August 28, 2019 • 34 mins
Although it’s now considered one of the national dishes of the U.K., fish and chips as we know it is less than two centuries old. Anney and Lauren dive into how fried fish and fried potatoes became such good companions.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to save our production of I Heart
Radio and Stuff Media. I'm any Reason and I'm Lauren
voc Obam, and today we're talking about fish and chips. Yes,
very exciting. It is a shout out to writer Dave
Rouse and the editorial team over at how stuff works
dot com for publishing the article that inspired this episode. Yes,
(00:27):
that's always a really nice thing because other than listener suggestions,
when we're trying to pick a new topic, sometimes we
just get bogged down in all of the possibilities. Yeah,
they're huge, and we get on these we get in
these like sort of like ruts where we've just done
you know, like like an Herb like Lavender, and I'm
just like, all I want to do is read about stage.
(00:48):
But we can't turn this into the Herb podcast because
that's just a different branding matter. I'm sure that a
few of y'all would not be into it. A few,
but there would be a lot of puns. That would
be a room for a lot of pun there. Oh gosh,
RB Your Enthusiasm is a t shirt that is available
in our online store. It is public dot com slash Saver,
(01:08):
one of our favorites. This was also in part inspired
by the fact that Lauren and I, as we've mentioned,
we were recently in Orlando for Podcast Movement. It's a
podcast convention, but we stayed a couple extra days in
Orlando because we're nerds and we wanted to go to
theme parks. Yeah. Absolutely, And part of the way they
(01:30):
convinced me to go with like in the original email,
they said, Annie, will you please come do this thing?
Also you can stay that we can go to the
same parks. They didn't even give me a chance to say, no,
this is how we'll get her there. And yeah, we
went to Universal Ak. In my book The Visiting World
of Harry Potter, m hmmm, and I wrote the New
(01:51):
Road and it was amazing, so amazing. But anyway, more
importantly to this show, we ate at the Leaky Cauldron.
We did, We did. It was it was a lovely
lunch and one of their options is fish and chips,
and there were there were a lot of people with
British accents. I don't think that we're putting them on,
like actual families from there in the park that day,
(02:12):
and one of them in line behind us were they
were investigating this visual menu and the mother stopped and
very suddenly said, wait, is this what they think people
eat luck in Britain? And that's like, that's like Pinky's voice.
My accent is terrible. I'm sorry, but but like it
was just such a moment of like of like confusion
(02:34):
and slight offense. It was. I was just I felt
really really lucky to to witness it. I do too.
And then the there was a young boy in that
party as well, and he said I can make better
fish and chips than that. This was before we even
ordered any food. I just want to say, we're waiting
(02:54):
in line to order the food. I understand, but um,
and I mean, I feel like to us it might
be obvious, but maybe not to everyone. Everyone. It is
a huge British thing. Yes, it's it's one of the
like quote unquote like national dishes or certainly one of
the like national like comfort food, yeah kind of dishes
(03:15):
of certainly England, lots of the rest of the UK
as well. Yeah. The first time I was in London
it was also a Harry Potter related thing. I was
there for other reasons, but I believe you entirely. Thank
you for the support. I was going to the Half
Blood Prince premiere in long amazing story short. I act
barely got to go into it. I just wanted to
(03:37):
like see yeah, but I got to go in and um,
I got soaked and it was hailing because London. Um.
And I went to the fanciest Fish and Chips restaurant
and there was this candle at my table and I
was just hovering over it for warm. That was my
first reason. Chips, well, I mean was it was? It
(04:00):
very fancy? Was good, it was very fancy. But for
everyone out there screaming at the word ever listening device,
you were hearing this. So I did go to plenty
of other establishments like dive bars and regular restaurants. So
I've had a variety that my only Okay, you've had
the like the like chippy, like paper cone, like fish
and chips experience as well. Absolutely, that's good. I'm not
(04:20):
totally positive that I had fish and chips when I
was in England. I did eat more than one meat
pie per day, of course, but um, but I'm not.
I can't remember. Oh dear, I think I must have had.
I must have. I feel like you must have. It's
hard to escape, honestly, it is. I know that I
had mushy peas and I know that I had chips.
I'm forgetting with her. I had anyway, Okay, And another
(04:45):
last side fact I had before we get to our question, Um,
I did. A British friend of mine came to visit
me for Dragon con big NERD convention coming up. Um,
he came to visit me for that, and he stayed
with me and he wanted to go. There's a British
themed pub there and he wanted to go and he
ordered the fish and chips and he said, is consistent
(05:08):
what his consensus was? Yeah. I thought he was going
to be a bit more judgment of it. Yeah, yeah,
I guess. I mean, you know deep that area is
very trusty as wicious, and the fact that that it's
like in a mall. Sure, sure you deep fry things
at a certain point, it's going to be delicious. Yeah,
that's that's true. And we have done an episode on
(05:31):
fries slash chips, We've done one on cod, so now
it's time for fish and chips. Yes, but it brings
us to our question what is it? Well, fish and
chips is a dish of fried fish and fried potatoes,
both generally cut into long, fixed strips. The fish will
(05:52):
be generally some kind of white, medium, firm, clean tasting fish,
most commonly cod or haddock filet's cut very thick and
then battered and deep fried until they're tender and flaky
and encased in this pillowy flower crust, war sometimes a
pleasantly grainy cracker or meal crust of some kind. The
chips are what Americans would call French fries, long thick
wedges of potato deep fried until just pillowy soft on
(06:15):
the inside and crisp and golden on the outside. Both
are salted after frying, and the result is a filling
stick to your ribs comfort food, crunchy and soft and
rich and fatty and carb and crevable, very agreevable. Yes,
this was a Hungry, Hungry research episode. There are, of course,
(06:35):
of course, a lot of preferences at play when it
comes to fish and chips. God rostatic salt, vinegar, pickled onion, ketchup,
curry sauce. The ketchup thing is apparently considered a bit
of like a hipster millennial thing, y'all right in if
you have opinions, catch up his hipster now Well, in England,
everything's hipster if you look at it through a certain lens,
(06:57):
I suppose as a fish and chips dipping sauce. It's
like that, that's off the beaten y'all. Okay, yeah, all right, yeah,
please write in. Apparently John Lennon liked them with ketchup,
like a lot of ketchup, enough that people wrote about
how much ketchup he was eating on his fish and chips,
and then after your own heart. It's true, it's true.
(07:18):
But yeah, so many, so many options. What type of
flour for the batter? Is their beer involved in that batter?
What kind of oil do you fry it in? How
thick the filets? How thick are your chips? Do they
have skin still attached? Do they come with a side
of mushy peas? So many options. Apparently the Chinese serve
this dish with sugar um. Please write in about that
(07:40):
as well, and in Belgium with mayo of course. Yeah.
According to scientific American beer batter is superior because of
the carbon dioxide bubbles and and the foaming agents present
in beer like naturally present. It's not like people are
usually adding that kind of thing. They usually come in
on the hops or on other grains anyway. Um. Yeah,
but the same reason that beer forms that like frothy
(08:01):
head will mean that when batter containing beer hits hot oil,
it creates this this lattice of bubbles in in the
forming crust, making the resulting fry light and fluffy. M
m m m. You can also order your fish and
chips with scraps, that is, the little bits of fried
batter that wind up sporing off in the fryer. Yeah. Oh,
(08:22):
and uh, I wanted to put in here. The chip
shops use so many puns. I have a list. Are
you ready? I'm so excited. Okay, actually a lot of
these I think you suggested for the cod episode. Many puns,
many funs. Sometimes I'm frustrated because I know only one
will make it as the title. Yeah, okay, so are
(08:46):
you ready? The cod Father Criminally Good Fish and Chips.
