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Peter Ross
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Narrator/Host Introduction
You might assume that much of the food on offer to Georgian Londoners would feel pretty alien to our modern appetites. But as Peter Ross tells Lauren Good in this episode of the History Extra podcast, this is not the case. From people pocketing baked potatoes on their way home in the small hours to why jelly was considered an aphrodisiac, Peter explores what was eaten and when in London during the Georgian period. And if you want to find out even more about what people ate in past centuries, don't miss our new podcast series, History's Greatest Dishes Included all the details about that in the description to this episode. But for now, it's over to Peter and Lauren.
- [02:34]
Lauren Good
Hi, Peter, thank you so much for joining me today.
- [02:37]
Peter Ross
Hi, you're welcome. Nice to join you.
- [02:39]
Lauren Good
Today we'll be talking about your new book, Insatiable Eating out in Georgian London. I thought we could shape our discussion as you do in your book, by meal times in the period. Can we start with Before Dawn? You open the first chapter with a woman called Sarah who has a prized possession stolen from her as she locks her door behind her at 1am and it's the kettle of Saloop. What was Saloop, Peter?
- [03:05]
Peter Ross
Well, Saloop was a drink. It's a starchy drink that was drunk hot in Georgian London. It was made from the ground up, dried roots of an orchid and it was imported in the dried form from the Levant, as they used to call it. That's the Eastern Mediterranean. And you could make it into a drink a bit if you imagine it's a bit like corn flour and you mix it with some hot water or some milk and it produces a thick drink that's described as slightly jellyfied. You could add sugar and spices. But probably Sarah Anderson, who we're talking about, was a poor woman, so probably just a bit of sugar went into that drink. It was sold on the streets and because it was warm and it had this sort of nourishing aspect to it, her customers would be people like coming home from work late at night, maybe out drinking late at night, but also people on their way to work early in the morning, night workers, etc.
- [04:02]
Lauren Good
What other foods would have been eaten before dawn.
- [04:06]
Peter Ross
So in theory you could get quite a lot of food from people who were selling it on the street. But gingerbread was one of the most common things and the history of gingerbread in this country is very long, goes right back to medieval times. But on the streets of London, gingerbread was definitely sold at night because we have images of people doing it and mentions of people in records of people selling gingerbread bit on the streets. It's a bit similar to the Saloop. It's, it's nourishing and it's sweet and it could be warm if it was kept warm.
- [04:34]
Lauren Good
We'll talk a little bit more about gingerbread later, which is absolutely fascinating. Now let's move on to breakfast. How would breakfast have differed according to your class in Georgian London?
- [04:45]
Peter Ross
Yeah, this is, this is interesting. So I sort of split the Georgians into sort of old fashioned categories, which is around class, but that's how they would have split themselves. So if you were from the working classes, you may actually, you may have got some salute from gingerbread on the way to work early in the morning. But often the working classes went to work before they had any breakfast and then they might get a break for breakfast. So they might have a break around, say, 8 or 9 o' clock in the morning, having worked for some time. But if you were what I like to call the leisured or moneyed classes, you didn't have to go to work, which meant your breakfast could be whenever you liked. So people would have their breakfast at 10, even 11 o' clock in the morning. Morning. So that split society. If you were in between those, you were possibly a merchant, for instance, you could go and get your breakfast at a coffee house on your way to work or again, take a break.
- [05:38]
Lauren Good
The coffee and tea houses really interested me. When did we actually start beginning our day with tea or coffee in the Georgian period?
- [05:47]
Peter Ross
Yeah. So tea, coffee and chocolate all arrive interestingly about in the 1650s, which is interesting. They all arrive at the same time, but we don't really seriously started drinking them for breakfast until. Until the beginning of the Georgian period to the beginning of the 18th century. One of the reasons for that is it's expensive. And it got increasingly expensive because the government suddenly realized they could throw a load of excise and tax onto it at all stages of its processing and drinking. So we start to get businessmen, legends, classes drinking tea and coffee and chocolate for breakfast around the beginning of the Georgian period. And then what seems to happen in the Georgian period is the wealthy take on something and gradually it moves down society and if it becomes cheap enough, then everybody's drinking it. So by the end of the Georgian period, everybody's drinking particularly tea, but also coffee because it becomes affordable and accessible.
- [06:42]
Lauren Good
That's interesting. I wouldn't have assumed that the lower classes were drinking tea and chocolate seems like a. A rare commodity to me during this time in history.
