Fish and chips

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Fish and chips, the battered fried fish with thick potato pieces that many call the national dish of the United Kingdom, still has one kitchen where an 1860s method survives untouched. That kitchen is not in Britain. It is in northern Ohio, where a handful of Arthur Treacher's restaurants fry in the old way. The recipe and the custom-built frying equipment came from Malin's in Bow, East London, which sold its exclusive rights to the American chain after going out of business in the early 1970s. The chain marketed the result as "the original". Ohio is now the last place on earth where that recipe is made on that equipment. The odd journey raises larger questions. Who first fried fish in batter in Britain, and who first served it beside chips? How did a cheap working-class meal stay on the table through two world wars? And how did one dish end up as a favourite everywhere from Dundee to Invercargill?

  302731

• 2. Fried Fish Roots

  ›

  The Spanish and Portuguese Jews who had lived in the Netherlands brought the habit of frying fish in oil to Britain. Some arrived as early as the 16th century, and the main wave reached London in the 1850s. They coated fish in flour and fried it, much like the Iberian dish pescado frito.

  The Sabbath shaped the method. Fish fried for Friday dinner could be eaten cold the next afternoon, at the meal called shalosh seudot. That worked because cooks used liquid vegetable oil rather than a hard fat such as butter, which would have turned unpleasant when cold.

  Print gives the first glimpses. Charles Dickens mentions "fried fish warehouses" in Oliver Twist, published in 1838. In 1845 the cook Alexis Soyer printed a recipe for "fried fish, Jewish fashion" in the first edition of A Shilling Cookery for the People. His version was dipped in a batter of flour and water. Cookery books warn of a trap, though. The phrase "fish the Jews' way" usually meant escabeche, which is fish fried and then pickled in vinegar.

  Chips have their own paper trail. The Oxford English Dictionary cites A Tale of Two Cities, from 1859, for its earliest use of the word in this sense. Dickens wrote of "husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil". Fried fish and fried potatoes had existed separately for at least 50 years before anyone is known to have sold them together.

  49131816

• 3. The First Chippies

  ›

  Around 1860, in Bow, East London, an Eastern European Jewish immigrant named Joseph Malin opened the first recorded shop to sell fish and chips together. In 1863 a Mr Lees did the same in Mossley, Lancashire, pioneering the idea in the north of England. Nobody can say for certain which shop came first, or whether someone combined the two foods even earlier.

  Plaques keep the argument alive. A century later the National Federation of Fish Friers made Malin's its first member and presented it with a plaque naming it the world's first fish and chip shop. Another contender is the site of Tommyfield Market in Oldham, which carries a blue plaque. In Covent Garden, The Rock & Sole Plaice, dating from 1871, is London's oldest chip shop still operating.

  Geography made the dish a mass meal. Trawl fishing in the North Sea developed rapidly in the second half of the 19th century. Railways then linked the ports to the big industrial cities, so fresh fish could reach them quickly. Fish and chips became a stock meal for the English working class.

  The earliest shops were spartan, with little more than a large cauldron of fat heated by a coal fire. The format later settled into a familiar pattern. Customers queued, and food in paper wrappings was passed over a counter in front of the fryers.

  The number of shops tells the rest. By 1910 more than 25,000 stood across the UK, and the total passed 35,000 by the 1930s. By 2009 only about 10,000 remained.

  27313435

• 4. Wartime Comfort

  ›

  Professor John Walton, who wrote Fish and Chips and the British Working Class, explains why the government protected the trade in the First World War. In his words, "The cabinet knew it was vital to keep families on the home front in good heart, unlike the German regime that failed to keep its people well fed". Safeguarding supplies of fish and chips became a priority.

  In 1928 Harry Ramsden opened his first shop in Guiseley, West Yorkshire. On a single day in 1952 it served 10,000 portions, a feat that earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records.

  George Orwell noticed the dish's hold on ordinary people in The Road to Wigan Pier, published in 1937. The book records his experience of working-class life in the North of England. Orwell counted fish and chips chief among the home comforts that acted as a panacea for the poor.