Is there a subtitle? Yeah? Cod Fellas, Oh my God,
the Almighty cod, cod swallow, new cod on the block,
frying Nemo, good pie, Mr Chips, Oh my god, friend
chips for your fries only fish go tech Ah. My
(09:12):
heart is swelling with warm. This industry is right with
puns and I love it. People leaning hard it's beautiful.
It really is. It really is. What about the nutrition, Uh,
you know, it's a lot of fried If you consider
a standard portion of fish and chips to be six
ounces of fish and ten ounces of chips, which is
(09:33):
like a large fry in American terms. Um, you're looking
at about a thousand calories, which is probably half for
more of your daily intake, and um upwards of fifty
grams of fat, which is about of your daily recommended intake.
It does have a good punch of protein and a
smattering of vitamins and minerals. Adding a side of mushy
peas helps. There a lot in with a little bit
of dietary fiber. Um, it is. I mean, it's a
(09:54):
meal that will indeed fill you up and keep you going,
but it's on it's on the heavy side. You know,
you should also eat vegetables at some point. Yes, I
feel like it's always deceptively filling. I look at it.
I'm going to polish this off. Oh no, halfway yeah,
usually like halfway through one of those giant pieces of
fried fish. I'm just like, I don't know, I don't
(10:15):
know anything anymore. It's it's one of the foods that's
been singled out by by British governmental health agencies for
portion control in helping with the obest epitomic. Yeah, like
just you know, like like five ounces of chips instead
of ten, you know, small fry instead of large fry,
that kind of thing. Yeah, we do have some numbers,
(10:36):
oh gosh, we do. And a lot of these come
from in one way or another. UM the National Federation
of Fish Fryers, which is a real thing in the UK. UM. Like,
if you run a shop or a chain, you can
join for a yearly membership fee that goes to a
number of fish and chip related interests. UM. You can
also get training and equipment advice for running your business.
Do you think they show up to meetings in friar roles?
(11:01):
Please tell me that's true. I you know, if they don't,
I hope someone involved is listening and we'll put in
the suggestion and that this comes to beautiful fruition. B
two and please send pictures if it's not too secretive.
Oh yeah, because when you start dressing as a friar
it feels like a level of secret. Seesman added, Yeah, yeah,
(11:22):
we don't wanna, you know, we don't want to be
all up in your fries. Yes, yes, all right, so fries.
This dish is a really big thing. Yes, yes. Winston
Churchill dubbed the combination the good Companions. As of million
servings of Vision ships were sold in Britain, which comes
out to six servings per person on average. This is
(11:45):
an annual um. The country boast over eight thousand, five
hundred fish and ship shops. That's so hard to say.
It's like one of those I don't know what those
stone twisters, hut um. And so that's eight times a
number of McDonald's and that makes it the most popular
take away food. Fish and Chips went out to surveys
conducted in the UK named as the most national of
(12:06):
national icons, and fish and chips Friday is a thing.
I'm like Catholicism or let's is it like Taco Tuesdays. Yeah.
More recent numbers put fish and chip establishments at ten thousand,
five hundred, but the sale of takeout fried fish a
bit lower, two million annually, as fifth after burgers, Chinese
(12:31):
and Indian, which I'm a little curious about that bearing
but okay, um chicken and then pizza. One of the
reasons for this is the increase in the prices of
haddock and cod, the two preferred fish for the meal.
Still more than half of the adults in the UK
visit a fish and chip shop once a month or more,
eat it once a week to go at least once
a year. Wow. Yeah, huh um. Fish and chip shops
(12:55):
don't just sell this dish, though, they've broughtened to encompass
other fast food takeaway options like a meat pies, fried
chicken strips, stuff like that. Fish breakdown of the fish
and fish and chips is cod haddock. The fish and
chip market in the UK is worth one point to
billion pounds and employees sixty one thousand people of potatoes
(13:21):
in Britain end up a chip form. Also of all
white fish is sold as part of this dish. Wow,
I love it. So it's a jug or not? It is?
It is? But how did it get here? Well we'll
tell you, but first we're going to take a quick
break for a word from our sponsor and we're back.
(13:48):
Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you. To get to the
history of fish and chips, you kind of have to
take it in parts. Sure, As we skirted around in
several episodes, the potato potato. No episode forthcoming, it's want
to be beautiful, yes, because we've done a lot done fries,
not the potato. Yet we did sweep potato on it. Yeah, alright.
(14:09):
The potato probably arrived in England from the New World
in the seventeenth century, perhaps with Sir Walter Rawley involved.
As we discussed in our French fry episode. The Belgians
or maybe the French probably came up with the fried
potato in these strips, although it probably happened in different
forms in different places around the same time. Yeah. Interestingly,
(14:31):
as we discussed in that episode, um, the French, Yeah, exactly,
potentially um as a substitute for fish is how it happened. Um,
when rivers froze over, so they would might even cut
them in fishy shapes. Yeah. Now you can have your
fish and your fries and eat them too, or something
like that. Yes, but deep fried potatoes aren't thought to
have really taken off in England until the eight hundreds,
(14:55):
possibly as late as the eighteen sixties, after a whole
lot of war and a couple a couple of like
blights upon crops happened in France and Austria, and that
popularized the potato and its fried form there, and then
it had some time to trickle out to other culinary scenes. Yes,
fried fish, meanwhile, was introduced to London's East End by
(15:17):
Spanish and Portuguese Jewish refugees fleeing at the end of
Moorish rule in fourteen Yeah, so what happened here was um.
Sophardic Jewish populations had been living on the Iberian Peninsula,
Spain and Portugal since about the eighth century UM. But
then when the Spanish Inquisition came along in the fourteen hundreds,
they outlawed Judaism. A lot of those people's fled from
(15:37):
Spain to Portugal. But then the Catholic Isabella of Spain
married Portuguese King Manuel the First in fourteen nineties six,
as Annie said, and she insisted upon the conversion or
expulsion of Jewish peoples from Portugal to Some folks stayed
and continued practicing in secret, but there was definitely an
exodus of sorts to the rest of Europe, and of
(15:57):
course they brought their culinary traditions along with them. M
Frying fish specifically might have been a way of cooking
and preserving it on Friday days so that it would
last through the end of the Sabbath, which in Judaism
is sundown Friday through sundown Saturday, and during what you're
not supposed to do any work like like cooking. Um.
A Bridge cookbook author in one referred to the Jews
(16:20):
way of preserving salmon and all sorts of fish. After
visiting London in the eighteenth century, Thomas Jefferson wrote about
eating quote, fried fish in the Jewish fashion. In some
chippies you can still get fried fish or fish fried
in mazza meal rather than flour. In Oliver Twist, Charles
Dickens mentioned fried fish warehouses and at the time vendors
(16:43):
sold fish from trays strung around their necks. Um also
more likely to be served with baked potatoes or bread.
