Friday, 16 May 2025

Oxtail soup, Steak and Kidney Pie, Tapioca Pudding, Sardines


What did they do with the rest of the ox? 
Why do I get to eat its tail?


Several of the common and everyday foods of my childhood - things I would be served almost every week, like it or not - have all-but disappeared. 

These are many; and include canned oxtail soup, steak and kidney pies, tapioca pudding and tins of sardines. 

I'm not sorry to see the back of any of these. The flavour of oxtail soup always seemed a bit odd to me - with an unpleasant aftertaste. I never could understand why anyone would want to ruin a steak pie with bits of rubbery, urinous, kidney. Tapioca pudding was bland belly-timber. Sardines were okay, as small fish go (certainly better than the vile pilchards) but I never really miss them. 

I classify all of these as wartime foods; which were imposed on British people by the shortages and distortions created by totalitarianism: i.e. the combination of a U-Boat blockade, and the ignorant tyranny of the Ministry of Agriculture. 


I think the bad reputation of British food came from this era. The socialistic national wartime government, then the post-war ruling Labour Party, loved being able to control food production and distribution, and dictating what people could eat. 

The damage to food quantity and quality took many years to repair, indeed rationing was continued for a decade post-war, and the Min of Ag never gave-up the reins of power (later enthusiastically embracing the most extreme lunacies of the European Economic Community/ EU) - and continuing after the pseudo-Brexit. 

This wartime attitude cast a long shadow over the UK national diet, which extended into the middle 1980s; an attitude that mass institutional food would inevitably be mediocre, at best; this was just the nature of things - and we ought not to expect otherwise (despite whatever we experienced in other countries). 


Meanwhile the best of English cooking was domestic, in those days; especially roasted meats, baked foods, and puddings. We often ate very well at home! Foreigners seldom experienced this because it was essentially private - and, of course, it depended on the specific woman doing the cooking.  


So I presume that the reason I was fed so much in the way of animal offcuts and offal - like ox tails and tongues; hearts, livers, and kidneys - all of which I hated; and such a volume of flavourless calories such as tapioca and semolina; and little fish in tins - was a communistic mind-set that instinctively regarded food as something that was sustenance and fuel for the proletariat; rather than potentially one of the good things in life. 

And of course the question arises: what was happening to all the best cuts of meat, to the animal's muscles rather than its organs and peripheries? 

Where was all that nice food going; who was eating all the good stuff?  


As nearly-always with socialism and Leftism generally - the rules and restrictions were for the Little People; not for the "communistic" leaders and ruling-classes themselves; most of whom have always self-righteous and hypocritical toffs. By one means or another; these continued to eat well and abundantly - even throughout rationing. 


Of course, things have now gone too far the other way! Too many are "foodies" and "food-porn" dominates the bookshelves, mass and social media. 

But I find it boring, wasteful, and life-distorting to regard every meal as An Event; to be planned, discussed, photographed, drooled-over, and shared online. 

There is a place for regarding food as routine belly-timber. I am happy enough with that...

Just so long as my belly timber is not offal.

   

15 comments:

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

I always thought steak and kidney pie (which I read about in Wodehouse) sounded like it would be delicious. This probably had something to do with the fact that I'd never actually eaten kidneys before.

Sardines, though, are all right.

Phil said...

Here in the US, ox tails are around $10/lb when you see them - it's one of the old poor people's foods that became fashionable.
And there are reasons for eating organ meats; they have lots of stuff that muscle meat is low on, such as collagen & vitamins (esp liver). Liver & kidneys should always be soaked in salt water & thoroughly stabbed before cooking (gets the blood out).
You are absolutely right about the Progressive / Marxists view of the People's Diet - Utilitarian simplicity. Our own processed foods are made mostly w/ soy, corn, & sugar; if it's good enough for hogs, it's good enough for you. Of course we've cheaped out on the sugar & substituted first corn sugar & now "high fructose corn syrup", which is made from corn stalks (they hydrolyze the starch in the stalks & put the cellulose in the cattle feed).
It's perfectly safe except for a little mercury.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Wm - Sardine are "all right", so far as I remember; on the other hand I haven't eaten one for about fifty years.

@Phil - You sound a bit of a foodie. I'm not that way myself, but "I know what I like" (and vice versa).

