriage is perhaps too strong a word: our relationship with food and cooking is more like a sort of uneasy, uncommitted cohabitation. It is ambivalent, often discordant, and highly fickle. There are moments of affection, and even of passion, but on the whole it is fair to say that we do not have the deep-seat- ed, enduring, inborn love of food that is to be found among our European neighbours, and indeed in most other cultures. Food is just not given the same high priority in English life as it is elsewhere. Even the Americans, whose ‘generic’ (as opposed to ethnic) food is arguably no better than ours, still seem to care about it more, demanding hundreds of different flavours and combinations in each category of junk food, for example, whereas we will put up with just two or three.
In most other cultures, people who care about food, and enjoy cooking and talking about it, are not singled out, either sneeringly or admiringly, as ‘foodies’. Keen interest in food is the norm, not the exception: what the English call a ‘foodie’ would just be a normal person, exhibiting a standard, healthy, appropriate degree of focus on food. What we see as foodie obsession is in other cultures the default mode, not something unusual or even noticeable.
Among the English, such an intense interest in food is regarded by the majority as at best rather odd, and at worst somehow morally suspect – not quite proper, not quite right. In a man, foodie tendencies may be seen as unmanly, effeminate, possibly even casting doubt upon his sexual orientation. In this context, foodieness is roughly on a par with, say, an enthusiastic interest in fashion or soft furnishings. English male ‘celebrity’ chefs who appear on television tend to go out of their way to demonstrate their masculinity and heterosexuality: they use blokeish language and adopt a tough, macho demeanour; parade their passion for football; mention their wives, girlfriends or children (‘the wife’ and ‘the kids’
in bloke-speak); and dress as scruffily as possible. Jamie Oliver, the young TV chef who has done so much to make cooking a more attractive career choice for English boys, is a prime example of this ‘please note how heterosexual I am’ style, with his cool scooter, loud music, sexy model wife, Cockney brashness and laddish ‘Chuck in a bi’ o’ this an’ a bi’ o’ that and you’ll be awright, mate’ approach to cookery.
Foodieness is somewhat more acceptable among females, but it is still noticeable, still remarked upon – and in some circles regarded as pretentious. No-one wishes to be seen as too deeply fascinated by or passionate about food. Most of us are proud to claim that we ‘eat to live, rather than living to eat’ – unlike some of our neighbours, the French in particular, whose excellent cooking we enjoy and admire, but whose shameless devotion to food we rather despise, not realizing that the two might perhaps be connected.
ANTI-EARNESTNESS AND OBSCENITY RULES
Our ambivalence about food may be due in part to the influence of the Importance of Not Being Earnest rule. Excessive zeal on any subject is embarrassing, and getting all earnest and emotional about something as trivial as food is, well, frankly rather silly.
But it seems to me that our uneasiness about food and foodieness involves something more than this. There is a hint here of a more general discomfort about sensual pleasures. Flaunting one’s passion for good food, and talking openly about the pleasure of eating it, is not embarrassing just because it is over-earnest but also because it is somehow a bit obscene.
It has been said that the English have a puritanical streak, but I’m not sure this is quite accurate. Sex, for example, is not regarded as sinful, but as private and personal and therefore a bit embarrassing. Jokes about sex, even quite explicit ones, are acceptable; earnest or fervent talk about the same intimate physical details is obscene. The sensual pleasures of eating, it seems to me, are in the same category – not exactly a taboo subject, but one that should only be talked about in a light-hearted, unserious, jokey manner.
Foodies (or foreigners) who dwell too lyrically, too erotically, on the delights of a perfectly executed, voluptuously creamy sauce bearnaise, will make us squirm, blush and look away. To avoid offending, all they need do is lighten up a bit, laugh at themselves, not take the whole thing quite so seriously. Without such ironic detachment, foodie-talk becomes a form of ‘gastro-porn’ (the term normally refers to lavishly illustrated foodie magazines and cookbooks, with detailed, mouth-watering descriptions of each luscious dish – but can equally be applied to over-enthusiastic foodie conversation).
CULINARY CLASS CODES
Along with the lists of ingredients and calorie-counts, almost every item of English food comes with an invisible class label. (Warning: this product may contain traces of lower-middle-class substances. Warning: this product has petit-bourgeois associations and may not be suitable for up-
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per-middle-class dinner parties.) Socially, you are what you eat – and when, where and in what manner you eat it, and what you call it, and how you talk about it.
The popular novelist Jilly Cooper, who has a much better understanding of the English class system than any sociologist, quotes a shopkeeper who told her, ‘When a woman asks for “back” I call her “madam”; when she asks for “streaky” I call her “dear”.’ Nowadays, in addition to these two different cuts of bacon, one would have to take into account the class semiotics of extra-lean and organic bacon, lardons, prosciutto, speck and Serrano ham (all favoured by the ‘madam’ class rather than the ‘dear’, but more specifically by the educated- upper-middle branch of the ‘madam’ class), as well as ‘bacon bits’, pork scratchings, and bacon-flavoured crisps (all decidedly ‘dear’-class foods, rarely eaten by ‘madams’).
English people of all classes love bacon sandwiches (the northern working classes call them ‘bacon butties’), although some more pretentious members of the lowerand middlemiddle classes pretend to have daintier, more refined tastes, and some affectedly health-conscious upper-middles make disapproving noises about fat, salt, cholesterol and heart disease.
Other foods that come with invisible labels warning of lower-class associations include:
prawn cocktail (the prawns are fine, but the pink ‘cocktail’ sauce is lower-middle class – and, incidentally, it does not suddenly become any ‘posher’ if you call it ‘Marie-Rose’ sauce)
egg and chips (both ingredients are relatively classless on their own, but working class if eaten together)
pasta salad (nothing wrong with pasta per se, but it’s ‘common’ if you serve it cold and mixed with mayonnaise) rice salad (lower class in any shape or form, but particu-
larly with sweetcorn in it)
tinned fruit (in syrup it’s working class, in fruit juice it’s still only about lower-middle)
sliced hard-boiled eggs and/or sliced tomato in a green salad (whole cherry tomatoes are just about OK, but the class-anxious would be advised generally to keep tomatoes, eggs and lettuce away from each other)
tinned fish (all right as an ingredient in something else, such as fishcakes, but very working class if served on its own) chip butties (a mainly northern tradition; even if you call it a chip sandwich rather than a butty, it is about as work-
ing-class as food can get).
Very secure uppers and upper-middles, with the right accents and other accoutrements, can admit to loving any or all of these foods with impunity – they will merely be regarded as charmingly eccentric. The more class-anxious should take care to pick their charming eccentricity from the very bottom of the scale (chip butties) rather than the class nearest to them (tinned fruit in juice), to avoid any possibility of a misunderstanding.
From “Watching the English”