As for who came up with the dish itself, London
and Lancashire have staked claim chips were cheap and accessible
food for workers, so there's kind of that vibe to it. Um.
The first Jewish cookbook that was published in the UK
(17:04):
in eighty six came with a recipe for fish and chips. Okay.
What is thought to be the first fish and chip
shop in the North of England and they all of
them have like these qualifiers around. Oh yeah, I love it.
I love it. I do too. Opened around Lancashire in
eighteen sixty three, Mr John Lee served fish and chips
out of a hut that was attached to a market,
later relocated across the street and added the inscription this
(17:27):
is the first fish and chip shop in the world.
So there you go. Yeah yeah, um that was in
eighteen sixty five when that location was opened, and I
believe it's considered the oldest continually operating fish and chips shop.
That the name, the official name of it is the
oldest fish and chip shop in the world. Oh I
(17:48):
love that. Yeah. Lauren and I accidentally stumbled while we
were in Orlando. We calls the restaurant called I can't
it was either Orlando's best seafood. I think it's the
world I think it was the world the world's seafood.
It had like two stars on yelp. We we got
a good chuckle out of it. We got a good
chuckle out of it. But that's what that reminds me of.
Hopefully this place is better than that. Um. But wait,
(18:10):
three years earlier in London, before this supposed first opening
of the fish and chip shop. Joseph Mallin allegedly opened
to fish and chip shop within the sound of the
bow bells on Cleveland Street and being born within that
sound as definition of Cockney. Thanks to Idris Elba and
hot Ones for that today. I didn't know that until
a couple of days ago. Um. Also, he was thirteen
Joseph Mallin, not Indrius Elba, when he started frying up
(18:32):
chips to help his family make more money. Then he
got the idea, the genius idea, to join his chips
with the fried fish from a local shop, probably selling
it first from a tray around his neck. Joseph was
was Jewish, yeah, exactly before he was able to open
a shop in eighteen sixty. So they can fight it out.
We don't have we don't have a dogonist fish fight. No,
(18:55):
we don't have a fish in this fight. It's like
she dig fish in a barel. No, let's move on.
In ev one, the oldest fish and chip shops still
in operation in London opened Rock and sold place. Oh
my gosh, that is so many fish puns in a
(19:18):
single Okay, it's really impressive because okay, hoof. By the
end of the nineteenth century, the dish was fairly common
in Britain. At first, these fish and chip shops were
largely family owned, ran out of the front of houses,
and the meal was frequently served in yesterday's newspaper to
keep costs down. I've also read that the newspaper thing
didn't happen until paper rationing of the world wars, but
(19:41):
either way, either way, a lot of places still do
this for kitch or I've heard arguments about the taste
and soaking up of the oil, but the practice of
using actual newspaper without grease paper in between was banned
in the nineteen eighties due to concerns around negative health
outcomes of ingesting the ink. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of
places here. I feel like it's fake, fake newspapers with newspapers, yeah,
(20:05):
with food grade printing, it exactly. Demand for this meal
increased during the Industrial Revolution as more and more workers
were looking for something quick and cheap for lunch. Innovations
during this period helped meet demand for the dish to
the steam trawler for catching fish, ice machines and railways
to transport that fish throughout the country, making it more
wildly available, I would say wildly widely available. The lines
(20:30):
of these shops caught the attention of Italian immigrants passing
through on their way to Scotland, Ireland and Wales, where
they set up fish and chip shops of their own.
There's this whole legend about the first fish and chip
shop in Ireland, and and that it came about when
when Giuseeppe Caravy accidentally disembarked from a ship headed to
America in County Cork, whereupon, I guess you figured like, well, heck,
(20:52):
I'm here now, and walked all the way to Dublin
and settled there and started selling fish and chips from
a handcart outside of pubs um and that he then
eventually opened a storefront on what's now Piers Street. And
their trademark phrase um lunad caista unadi kayla meaning one
of this, one of the other um morphed into the
(21:13):
Dublin nickname for the dish one and one. Oh that's awesome. Yeah.
By nineteen ten, there were twenty five thousand fish and
chip shops around the UK. By nineteen thirteen, UM delegates
from a number of local fish frying organizations got together
to form a National Federation of Fish Fryers Associations UM.
(21:34):
These local groups had been getting together for for a
couple of decades to help each other protect trade interests. UM.
As a national organization they work with the government to
preserve supplies and prices thereof. During World War One, uh
then Prime Minister Lloyd George and his Wark cabinet made
sure that the ingredients for fish and chips stayed off
of rations lists, because they figured that the industrial workers
(21:57):
that they needed making their munitions, and then the families
those were off serving, would be better off emotionally and
nutritionally if they could still access fish and chips. By
the nine twenties and thirties, the dish was hugely popular,
so much so in nineteen thirty one one restaurant in
England had to hire a doorman to control the queue,
(22:18):
which is doubly funny to me considering how my British
friends feel about viewing peak fish and chips. There were
thirty five thousand shops. Most industrial towns had one on
every street. During that time. Two thirds of the fresh
catch in Britain was destined for fish and chips. My goodness,
(22:39):
and also in a in a great reversal of cause
and effect. The demand for fish was such that that
more railways were developed um and that fishing ports were industrialized.
So all of the Industrial revolution stuff that led to
the dish being a thing then created need for more
industrial revolution. The power of chips, it is. It's mighty.
(23:02):
It also didn't get hit by rashing during World War Two,
making it incredibly valuable for feeding families. However, the lines
were places selling the meal were often hours long, and
they didn't always have fish. So when news got out
that a restaurant did have fish, people flocked to that establishment.
When Brian's Fish and Chip Shop and Leeds ran low
on fish, they started selling homemade fish cakes instead, and
(23:26):
it came with this warning, patrons, would you not recommend
the use of vinegar with these fish cakes? Wow? Okay,
I don't know what that Okay, sure, okay, yeah, I
appreciate any kind of food warnings. Multiple outlets have written
about the power of fish and chips as a morale
boost during the World Wars. In George Orwell's seven work
(23:48):
The Road to Wigan Pier, which I read in college.
Don't remember very much but I read it, he claimed
that the availability of Fish and Chips kept people decently
happy and quote averted revolution who Frederick Lord Woolton, the
wartime food minister, gave the a OK for mobile fryers
available for people being evacuated. The dish also did help
(24:09):
with the war effort in another way. Um people who
had been working in the deep sea trawling industry were
especially recruited to the navy, and supposedly one of the
ways that British troops identified each other during the Harrowing
d d Battle was by calling out fish and waiting
for the appropriate response being, of course chips. Wow, that's
(24:30):
some more interesting version of Marco Polo, Like maybe I'm
going to adopt this. Actually, I like I like that,
like in a busy store or something, if you're trying
to find your friend like fish chips. It also sounds
like it could be a buddy comedy fish and chips.
Somebody needs to get on that. We are the music
(24:53):
makers and we are the dreamers of the dreams. Shane
Henry ram And celebrated their twenty one anniversary in nineteen
fifty two by serving our record breaking at ten thousand
plates efficient chips at their original price, not the record nowadays, though,
lots of people came in for that record. Yes, yes, yeah. UM.