  The Second World War repeated the pattern. Fish and chips stayed among the few foods in the United Kingdom that were never rationed. Winston Churchill, then Prime Minister, called the pairing "the good companions".

  99100222398

• 5. The Fish Restaurant King

  ›

  For nine pence in 1896, a diner in Lambeth, South London, could order fish and chips, bread and butter, and a pot of tea. The restaurant belonged to Samuel Isaacs, an entrepreneur from Whitechapel who already ran a thriving wholesale and retail fish business. People called him the Fish Restaurant King.

  Isaacs introduced the sit-down fish restaurant, a contrast to the takeaway shop. It was popular at once and grew into a chain of 22 restaurants. His trademark was the phrase "This is the Plaice", paired with a picture of the fish behind the pun.

  The interiors were the selling point. Carpets, table service, tablecloths, flowers, china and cutlery brought the trappings of upmarket dining within reach of working people. Branches stood on the Strand and elsewhere in London, and at southern seaside resorts including Brighton, Ramsgate and Margate. Early in the 20th century the menus grew to include meat dishes and other variations.

  One branch even reached the cinema. The old Brighton restaurant at No.1 Marine Parade appears in the background of Norman Wisdom's 1955 film One Good Turn, just as the character Pitkin runs onto the seafront. The site now holds a Harry Ramsden's restaurant.

  353698

• 6. Around the World

  ›

  In the 1870s, according to Dundee City Council, a Belgian immigrant named Edward De Gernier sold chips in the city's Greenmarket. That claim makes Scotland an early stop on the dish's travels.

  In Australia, the first recorded owner of a fish and chip shop was a Greek migrant named Athanasias Comino. He opened on Sydney's Oxford Street in 1879, though he was inspired by an earlier shop run by an unknown Welshman. The country now has an estimated 4,000 shops.

  Ireland's story begins with a mistake. In the 1880s an Italian immigrant named Giuseppe Cervi stepped off a North America-bound ship at Queenstown, now Cobh in County Cork, and walked to Dublin. He sold fish and chips from a handcart outside pubs before settling on Great Brunswick Street, now Pearse Street. His wife Palma would ask customers "Uno di questa, uno di quella?" The question, meaning one of this and one of that, became the Dublin phrase "one and one" for fish and chips. Today most traditional Irish vendors are migrants from southern Italy or their descendants, and a trade organisation represents them. In Australia and New Zealand, the business is popular among Chinese migrants in particular.

  New Zealand was serving the dish by 1903, when meals of fish and chips were being advertised. That year the London Fish Shop opened in Invercargill, using a frying apparatus imported from England. The British Fried Fish and Chip Potato Saloon opened in Auckland. Friday night became the traditional night for fish. In 1980 four rising Labour Party politicians, including David Lange, earned the nickname the "Fish and Chip Brigade" after a published photograph showed them eating the meal.

  Canada eats the dish in pubs and takeaways, especially in the Atlantic provinces, Ontario and along the West Coast. Poutine often replaces the chips. In Newfoundland and Labrador, fish and chips made with Atlantic cod is the most common takeout meal.

  In the United States, the Upstate New York and Wisconsin version is called a fish fry. The dish keeps its British name elsewhere, even though American chips means potato crisps. The South favours fried catfish with French fries, coleslaw, pickles, raw onion and lemon slices.

  In the western Norwegian town of Kristiansund, fish and chips has been street food since the 1940s. Locals call it fishan.

  3846474852

• 7. On the Plate

  ›

  Cod and haddock are the usual fish in Britain and Ireland, and haddock is preferred in the north of the UK while cod leads in the south. Vendors also sell lemon sole, hake, plaice, skate, ray and rock salmon, a name covering several dogfish species. An unspecified "fish" is increasingly likely to be the much cheaper pollock. The Fish Labelling Regulations 2003 push shops to name the species, which is why menus now say "cod and chips".