- [06:53]
Peter Ross
Yeah, I think the working classes were probably not drinking the chocolate, they were definitely drinking the tea. And we know that basically by the end of the Georgian period, everyone was drinking tea. And there's one historian, contemporary Georgian historian, who says if you go into any working class house anywhere across the country, at any time of day, they're drinking tea, tea with their dinner, tea with their breakfast, mostly because it's become affordable and you could actually there was less tax on tea than there was on coffee because they taxi in a different way. So tea then becomes the national drink at the end of the Georgian period.
- [07:27]
Lauren Good
There's also a focus here on the comfort of food and the warmth it can provide, because a lot of these people are working in really difficult, cold environments in the early hours.
- [07:38]
Peter Ross
Yeah. So one of the reasons that Salute was popular and gingerbread was because of that warmth. And gingerbread, I think I say in the book, it warms you twice because it was actually warm and they tried to keep it warm. They had burners underneath the stools that they sold it from or even in the baskets they sold it from. So it was actually still warm. But also ginger has that feeling of warmth to it, which is probably one of the reasons it was so popular. So you're getting from it those two sorts of warmth, and you're also getting sugar, a sugar kick from it. But there were. There were other breakfast things that people would have that. That were like buns, for instance, would be maybe warm in the morning, but a very cheap thing to have with your. Your cup of tea in the morning.
- [08:20]
Lauren Good
Something that surprised me was that the upper classes would actually eat cake too. I know we have pastries for breakfast now, but it does seem quite indulgent to have cake at this time of the morning.
- [08:32]
Peter Ross
Yeah, it does seem weird to us now. And there are lots of recipe books from the time that have breakfast cake recipes in them. But as you say, when you think about it, an almond croissant is not dissimilar to a cake, is it? I mean, when I was growing up, nobody ate cake croissants in this country. It would be very unusual, maybe a few Danish pastries if he was staying somewhere. But we've got very used to eating those sweet things. And now it seems a bit weird, you know, if you go. If you go on the continent, they eat ham for breakfast, you know, and things like that, but we eat bacon for breakfast. So the traditions associated with breakfast are very, very particular to the country you. You live in. But, yeah, cake. And also, I think the wealthy had the servants to make it, they had the cooks to make it, so they could have anything they liked for breakfast. But cake, it was remarked upon as being slightly extravagant. And I know Jane Austen's mother, when she visited a large country house, noted that there was cake at breakfast as well as the usual thing. So it was fairly common, but probably limited to those who could afford it. Obviously.
- [09:37]
Lauren Good
I'd also like. I know we've just talked about coffee and chocolate houses, but something that really interested me and I think throughout your book, I didn't think I'd see so many similarities to today. Something I Found quite funny was that we see similar annoyances owners faced to people today. How are these spaces used in Georgian London in a similar way to how we would use a coffee shop today?
- [10:01]
Peter Ross
Yeah, I know exactly the bit you're referring to because there's a. There's a brilliant part from, from a play about a coffee shop, basically. And there's the coffee shop owner who's a woman. And there were often, often women who ran the coffee shops, may not have owned them, but certainly were running them. She complains that people come into the coffee shop and they read the newspapers, which she supplied. So they asked for a pen and ink which she supplies for them to write because they're using it as a sort of business center, like an office. They're using the heating in there and they spend all day there and then all they pay is 2 pence for one of the one dish of coffee that they sit over all day. Which is so much like those people we all see in coffee shops who bring their laptop and plug it in and the poor people who own it say, you know, if you're going to sit there all day, you've got to have more than one coffee. And that is really interesting how they had exactly the same problems as we do today.
- [10:54]
Lauren Good
Moving on to lunch, what sort of meals were eaten by the Georgians during this time of the day?