(25:15):
In nineteen seventy six, the aforementioned National Federation of Fish
Fryers opened its training Academy UH. In two thousand two,
brief science note um okay, researchers working in genetics named
this new gene imaging technology fish and chips. And I
don't understand it's super well, but but like very very Basically,
UM fish stands for fluorescence in C two hybridization, which
(25:39):
is it's a way of lighting up genes as they
activate within cell nucleus. Okay. UM. Gene chips, meanwhile, are
an older technology. Their their whole arrays of genetic material
arranged either on on a glass slide or coded like
representationally onto a microchip so that you can study the
whole array at once. UM. So fish and chips was
(26:00):
meant to provide a way of studying this wide array
of genes within a cell nucleus. UM. And the name
is catchy. I thought that was super cute. Yeah, that's
really really cute. UM. In the first decade of the
twenty one century, it became sort of a popular thing
to collect used vegetable based cooking oil from fry shops
(26:21):
to be filtered and sold as biodiesel fuel for cars.
Oh wow, uh one panicos Pena A published the book
Fish and Chips, a history likeworts of history with fish
and chips. That's cool, um and who. Ending on a
(26:41):
sad note, unfortunately, climate change is deeply impacting the fishing industry. Um.
Oxygen levels and the oceans are dropping as temperatures rise
because warmer water cannot hold as munch oxygen as colder water,
and populations of like perhaps especially large cold water fish
like hattocking cod, could shrink by a quarter in the
next thirty years. And that's like the best case scenario. Um,
(27:03):
the worst case being extinction. So yeah, so prices are
only gonna go up. Yeah and hopefully um and don't
hopefully like impossible or beyond. We'll come up with with
a with a fish alternative. Oh yeah yeah. Okay, Well
(27:26):
I have an embarrassing note that I'll share with everybody. Okay. Um, So,
I whenever I'm feeling a little down, I watched the
movie How To Train Your Dragon, and I watched it
over and over again recently, and I was kind of
in a weird mind state. My friend was quizzing me
because she was so surprised to know this about me,
because I'm trying to keep it hidden. Sure, and she
(27:46):
was like, do you know what type of dragon that is?
And we, of course I do what I tell her
what it is. I am gonna I made the hiccups
costume is the main character for a dragon con and
his his name his full name when she asked me
is hiccup her and his headache the third And that's
my embarrassing geek knowledge of the day. I'll share with you.
(28:12):
You still randomly asked me, like, what do you know
about this? Check? And let me tell do you know
about the economy of brook? Oh? Yeah I do. How
much time do you have? We'll get some fish and
chips and we'll talk it over. Yeah that's great. No, hey,
I support I support all all of your nerd dum.
Thank you. Yeah, of course, well I guess on that
(28:35):
like weird like nerd bookend. Yeah, we start with a
nerd bookend. We did it on either side. Yeah, that's
a delicious nerd sandwich. Um. Yeah, that's that's about what
we have to say about fish and chips. We do
have a little bit more for you. Um, but first
we've got one more quick break for a word from
our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsoring, Yes, thank you,
(29:04):
and we're back with listener. I thought a British accent
would be too grading for the that was much less grading.
At least we we've we've stopped getting hate mail about
our listener mail song. People have had to hold they
had to embrace it. It's either that or just jettison
(29:26):
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if you ever have any suggestions for listener mail, you
want to write like a little jingle yourself. Oh man, yeah,
the stuff you should notice, stuff like that. Sure. So yeah,
we went in on this game. We would love to
put your some nice thing that you right, We'll happily
(29:48):
do that for you. Had no charge, no additional cost
to this free podcast. Anyway, we do have some listener
veils and APU were stuck with us. Katie wrote big
fan of the show, but first time writing in. I
was particularly inspired by your PiZZ episode and wanted to
share a story with you. I am from Pennsylvania originally
(30:09):
don't get me started on our obsession with preszels, but
am currently teaching elementary school in the UK. I often
use food as examples of math concepts, and admittedly this
does tend to revolve around how much I love pizza. Well,
fast forward to the end of the year. Some of
the children brought in chocolates, cards, or flowers as an
end of the year gift, except one. One child proudly
(30:30):
walked into a classroom with the largest pizza she could
find as a thank you gift, with strict instructions that
it was just for me and I wasn't allowed to share.
I know you're not supposed to have favorites, but that
certainly was the most delicious gift I received. My admittedly
selfish recommendation for the podcast would be visit Amelia Island,
Florida for the annual shrimp festival in me oh Man. Well,
(30:55):
definitely adding that to our list. I'm in I could
put some hurt and on a shrimp festival, and I've
never been to a shrimp festival, and I think it's time. Yeah,
the time is now or may as the case maybe.
Um Melissa wrote, I really loved your episode on boiled Peanuts.
I grew up an hour north of Green Bay, Wisconsin,
and only eight peanuts roasted on top of white cake
(31:17):
with white fluffy frosting. Way better than sprinkles. I've never
had this. This sounds amazing anyway. The only thing I
seemed to love more than peanut cake is at a mammy.
Several years ago, I started getting sick and fatigued all
the time. After a discussion with my doctor, I went
through allergy testing and I tested positive for soil allergy.
No more at a mom a. I was expressing my
(31:38):
sadness to my husband's stepmom, Marty one day, and she
suggested I substitute boiled peanuts. My husband grew up in
New Orleans with his mom, However, his father lived in
South Georgia. Almost three weeks later, four giant sacks of
green peanuts were delivered to our house. I FaceTime called
Marty every other night for weeks as we tried different
spice combinations and worked out a process for making the
(31:59):
best boil peanuts. We finally decided on an eight or
so hours overnight in the crock pot, more or less
depending on how dry your peanuts are, and we always
season with crab boil. We tried every crab boil under
the sun, and they are all great. I personally love
half a bag of Zataran's dry hole spice crab and
crawfish boil with one cap of Zadaran's Liquid crab boil,
(32:20):
a lemon wedge and some fresh garlic. My husband really
loves day after a crawfish boiled peanuts. Um. I saved
some of the pot liquor to boil the peanuts. We
continued to call each other every Thursday for the next
eight years. As a result, Jay also started talking to
his dad every week. Jay's dad left when he was young,
and until Marty and her peanuts, their relationship was rocky
(32:41):
and stressed. Eventually, Jay's dad, a truck driver, got a
regular run from Jacksonville to Denver, and every time he
came into town, I got a new bag of peanuts,
and he got two big jars of a new recipe
for Marty to critique. Marty passed away suddenly last year.
I think the cosmos every day that she sent those peanuts.
She became my best friend and Jason got his dad back.
(33:01):
I now eat a bowl of boiled peanuts every Thursday
while Jason talks to his dad. Oh that is such
a lovely story. Thank you so much for sharing it. Yeah,
that's the powerful it is. It is. It's man, it's
it is delicious and emotionally nutritious. It is. Yeah, that's lovely, Lauren,
(33:21):
and those letters were both lovely, so thanks. We're sending them,
oh my gosh. Yes, and if you would like to
email as you can and we're looking forward to those
listener mail jingles you're gonna send um. You can email
us at l O at savor pod dot com. We're
also on social media. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter,
and Facebook at savor Pod. We do hope to hear
(33:43):
from you. Savor is production of I Heart Radio and
Stuff Media. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you
can visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thank you, as
always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks
to you for listening, and we hope that lots more
good things are coming your way
Hello, and welcome to save our production of I Heart
Radio and Stuff Media. I'm any Reason and I'm Lauren
voc Obam, and today we're talking about fish and chips. Yes,
very exciting. It is a shout out to writer Dave
Rouse and the editorial team over at how stuff works
dot com for publishing the article that inspired this episode. Yes,
(00:27):
that's always a really nice thing because other than listener suggestions,
when we're trying to pick a new topic, sometimes we
just get bogged down in all of the possibilities. Yeah,
they're huge, and we get on these we get in
these like sort of like ruts where we've just done
you know, like like an Herb like Lavender, and I'm
just like, all I want to do is read about stage.