My general attitude is that humans demonstrably cope with an incredible range of diets - so long as there is enough and some variety.

I think the obesity problem is probably mainly due to something (probably some kinds of hormones, or perhaps pharmaceuticals) that has got into the food supply (and maybe the soil) so widely by now, that it is nigh unavoidable.

Clearly whatever-it-is doesn't reduce lifespan significantly, but it may be a factor in the bovine/ ovine/ porcine/ poultry-like qualities of modern humans!

william arthurs said...

When I lived in Hong Kong many years ago, the expat food store nearest my apartment stocked "Porthos" Sardines, which were clearly destined for Sinophone regions because the tin had Chinese as well as Portuguese on the side. I ate them once a week because I liked the tin. The Chinese label, when translated, just meant "Old Man Sardines": being unfamiliar with the Three Musketeers, the translator assumed that a man with a beard, in a hat, must be old.

william arthurs said...

"What do they do with the rest of the ox?" reminded me of the second of these venerable jokes, the one about Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. https://www.commentary.org/articles/joseph-epstein/two-passover-jokes/

Bruce Charlton said...

@wa - I'm afraid I didn't get the joke, until I'd looked up the relevant name. I don't even know what "seder" is.

iamnot said...

>I think the bad reputation of British food came from this era.

Certainly it didn't come from a Ploughman's lunch. One of the best looking meals, never had an official one being from New England but I instinctively make similar arrangements all the time.

Bruce Charlton said...

@i - My understanding is that the medieval ploughman's lunch was bread and cheese only (with something to drink - beer, cider, then later cold tea).

The modern ploughman's lunch concept (typically bread and cheese, with salad and pickle) was from the 1950s, and seems to have involved the Milk Marketing Board - as a way of encouraging pubs to provide food that included cheese.

Unfortunately, the cheese makers had not then begun to recover from the wartime restrictions, and only a poor kind of cheddar (processed and dyed) was widely available. (I lived near Cheddar itself, there was excellent cheddar available.) Since around the 1980s, the number and variety of good British cheeses has expanded enormously - and the ploughman's lunch has improved enormously.

Hagel said...

Dried or dry aged liver is pretty good, lasts for a long time, can be stored at room temperaturw, and would thus have been a fine ration food.
It is similar to those other air dried raw meats like prosciutto crudo, jamon iberico, and jerky

Hagel said...

Why hasn't Britain capitalised on and culturally conserved cheddar cheese with standards and certifications like France has with brie and Italy has with parmesan? Cheddar could have been an all time classic household name. It almost is despite being deagged through mud

Bruce Charlton said...

@Hagel - Aargh. More foodie stuff.

If dried liver was the only available food, I would die.

william arthurs said...

Someone regarded cheddar as a plebeian taste and thus less worthy of this protection than Stilton!

Bruce Charlton said...

Cheddaring is a process, so it can't be patent protected in the same way as regional cheeses.

And there are too many strong vested interests, in the UK and all over the world.

The cheddar I usually buy comes from Cornwall - which is a bitter pill for me to swallow (born in Devon, great rival of Cornwall; raised in Somerset) - but I like it better than the available Somerset alternatives.

In many urban supermarkets, there are about a dozen, probably twenty, types of cheddar for sale - from rubbery processed cooking cheeses, up to much more expensive special types that are crunchy, extra mature, crumbly and dry - all kinds.

Specialist shops have even more (even more expensive) locally produced cheddars, perhaps with exotic inclusions such as nettle leaves.

I can understand why people used to rave about French or Swiss cheese fifty years ago, but nowadays, IMO British cheeses are vastly superior to any other nation; in numbers, range, and quality - and a match for all other nations combined. It has been a revolution.

Hagel said...

Thanks for the interesting info.
Since there is a place named Cheddar, I made certain assumptions about cheddar cheese

Bruce Charlton said...

@H - Cheddar is famous for Two things. The cheese; and it has probably the best (most impressive) limestone caves in the British Isles - although Wiki says that the Welsh are now trying to claim some better caves...

It also has what passes for a deep and beautiful gorge (ravine) by English standards (the place where the hymn Rock of Ages was written).

Consequently, there are quite a lot of tourists.