BrainStuff Classics: How Did Fish & Chips Become England's National Dish?

Light and tender fried fish plated with crisp fried potatoes is a classic English comfort meal, but it's only a little over a century old. Learn the history of fish and chips in today's classic episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/culture-traditions/cultural-traditions/fish-and-chips.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, BrainStuff. Lauren
Vogelbaum here with a classic episode from The Vault. In
this one, we dig into the history of fish and
chips in England and how these two foreigners, potatoes and
the concept of deep frying, both became such an omnipresent

(00:22):
part of the culture.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hey, BrainStuff. Lauren Vogelbaum here. The irresistible combination of a
thick hunk of battered cod resting atop a mound of
steaming hot chips known as French fries in America is
the quintessential British comfort food. Whether eaten on a plastic
lap tray in front of the telly or picked from
a paper cone on the way home from the pub,

(00:43):
a meal of fish and chips is a serving of
deep fried comfort with a sprinkling of salt and vinegar.
At the dish's peak popularity in the late 1920s, there
were 35,000 fish and chip shops in the United Kingdom,
that is, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Today, there
are still 10,500 chippies in the UK, serving 360 million

(01:04):
meals of fish and chips every year, the equivalent of
six servings of fish and chips for every man, woman,
and child. The golden fried combo is so deeply entrenched
in British culture that it's hard to imagine a time
when there wasn't a fish and chip shop in every neighborhood.
But travel back a mere 200 years and you'd be
hard-pressed to find fried fish or chipped potatoes anywhere in
the British Isles. The delicious duo came together in the

(01:27):
mid-19th century, thanks in large part to the culinary contributions
of immigrants. The practice of breading and frying fish is
credited to Jewish communities originally living in Spain and Portugal.
Known as Sephardic Jews, the Jewish communities of the Iberian
Peninsula thrived there since the 8th century, much of it
under Muslim rule. The situation changed dramatically in the 15th century.

(01:50):
At first, the Spanish Inquisition outlawed Judaism, sending Spanish Jews
fleeing to the neighboring Portugal. Then, in 1946, the Portuguese
King Manuel I married Isabella of Spain, who insisted on
the conversion or expulsion of Jews from Portugal, too. Some
Jews chose to remain in Spain and Portugal, many of
them feigning conversion but continuing to practice in secret. But

(02:13):
others chose to flee to other parts of Europe where
they could live freely. And wherever the Sephardic Jews traveled,
they brought their rich culinary traditions. Jewish immigrants to England
took to selling fried fish in the streets from trays
hung from their necks by leather straps. As early as 1781,
a British cookbook author refers to the Jews' way of
preserving salmon and all sorts of fish. And Thomas Jefferson,

(02:36):
after a visit to England, wrote about sampling fried fish
in the Jewish fashion. Even today, some hints of the
Jewish origins of British fried fish remain. The sign hanging
above Buba's Fish and Chips outside of London advertises varieties
of fish in matzo meal, batter, and grilled. But it
wasn't until the mid-19th century that Jewish-style fried fish fully

(02:58):
made the cultural transfer from the streets of East London
to the broader British populace. And for that, says historian
Panikos Panayi, you can thank the railroad. He said, the
internet is revolutionary, but the railway changes everything. Now you
can transport fresh fish from the sea to anywhere in
Great Britain within a few hours. That's when fried fish

(03:18):
really takes off. Meanwhile, nobody is entirely sure how fried
potatoes became a staple part of the European diet. We
do know that it took a really long time for
fried potatoes, or potatoes of any kind, to make their
way to England. The exotic tubers, first brought to Europe
by explorers and conquerors coming back from South America in
the 1500s, were considered inedible for centuries. In Belgium, the

(03:42):
story is that fried potatoes also originated in Spain in
the 16th century and were brought north to a region
called the Spanish Netherlands, which is near modern-day Belgium. There,
in the 17th century, fishermen who struck out at sea
would carve potatoes into fish shapes and fry them up
for a stand-in supper. Panayi is the author of Fish

(04:02):
and Ships, a History. During his research, he wasn't able
to pinpoint the precise arrival of fried potatoes to England,
but it was definitely much later than the Belgian accounts.
He believes that frying potatoes didn't really take off in
Great Britain until the 1860s, which is right around the
time that we see the very first fish and chip shops.
So when exactly did these two fried friends get together?

(04:26):
There are competing claims for being the first British fish
and chip shop. A Jewish immigrant named Joseph Malins is
believed to have opened his chippy in a London neighborhood
in 1860 after selling the classic combo in the streets
for years. And up north near Manchester, the fish and
chip stand owned by John Lees in the town of
Mosley was already doing brisk business by 1863. Panayi says

(04:49):
that by 1900, fish and chips were a staple food
in the UK. Their widespread appeal was about cost and
convenience as much as flavor. The advent of industrial-scale trawl
fishing in the North Sea meant inexpensive fresh fish could
be sent by rail to all corners of Great Britain
to feed hungry factory workers and their families. By 1910,
there were 25,000 fish and chip shops in the UK,

(05:12):
and they even stayed open during World War I. In
an effort to boost morale at home, Prime Minister David
Lloyd George made sure that fish and chips stayed off
the ration list. The same practice was observed during World
War II, when Winston Churchill famously referred to a hot
meal of fish and chips as the good companions. According
to the National Federation of Fish Fryers, which is a

(05:34):
real thing, British soldiers storming Normandy beaches on D-Day would
identify each other by yelling out fish and waiting for
the response, chips. In the modern multicultural UK, there's plenty
of competition for the national dish. Chicken tikka masala makes
a strong claim. But London-born Pagnani says that fish and
chips is still regarded as a culinary symbol of Britishness.

(05:58):
Some chippy traditions have changed over the years. For example,
during the war years, paper rations meant that fish and
chips were served in cones of yesterday's newspaper. That practice
went out of favor in the 1980s. And traditionally, fish
and chips were accompanied by salt and malt vinegar. But
younger generations have turned to curry sauce and even ketchup,
which Pagnani says he wouldn't dream of doing. In Northern England,

(06:22):
the classic side dish at the chippy is mushy peas,
a gray-green concoction of well-boiled field peas that tastes much
better than it looks or sounds. And any chippy worth
its salt will throw in a sprinkling of scraps for
customers savvy enough to ask. Those, of course, are the
crispy bits of loose batter floating around in the fryers.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Today's episode is based on the article How Fish and
Chips Became England's National Dish on HowStuffWorks.com, written by Dave Ruse.
BrainStuff is a production of iHeart Podcasts in partnership with
HowStuffWorks.com and is produced by Tyler Klang. For more shows
from iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.