(00:48):
But we can't turn this into the Herb podcast because
that's just a different branding matter. I'm sure that a
few of y'all would not be into it. A few,
but there would be a lot of puns. That would
be a room for a lot of pun there. Oh gosh,
RB Your Enthusiasm is a t shirt that is available
in our online store. It is public dot com slash Saver,
(01:08):
one of our favorites. This was also in part inspired
by the fact that Lauren and I, as we've mentioned,
we were recently in Orlando for Podcast Movement. It's a
podcast convention, but we stayed a couple extra days in
Orlando because we're nerds and we wanted to go to
theme parks. Yeah. Absolutely, And part of the way they
(01:30):
convinced me to go with like in the original email,
they said, Annie, will you please come do this thing?
Also you can stay that we can go to the
same parks. They didn't even give me a chance to say, no,
this is how we'll get her there. And yeah, we
went to Universal Ak. In my book The Visiting World
of Harry Potter, m hmmm, and I wrote the New
(01:51):
Road and it was amazing, so amazing. But anyway, more
importantly to this show, we ate at the Leaky Cauldron.
We did, We did. It was it was a lovely
lunch and one of their options is fish and chips,
and there were there were a lot of people with
British accents. I don't think that we're putting them on,
like actual families from there in the park that day,
(02:12):
and one of them in line behind us were they
were investigating this visual menu and the mother stopped and
very suddenly said, wait, is this what they think people
eat luck in Britain? And that's like, that's like Pinky's voice.
My accent is terrible. I'm sorry, but but like it
was just such a moment of like of like confusion
(02:34):
and slight offense. It was. I was just I felt
really really lucky to to witness it. I do too.
And then the there was a young boy in that
party as well, and he said I can make better
fish and chips than that. This was before we even
ordered any food. I just want to say, we're waiting
(02:54):
in line to order the food. I understand, but um,
and I mean, I feel like to us it might
be obvious, but maybe not to everyone. Everyone. It is
a huge British thing. Yes, it's it's one of the
like quote unquote like national dishes or certainly one of
the like national like comfort food, yeah kind of dishes
(03:15):
of certainly England, lots of the rest of the UK
as well. Yeah. The first time I was in London
it was also a Harry Potter related thing. I was
there for other reasons, but I believe you entirely. Thank
you for the support. I was going to the Half
Blood Prince premiere in long amazing story short. I act
barely got to go into it. I just wanted to
(03:37):
like see yeah, but I got to go in and um,
I got soaked and it was hailing because London. Um.
And I went to the fanciest Fish and Chips restaurant
and there was this candle at my table and I
was just hovering over it for warm. That was my
first reason. Chips, well, I mean was it was? It
(04:00):
very fancy? Was good, it was very fancy. But for
everyone out there screaming at the word ever listening device,
you were hearing this. So I did go to plenty
of other establishments like dive bars and regular restaurants. So
I've had a variety that my only Okay, you've had
the like the like chippy, like paper cone, like fish
and chips experience as well. Absolutely, that's good. I'm not
(04:20):
totally positive that I had fish and chips when I
was in England. I did eat more than one meat
pie per day, of course, but um, but I'm not.
I can't remember. Oh dear, I think I must have had.
I must have. I feel like you must have. It's
hard to escape, honestly, it is. I know that I
had mushy peas and I know that I had chips.
I'm forgetting with her. I had anyway, Okay, And another
(04:45):
last side fact I had before we get to our question, Um,
I did. A British friend of mine came to visit
me for Dragon con big NERD convention coming up. Um,
he came to visit me for that, and he stayed
with me and he wanted to go. There's a British
themed pub there and he wanted to go and he
ordered the fish and chips and he said, is consistent
(05:08):
what his consensus was? Yeah. I thought he was going
to be a bit more judgment of it. Yeah, yeah,
I guess. I mean, you know deep that area is
very trusty as wicious, and the fact that that it's
like in a mall. Sure, sure you deep fry things
at a certain point, it's going to be delicious. Yeah,
that's that's true. And we have done an episode on
(05:31):
fries slash chips, We've done one on cod, so now
it's time for fish and chips. Yes, but it brings
us to our question what is it? Well, fish and
chips is a dish of fried fish and fried potatoes,
both generally cut into long, fixed strips. The fish will
(05:52):
be generally some kind of white, medium, firm, clean tasting fish,
most commonly cod or haddock filet's cut very thick and
then battered and deep fried until they're tender and flaky
and encased in this pillowy flower crust, war sometimes a
pleasantly grainy cracker or meal crust of some kind. The
chips are what Americans would call French fries, long thick
wedges of potato deep fried until just pillowy soft on
(06:15):
the inside and crisp and golden on the outside. Both
are salted after frying, and the result is a filling
stick to your ribs comfort food, crunchy and soft and
rich and fatty and carb and crevable, very agreevable. Yes,
this was a Hungry, Hungry research episode. There are, of course,
(06:35):
of course, a lot of preferences at play when it
comes to fish and chips. God rostatic salt, vinegar, pickled onion, ketchup,
curry sauce. The ketchup thing is apparently considered a bit
of like a hipster millennial thing, y'all right in if
you have opinions, catch up his hipster now Well, in England,
everything's hipster if you look at it through a certain lens,
(06:57):
I suppose as a fish and chips dipping sauce. It's
like that, that's off the beaten y'all. Okay, yeah, all right, yeah,
please write in. Apparently John Lennon liked them with ketchup,
like a lot of ketchup, enough that people wrote about
how much ketchup he was eating on his fish and chips,
and then after your own heart. It's true, it's true.
(07:18):
But yeah, so many, so many options. What type of
flour for the batter? Is their beer involved in that batter?
What kind of oil do you fry it in? How
thick the filets? How thick are your chips? Do they
have skin still attached? Do they come with a side
of mushy peas? So many options. Apparently the Chinese serve
this dish with sugar um. Please write in about that
(07:40):
as well, and in Belgium with mayo of course. Yeah.
According to scientific American beer batter is superior because of
the carbon dioxide bubbles and and the foaming agents present
in beer like naturally present. It's not like people are
usually adding that kind of thing. They usually come in
on the hops or on other grains anyway. Um. Yeah,
but the same reason that beer forms that like frothy
(08:01):
head will mean that when batter containing beer hits hot oil,
it creates this this lattice of bubbles in in the
forming crust, making the resulting fry light and fluffy. M
m m m. You can also order your fish and
chips with scraps, that is, the little bits of fried
batter that wind up sporing off in the fryer. Yeah. Oh,
(08:22):
and uh, I wanted to put in here. The chip
shops use so many puns. I have a list. Are
you ready? I'm so excited. Okay, actually a lot of
these I think you suggested for the cod episode. Many puns,
many funs. Sometimes I'm frustrated because I know only one
will make it as the title. Yeah, okay, so are
(08:46):
you ready? The cod Father Criminally Good Fish and Chips.