  Other coasts choose their own fish. British Columbia favours Pacific cod, halibut and Chinook salmon, with tempura techniques brought by Japanese Canadians. Australian shops use flathead, barramundi and flake, which is shark meat, and farmed basa imported from Vietnam has become common. New Zealanders moved from snapper to hoki and tarakihi as snapper catches declined. In India the dish usually uses pomfret with chilli paste, while South Africa favours hake and snoek.

  The frying fat sparks a longstanding debate among UK vendors. Traditional frying used beef dripping or lard, and living museums such as Beamish still do so. Vegetable oils, including palm, rapeseed and peanut oil, now predominate, partly because they suit vegetarians and followers of certain faiths.

  Batter in Britain and Ireland is usually flour and water with a little sodium bicarbonate and vinegar. The two react to make bubbles that lighten the coating. Beer batter, often two parts flour to three parts beer by volume, gives a lighter texture and an orange-brown colour. British chips are usually considerably thicker than American French fries.

  In most of Britain and Ireland, salt and vinegar go on at serving time. Edinburgh prefers "sauce", a brown sauce, in place of vinegar. A 2020 YouGov poll in the UK ranked ketchup, curry sauce and mushy peas as the top three toppings after salt and vinegar. In the Midlands, chips with mushy peas or baked beans are called a "pea mix" or a "bean mix".

  Shops also sell scraps, loose blobs of batter fried crisp, which northern shops once handed to customers' children as treats. In Sheffield, a piece of fish sandwiched between two potato slices and battered becomes a Yorkshire fishcake, often sold in a bun as a Fishcake Butty.

  A serving of 6 oz of fried fish with 10 oz of fried chips holds approximately 1000 kcal and 52 g of fat.

  2455561371

• 8. Friday Habits

  ›

  In 1967 the Smiths Potato Crisps Company launched Salt & Vinegar crisps, a flavour inspired by the way people seasoned fish and chips. The dish had plainly become part of everyday British taste.

  Old religious habit still helps explain Friday's place in the diet. The Roman Catholic custom of eating fish instead of meat on Fridays, especially during Lent, continues to shape eating even in largely Protestant or secular societies. Many cafeterias that vary their menus all week serve fish and chips every Friday.

  The dish also marks a boundary between neighbours. Australians and New Zealanders use the words "fish and chips" as a shibboleth for their different short-i vowels. New Zealanders hear Australians say "feesh and cheeps", while Australians hear New Zealanders say "fush and chups".

  Shop owners reward the dish with puns. British names include "A Salt and Battery", "The Codfather", "The Frying Scotsman", "Oh My Cod", "Frying Nemo" and "Jack the Chipper". Chip shops sell roughly 25% of all the white fish eaten in the UK, and 10% of its potatoes.

  Old wrapping habits have faded. Shops once used an inner layer of white paper for hygiene and an outer layer of newspaper or blank newsprint to insulate and absorb grease. Hygiene concerns have nearly ended the use of newspaper, and food-quality paper or recyclable cardboard boxes have taken over.

  The National Federation of Fish Friers, founded in 1913, promotes the trade and offers training courses. It has about 8,500 members. The National Fish & Chips Awards began in 1988, and the Norwegian ambassador to the UK, Mona Juul, attended the 30th ceremony.

  Record attempts add a showman's streak. Gadaleto's Seafood Market in New Paltz, New York, held the title of largest serving in 2004. The Wensleydale Heifer, a Yorkshire pub, broke it in July 2011. In August 2012 Scawsby Fisheries of Doncaster tried to beat it with 33 lb of battered cod and 64 lb of chips. Resorts World Birmingham now holds the record, with a portion weighing 54.99 kg made from a 27.83 kg raw halibut filet on the 9th of February 2018.

  Even the leftover oil has a second life. The German biodiesel company Petrotec has announced plans to turn waste oil from the British fish-and-chip industry into biodiesel in the UK.

  9495129697