Can you write me 1500-word papers (500-word for each topic)? Please find the attachment below for the assignment questions. I will provide you with the lecture notes.

FOOD IN ENGLAND

REPUTATION …

It is commonly said, even by the English themselves, that English cooking is the worst in the world. … Now that is simply not true … And yet it must be admitted that there is a serious snag from the foreign visitor’s point of view. This is, that you practically don’t find good English cooking outside a private house. (George Orwell, “In Defence of English Cooking,” 1945)

QUANTITY OR QUALITY?

... what emerges rather strikingly from the records and writings of foreign visitors to England [in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries] is the unanimity of their opinion that the Englishman of every class fed better than his counterpart on the Continent. (J. C. Drummond, The Englishman’s Food, 1939)

THE BEGINNINGS OF MIDDLE-CLASS TASTE

I have always heard they [the English] were great Flesh-eaters, and I found it true. I have known several People in England that never eat any Bread, and universally they eat very little: They nibble a few Crumbs, while they chew the Meat by whole Mouthfuls. … There are some Noblemen that have both French and English Cooks, and these eat much after the French Manner: But among the middling Sort of People, (which are those I spoke of before) they have ten or twelve Sorts of common Meats, which infallibly take their Turns at their Tables, and two Dishes are their Dinners; a Pudding, for instance, and a Piece of roast Beef... It is a common Practice, even among People of good Substance, to have a huge Piece of Roast-Beef on Sundays, of which they stuff till they can swallow no more, and eat the rest cold, without any other Victuals, the other six Days of the Week. (Henri Misson, Memoirs and Observations on a Journey in England, 1698)

AN IDEOLOGY OF BEEF

… Beef and Mutton. This was the Diet which bred that hearty Race of Mortals who won the Fields of Crecy and Agincourt. ... The Tables of the ancient Gentry of this Nation were covered thrice a Day with hot Roast-Beef... The Common People of this Kingdom do still keep up the Taste of their Ancestors; and it is to this that we in a great Measure owe the unparalleled Victories that have been gained in this Reign: For I would desire my Reader to consider, what Work our Countrymen would have made at Blenheim and Ramillies, if they had been fed with Fricassees and Ragouts.

... I in everything love what is simple and natural, so particularly in my Food; Two plain Dishes, with Two or Three good-natured, cheerful, ingenuous Friends, would make me more pleased and vain, than all that Pomp and Luxury can bestow. (Richard Steele, The Tatler, 21 March 1710)

SIMPLE AND NATURAL FOOD

Since around 1700, English people have often seen their food, and cooking, as “simple and natural” compared to more complex styles of food preparation in other countries, especially France. A good example is found in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Frenzy (1972). This is a story about a rapist and serial killer, but there is quite a lot of comedy linked to the detective who is trying to find the murderer. The detective loves “simple and natural” English food, but his wife is studying French cooking!

RICE AS ELITE FOOD

… most scholars agree that rice was the staple food, qualitatively and quantitatively, valued by the elites—emperors, nobles, warriors, and wealthy merchants. The rice culture was ryōshu bunka, a culture of regional lords and elites in general. … In a broad sense it seems safe to conclude that for a long period rice was not available in sufficient quantity for the nonelite of Japan, including rice producing peasants. … Rice was the staple food only for the elite in central Japan, but ultimately it became the most desired food for most Japanese. (Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Rice as Self: Japanese Identities Through Time, 1993)

VEGETARIANISM AS COUNTER-CULTURE

Britain was the first country in the west to have a vegetarian “movement” and the first country in the world where vegetarianism became a powerful social force for non-religious reasons.

In the middle 1700s the arguments began to be made that (i) humans are not “naturally” designed to eat meat; and (ii) it is immoral to kill animals simply to eat them. When economic arguments were added, vegetarianism became a philosophy that was hard to refute.

The quantity of nutritious vegetable matter, consumed in fattening the carcass of an ox, would afford ten times the sustenance, undepraving indeed, and incapable of generating disease, if gathered immediately from the bosom of the earth. The most fertile districts of the habitable globe are now actually cultivated by men for animals … (Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Vindication of Natural Diet, 1813)

The British Vegetarian Society, the first in the world, was founded in 1847.

IMPORTED FOOD AND FISH AND CHIPS

The rise in popularity of the fried fish-and-chip shop seems to have coincided with the new supplies of cheap cod (and, possibly, of vegetable fats and oils) which became available in the closing decades of the century. Its origins are obscure, but it seems likely that it grew out of the hot-pie shop, which was well known in early Victorian England: fish was first added as a side-line, but ultimately triumphed over its competitor. Mayhew reported in 1851 that fried fish was hawked around the London pubs in the form of sandwiches, but when the French chip was added is not recorded. Lancashire claims to be the birthplace of the combination, and it was in Oldham that the engineering firm of Faulkner and Co. began manufacturing ranges for chip frying between 1870 and 1875. At all events, the fish-and-chip shop had become socially and dietetically significant well before 1900; it was the outstanding example in England of a gastronomic institution designed principally for the working classes, and there can be no doubt that it made an important contribution to the protein content of the urban diet. (John Burnett, Plenty and Want: A Social History of Food in England, 1966)

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