Is there a subtitle? Yeah? Cod Fellas, Oh my God,
the Almighty cod, cod swallow, new cod on the block,
frying Nemo, good pie, Mr Chips, Oh my god, friend
chips for your fries only fish go tech Ah. My
(09:12):
heart is swelling with warm. This industry is right with
puns and I love it. People leaning hard it's beautiful.
It really is. It really is. What about the nutrition, Uh,
you know, it's a lot of fried If you consider
a standard portion of fish and chips to be six
ounces of fish and ten ounces of chips, which is
(09:33):
like a large fry in American terms. Um, you're looking
at about a thousand calories, which is probably half for
more of your daily intake, and um upwards of fifty
grams of fat, which is about of your daily recommended intake.
It does have a good punch of protein and a
smattering of vitamins and minerals. Adding a side of mushy
peas helps. There a lot in with a little bit
of dietary fiber. Um, it is. I mean, it's a
(09:54):
meal that will indeed fill you up and keep you going,
but it's on it's on the heavy side. You know,
you should also eat vegetables at some point. Yes, I
feel like it's always deceptively filling. I look at it.
I'm going to polish this off. Oh no, halfway yeah,
usually like halfway through one of those giant pieces of
fried fish. I'm just like, I don't know, I don't
(10:15):
know anything anymore. It's it's one of the foods that's
been singled out by by British governmental health agencies for
portion control in helping with the obest epitomic. Yeah, like
just you know, like like five ounces of chips instead
of ten, you know, small fry instead of large fry,
that kind of thing. Yeah, we do have some numbers,
(10:36):
oh gosh, we do. And a lot of these come
from in one way or another. UM the National Federation
of Fish Fryers, which is a real thing in the UK. UM. Like,
if you run a shop or a chain, you can
join for a yearly membership fee that goes to a
number of fish and chip related interests. UM. You can
also get training and equipment advice for running your business.
Do you think they show up to meetings in friar roles?
(11:01):
Please tell me that's true. I you know, if they don't,
I hope someone involved is listening and we'll put in
the suggestion and that this comes to beautiful fruition. B
two and please send pictures if it's not too secretive.
Oh yeah, because when you start dressing as a friar
it feels like a level of secret. Seesman added, Yeah, yeah,
(11:22):
we don't wanna, you know, we don't want to be
all up in your fries. Yes, yes, all right, so fries.
This dish is a really big thing. Yes, yes. Winston
Churchill dubbed the combination the good Companions. As of million
servings of Vision ships were sold in Britain, which comes
out to six servings per person on average. This is
(11:45):
an annual um. The country boast over eight thousand, five
hundred fish and ship shops. That's so hard to say.
It's like one of those I don't know what those
stone twisters, hut um. And so that's eight times a
number of McDonald's and that makes it the most popular
take away food. Fish and Chips went out to surveys
conducted in the UK named as the most national of
(12:06):
national icons, and fish and chips Friday is a thing.
I'm like Catholicism or let's is it like Taco Tuesdays. Yeah.
More recent numbers put fish and chip establishments at ten thousand,
five hundred, but the sale of takeout fried fish a
bit lower, two million annually, as fifth after burgers, Chinese
(12:31):
and Indian, which I'm a little curious about that bearing
but okay, um chicken and then pizza. One of the
reasons for this is the increase in the prices of
haddock and cod, the two preferred fish for the meal.
Still more than half of the adults in the UK
visit a fish and chip shop once a month or more,
eat it once a week to go at least once
a year. Wow. Yeah, huh um. Fish and chip shops
(12:55):
don't just sell this dish, though, they've broughtened to encompass
other fast food takeaway options like a meat pies, fried
chicken strips, stuff like that. Fish breakdown of the fish
and fish and chips is cod haddock. The fish and
chip market in the UK is worth one point to
billion pounds and employees sixty one thousand people of potatoes
(13:21):
in Britain end up a chip form. Also of all
white fish is sold as part of this dish. Wow,
I love it. So it's a jug or not? It is?
It is? But how did it get here? Well we'll
tell you, but first we're going to take a quick
break for a word from our sponsor and we're back.
(13:48):
Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you. To get to the
history of fish and chips, you kind of have to
take it in parts. Sure, As we skirted around in
several episodes, the potato potato. No episode forthcoming, it's want
to be beautiful, yes, because we've done a lot done fries,
not the potato. Yet we did sweep potato on it. Yeah, alright.
(14:09):
The potato probably arrived in England from the New World
in the seventeenth century, perhaps with Sir Walter Rawley involved.
As we discussed in our French fry episode. The Belgians
or maybe the French probably came up with the fried
potato in these strips, although it probably happened in different
forms in different places around the same time. Yeah. Interestingly,
(14:31):
as we discussed in that episode, um, the French, Yeah, exactly,
potentially um as a substitute for fish is how it happened. Um,
when rivers froze over, so they would might even cut
them in fishy shapes. Yeah. Now you can have your
fish and your fries and eat them too, or something
like that. Yes, but deep fried potatoes aren't thought to
have really taken off in England until the eight hundreds,
(14:55):
possibly as late as the eighteen sixties, after a whole
lot of war and a couple a couple of like
blights upon crops happened in France and Austria, and that
popularized the potato and its fried form there, and then
it had some time to trickle out to other culinary scenes. Yes,
fried fish, meanwhile, was introduced to London's East End by
(15:17):
Spanish and Portuguese Jewish refugees fleeing at the end of
Moorish rule in fourteen Yeah, so what happened here was um.
Sophardic Jewish populations had been living on the Iberian Peninsula,
Spain and Portugal since about the eighth century UM. But
then when the Spanish Inquisition came along in the fourteen hundreds,
they outlawed Judaism. A lot of those people's fled from
(15:37):
Spain to Portugal. But then the Catholic Isabella of Spain
married Portuguese King Manuel the First in fourteen nineties six,
as Annie said, and she insisted upon the conversion or
expulsion of Jewish peoples from Portugal to Some folks stayed
and continued practicing in secret, but there was definitely an
exodus of sorts to the rest of Europe, and of
(15:57):
course they brought their culinary traditions along with them. M
Frying fish specifically might have been a way of cooking
and preserving it on Friday days so that it would
last through the end of the Sabbath, which in Judaism
is sundown Friday through sundown Saturday, and during what you're
not supposed to do any work like like cooking. Um.
A Bridge cookbook author in one referred to the Jews
(16:20):
way of preserving salmon and all sorts of fish. After
visiting London in the eighteenth century, Thomas Jefferson wrote about
eating quote, fried fish in the Jewish fashion. In some
chippies you can still get fried fish or fish fried
in mazza meal rather than flour. In Oliver Twist, Charles
Dickens mentioned fried fish warehouses and at the time vendors
(16:43):
sold fish from trays strung around their necks. Um also
more likely to be served with baked potatoes or bread.
As for who came up with the dish itself, London
and Lancashire have staked claim chips were cheap and accessible
food for workers, so there's kind of that vibe to it. Um.
The first Jewish cookbook that was published in the UK
(17:04):
in eighty six came with a recipe for fish and chips. Okay.
What is thought to be the first fish and chip
shop in the North of England and they all of
them have like these qualifiers around. Oh yeah, I love it.
I love it. I do too. Opened around Lancashire in
eighteen sixty three, Mr John Lee served fish and chips
out of a hut that was attached to a market,
later relocated across the street and added the inscription this
(17:27):
is the first fish and chip shop in the world.
So there you go. Yeah yeah, um that was in
eighteen sixty five when that location was opened, and I
believe it's considered the oldest continually operating fish and chips shop.
That the name, the official name of it is the
oldest fish and chip shop in the world. Oh I
(17:48):
love that. Yeah. Lauren and I accidentally stumbled while we
were in Orlando. We calls the restaurant called I can't
it was either Orlando's best seafood. I think it's the
world I think it was the world the world's seafood.
It had like two stars on yelp. We we got
a good chuckle out of it. We got a good
chuckle out of it. But that's what that reminds me of.
Hopefully this place is better than that. Um. But wait,
(18:10):
three years earlier in London, before this supposed first opening
of the fish and chip shop. Joseph Mallin allegedly opened
to fish and chip shop within the sound of the
bow bells on Cleveland Street and being born within that
sound as definition of Cockney. Thanks to Idris Elba and
hot Ones for that today. I didn't know that until
a couple of days ago. Um. Also, he was thirteen
Joseph Mallin, not Indrius Elba, when he started frying up
(18:32):
chips to help his family make more money. Then he
got the idea, the genius idea, to join his chips
with the fried fish from a local shop, probably selling
it first from a tray around his neck. Joseph was
was Jewish, yeah, exactly before he was able to open
a shop in eighteen sixty. So they can fight it out.
We don't have we don't have a dogonist fish fight. No,
(18:55):
we don't have a fish in this fight. It's like
she dig fish in a barel. No, let's move on.
In ev one, the oldest fish and chip shops still
in operation in London opened Rock and sold place. Oh
my gosh, that is so many fish puns in a
(19:18):
single Okay, it's really impressive because okay, hoof. By the
end of the nineteenth century, the dish was fairly common
in Britain. At first, these fish and chip shops were
largely family owned, ran out of the front of houses,
and the meal was frequently served in yesterday's newspaper to
keep costs down. I've also read that the newspaper thing
didn't happen until paper rationing of the world wars, but
(19:41):
either way, either way, a lot of places still do
this for kitch or I've heard arguments about the taste
and soaking up of the oil, but the practice of
using actual newspaper without grease paper in between was banned
in the nineteen eighties due to concerns around negative health
outcomes of ingesting the ink. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of
places here. I feel like it's fake, fake newspapers with newspapers, yeah,
(20:05):
with food grade printing, it exactly. Demand for this meal
increased during the Industrial Revolution as more and more workers
were looking for something quick and cheap for lunch. Innovations
during this period helped meet demand for the dish to
the steam trawler for catching fish, ice machines and railways
to transport that fish throughout the country, making it more
wildly available, I would say wildly widely available. The lines
(20:30):
of these shops caught the attention of Italian immigrants passing
through on their way to Scotland, Ireland and Wales, where
they set up fish and chip shops of their own.
There's this whole legend about the first fish and chip
shop in Ireland, and and that it came about when
when Giuseeppe Caravy accidentally disembarked from a ship headed to
America in County Cork, whereupon, I guess you figured like, well, heck,
(20:52):
I'm here now, and walked all the way to Dublin
and settled there and started selling fish and chips from
a handcart outside of pubs um and that he then
eventually opened a storefront on what's now Piers Street. And
their trademark phrase um lunad caista unadi kayla meaning one
of this, one of the other um morphed into the
(21:13):
Dublin nickname for the dish one and one. Oh that's awesome. Yeah.
By nineteen ten, there were twenty five thousand fish and
chip shops around the UK. By nineteen thirteen, UM delegates
from a number of local fish frying organizations got together
to form a National Federation of Fish Fryers Associations UM.
(21:34):
These local groups had been getting together for for a
couple of decades to help each other protect trade interests. UM.
As a national organization they work with the government to
preserve supplies and prices thereof. During World War One, uh
then Prime Minister Lloyd George and his Wark cabinet made
sure that the ingredients for fish and chips stayed off
of rations lists, because they figured that the industrial workers
(21:57):
that they needed making their munitions, and then the families
those were off serving, would be better off emotionally and
nutritionally if they could still access fish and chips. By
the nine twenties and thirties, the dish was hugely popular,
so much so in nineteen thirty one one restaurant in
England had to hire a doorman to control the queue,
(22:18):
which is doubly funny to me considering how my British
friends feel about viewing peak fish and chips. There were
thirty five thousand shops. Most industrial towns had one on
every street. During that time. Two thirds of the fresh
catch in Britain was destined for fish and chips. My goodness,
(22:39):
and also in a in a great reversal of cause
and effect. The demand for fish was such that that
more railways were developed um and that fishing ports were industrialized.
So all of the Industrial revolution stuff that led to
the dish being a thing then created need for more
industrial revolution. The power of chips, it is. It's mighty.
(23:02):
It also didn't get hit by rashing during World War Two,
making it incredibly valuable for feeding families. However, the lines
were places selling the meal were often hours long, and
they didn't always have fish. So when news got out
that a restaurant did have fish, people flocked to that establishment.
When Brian's Fish and Chip Shop and Leeds ran low
on fish, they started selling homemade fish cakes instead, and
(23:26):
it came with this warning, patrons, would you not recommend
the use of vinegar with these fish cakes? Wow? Okay,
I don't know what that Okay, sure, okay, yeah, I
appreciate any kind of food warnings. Multiple outlets have written
about the power of fish and chips as a morale
boost during the World Wars. In George Orwell's seven work
(23:48):
The Road to Wigan Pier, which I read in college.
Don't remember very much but I read it, he claimed
that the availability of Fish and Chips kept people decently
happy and quote averted revolution who Frederick Lord Woolton, the
wartime food minister, gave the a OK for mobile fryers
available for people being evacuated. The dish also did help
(24:09):
with the war effort in another way. Um people who
had been working in the deep sea trawling industry were
especially recruited to the navy, and supposedly one of the
ways that British troops identified each other during the Harrowing
d d Battle was by calling out fish and waiting
for the appropriate response being, of course chips. Wow, that's
(24:30):
some more interesting version of Marco Polo, Like maybe I'm
going to adopt this. Actually, I like I like that,
like in a busy store or something, if you're trying
to find your friend like fish chips. It also sounds
like it could be a buddy comedy fish and chips.
Somebody needs to get on that. We are the music
(24:53):
makers and we are the dreamers of the dreams. Shane
Henry ram And celebrated their twenty one anniversary in nineteen
fifty two by serving our record breaking at ten thousand
plates efficient chips at their original price, not the record nowadays, though,
lots of people came in for that record. Yes, yes, yeah. UM.
(25:15):
In nineteen seventy six, the aforementioned National Federation of Fish
Fryers opened its training Academy UH. In two thousand two,
brief science note um okay, researchers working in genetics named
this new gene imaging technology fish and chips. And I
don't understand it's super well, but but like very very Basically,
UM fish stands for fluorescence in C two hybridization, which
(25:39):
is it's a way of lighting up genes as they
activate within cell nucleus. Okay. UM. Gene chips, meanwhile, are
an older technology. Their their whole arrays of genetic material
arranged either on on a glass slide or coded like
representationally onto a microchip so that you can study the
whole array at once. UM. So fish and chips was
(26:00):
meant to provide a way of studying this wide array
of genes within a cell nucleus. UM. And the name
is catchy. I thought that was super cute. Yeah, that's
really really cute. UM. In the first decade of the
twenty one century, it became sort of a popular thing
to collect used vegetable based cooking oil from fry shops
(26:21):
to be filtered and sold as biodiesel fuel for cars.
Oh wow, uh one panicos Pena A published the book
Fish and Chips, a history likeworts of history with fish
and chips. That's cool, um and who. Ending on a
(26:41):
sad note, unfortunately, climate change is deeply impacting the fishing industry. Um.
Oxygen levels and the oceans are dropping as temperatures rise
because warmer water cannot hold as munch oxygen as colder water,
and populations of like perhaps especially large cold water fish
like hattocking cod, could shrink by a quarter in the
next thirty years. And that's like the best case scenario. Um,
(27:03):
the worst case being extinction. So yeah, so prices are
only gonna go up. Yeah and hopefully um and don't
hopefully like impossible or beyond. We'll come up with with
a with a fish alternative. Oh yeah yeah. Okay, Well
(27:26):
I have an embarrassing note that I'll share with everybody. Okay. Um, So,
I whenever I'm feeling a little down, I watched the
movie How To Train Your Dragon, and I watched it
over and over again recently, and I was kind of
in a weird mind state. My friend was quizzing me
because she was so surprised to know this about me,
because I'm trying to keep it hidden. Sure, and she
(27:46):
was like, do you know what type of dragon that is?
And we, of course I do what I tell her
what it is. I am gonna I made the hiccups
costume is the main character for a dragon con and
his his name his full name when she asked me
is hiccup her and his headache the third And that's
my embarrassing geek knowledge of the day. I'll share with you.
(28:12):
You still randomly asked me, like, what do you know
about this? Check? And let me tell do you know
about the economy of brook? Oh? Yeah I do. How
much time do you have? We'll get some fish and
chips and we'll talk it over. Yeah that's great. No, hey,
I support I support all all of your nerd dum.
Thank you. Yeah, of course, well I guess on that
(28:35):
like weird like nerd bookend. Yeah, we start with a
nerd bookend. We did it on either side. Yeah, that's
a delicious nerd sandwich. Um. Yeah, that's that's about what
we have to say about fish and chips. We do
have a little bit more for you. Um, but first
we've got one more quick break for a word from
our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsoring, Yes, thank you,
(29:04):
and we're back with listener. I thought a British accent
would be too grading for the that was much less grading.
At least we we've we've stopped getting hate mail about
our listener mail song. People have had to hold they
had to embrace it. It's either that or just jettison
(29:26):
from THEE. So those of you who are still with us,
thank you for putting up with us. Also, you know,
if you ever have any suggestions for listener mail, you
want to write like a little jingle yourself. Oh man, yeah,
the stuff you should notice, stuff like that. Sure. So yeah,
we went in on this game. We would love to
put your some nice thing that you right, We'll happily
(29:48):
do that for you. Had no charge, no additional cost
to this free podcast. Anyway, we do have some listener
veils and APU were stuck with us. Katie wrote big
fan of the show, but first time writing in. I
was particularly inspired by your PiZZ episode and wanted to
share a story with you. I am from Pennsylvania originally
(30:09):
don't get me started on our obsession with preszels, but
am currently teaching elementary school in the UK. I often
use food as examples of math concepts, and admittedly this
does tend to revolve around how much I love pizza. Well,
fast forward to the end of the year. Some of
the children brought in chocolates, cards, or flowers as an
end of the year gift, except one. One child proudly
(30:30):
walked into a classroom with the largest pizza she could
find as a thank you gift, with strict instructions that
it was just for me and I wasn't allowed to share.
I know you're not supposed to have favorites, but that
certainly was the most delicious gift I received. My admittedly
selfish recommendation for the podcast would be visit Amelia Island,
Florida for the annual shrimp festival in me oh Man. Well,
(30:55):
definitely adding that to our list. I'm in I could
put some hurt and on a shrimp festival, and I've
never been to a shrimp festival, and I think it's time. Yeah,
the time is now or may as the case maybe.
Um Melissa wrote, I really loved your episode on boiled Peanuts.
I grew up an hour north of Green Bay, Wisconsin,
and only eight peanuts roasted on top of white cake
(31:17):
with white fluffy frosting. Way better than sprinkles. I've never
had this. This sounds amazing anyway. The only thing I
seemed to love more than peanut cake is at a mammy.
Several years ago, I started getting sick and fatigued all
the time. After a discussion with my doctor, I went
through allergy testing and I tested positive for soil allergy.
No more at a mom a. I was expressing my
(31:38):
sadness to my husband's stepmom, Marty one day, and she
suggested I substitute boiled peanuts. My husband grew up in
New Orleans with his mom, However, his father lived in
South Georgia. Almost three weeks later, four giant sacks of
green peanuts were delivered to our house. I FaceTime called
Marty every other night for weeks as we tried different
spice combinations and worked out a process for making the
(31:59):
best boil peanuts. We finally decided on an eight or
so hours overnight in the crock pot, more or less
depending on how dry your peanuts are, and we always
season with crab boil. We tried every crab boil under
the sun, and they are all great. I personally love
half a bag of Zataran's dry hole spice crab and
crawfish boil with one cap of Zadaran's Liquid crab boil,
(32:20):
a lemon wedge and some fresh garlic. My husband really
loves day after a crawfish boiled peanuts. Um. I saved
some of the pot liquor to boil the peanuts. We
continued to call each other every Thursday for the next
eight years. As a result, Jay also started talking to
his dad every week. Jay's dad left when he was young,
and until Marty and her peanuts, their relationship was rocky
(32:41):
and stressed. Eventually, Jay's dad, a truck driver, got a
regular run from Jacksonville to Denver, and every time he
came into town, I got a new bag of peanuts,
and he got two big jars of a new recipe
for Marty to critique. Marty passed away suddenly last year.
I think the cosmos every day that she sent those peanuts.
She became my best friend and Jason got his dad back.
(33:01):
I now eat a bowl of boiled peanuts every Thursday
while Jason talks to his dad. Oh that is such
a lovely story. Thank you so much for sharing it. Yeah,
that's the powerful it is. It is. It's man, it's
it is delicious and emotionally nutritious. It is. Yeah, that's lovely, Lauren,
(33:21):
and those letters were both lovely, so thanks. We're sending them,
oh my gosh. Yes, and if you would like to
email as you can and we're looking forward to those
listener mail jingles you're gonna send um. You can email
us at l O at savor pod dot com. We're
also on social media. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter,
and Facebook at savor Pod. We do hope to hear
(33:43):
from you. Savor is production of I Heart Radio and
Stuff Media. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you
can visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thank you, as
always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks
to you for listening, and we hope that lots more
good things are coming your way
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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