- [11:01]
Peter Ross
So lunch is the sticky problem with the Georgians because one of the chapters is did the Georgians even eat lunch? Because the early Georgians did not have a meal that was called lunch. There's a long reason which I try to explain in the book for this. So you need to talk about dinner before you can talk about lunch because dinner was the main meal meal for Georgians in the middle of the day. So the early Georgians, beginning of the 18th century would eat their dinner around what they'd call dinner time, 12 o' clock or 1 o', clock, which means you didn't need lunch because you're going to have supper later in the, in the day. But there's this social distinction that the leisured classes, the wealthy, started to see that everybody's doing the same as us. So I'm going to eat my dinner a little bit later, I'll eat it at 2 o'. Clock. So the newly emerging merchants or middle classes, they think, well, I'm as good as them, I'm going to have my dinner at 2 o'. Clock. And then they chase each other down the century. So dinner gets later and later and later till the aristocracy like Mr. Bingley from Pride and Prejudice is eating at 6:30 or 7:00 in the evening, which means suddenly there's a space for a meal in the middle of the day. So we have. What emerges is this thing called lunch. It originally starts off as a bit of bread and cheese. A luncheon was actually something that wasn't necessarily a set time of day. It was a bit of bread and cheese you could eat at any time of day. But gradually this idea that you needed something in the middle of the day becomes a meal, and it's called lunch, luncheon, Nuncheon, Noonshine, all sorts of different names. Eventually it establishes itself as luncheon or lunch. And at the end of the Georgian period, you don't say luncheon, that's a bit nouveau riche. You say lunch. And the sort of things they were eating would be lighter foods, not necessarily cooked foods. Bread and cheese would be something, maybe some cold meat. And gradually this becomes something that most Georgians were eating. But the poor working classes are still eating their dinner at about 12 or 1 o', clock because that's when they're given their break to eat their main meal. And they can't necessarily afford to have another big meal in the evening. So it gets left over, actually, because when I was growing up, you know, we had school dinners, even though we ate them at lunchtime. And people in the north will still say, use the word dinner for what I would call your lunch, and then they'd call their dinner their tea, you know. So all this confusion about what you call a meal, at what time, certain date really comes from this period where lunch suddenly developed.
- [13:39]
Lauren Good
It's such an interesting development because your book really demonstrated that it wasn't just what you were eating, it was also what time you were eating that revealed so much about your position in society.
- [13:51]
Peter Ross
Yes, yes, exactly.
- [13:53]
Lauren Good
We do see huge differences between classes in this period. What initiatives did a man called Patrick Colquhoun take to try and help the poor?
- [14:03]
Peter Ross
Patrick Colquhoun was. Was. He was a Scotsman, he was a magistrate, but he was. He's also based in London. He came up with this idea and there were several people trying to do this. It was a charity that would supply meal tickets to the deserving poor. And that's quite interesting that they vetted who would get these meal tickets, and it was mostly those families who lived in the East End. Maybe they'd fallen on hard times because they'd lost work or something like that. So the meal ticket that his charity supplied, it wouldn't get you free food, which was a significant aspect of it. It would get you half price food. A number of nominated cook shops in the East End. So it would get you something like some beef soup or a beef stew. It might get you some vegetables to go with it. If you were a family, you might get four of these tickets to spread amongst the family. You would also get some subsidized raw potatoes. You could go and get a sack of potatoes with one of these tickets. And the idea was that not only would it supply them with a good meal, but it would teach a bit patronizing. It would teach the poor that. But what you shouldn't be doing is trying to maybe hock all your clothes on a Saturday so you could buy a big meal on a Sunday, but you should be cooking something yourself that wasn't using too much fuel to cook if you could cook at home. And that was very nourishing. So they encouraged them to have something like a beef stew rather than a roast, because making a roast wastes quite a lot of heat because most of that heat's going up the chimney. So it was an experiment and it worked really well. It served thousands of people with food in the East End. But sadly, the experiment stopped after some time. It was a private enterprise. Maybe the money ran out, but it was supplying good food to the poor in the East End and may have taught them that basically it's better to eat something like a stew than a roast.
- [16:09]
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- [19:05]
Peter Ross
Priceline Negotiator it's me, the Priceline negotiator.
- [19:10]
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- [19:12]
Peter Ross
What about a third time?
- [19:13]
Venmo Advertiser
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- [19:20]
Peter Ross
Seems like you decided.
- [19:22]
Venmo Advertiser
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- [19:26]
Peter Ross
Time to be the timeline.
- [19:28]
Venmo Advertiser
Fine. No one deals more deals than Please stop.
- [19:33]
Peter Ross
Touche. Priceline.
- [19:34]
Venmo Advertiser
Priceline.
- [19:35]
Lauren Good
Now it's very clear that a person's class really impacts what they eat and when they eat it. But you also discuss a demographic pretty separate in their own right from the others called costermongers. Who were these people and how did their eating habits differ from others? In Georgian London?
- [19:53]
Peter Ross
Costa mongers. They'd be selling things from carts, maybe in the London, they would so often sell vegetables. They could sell, they'd sell anything. They seem to have had a community of their own, a bit like the travelers community. And they're probably in some ways related to a traveler's community in the fact that they had a bit of their own language, their own way of living. They seem to have eaten out a lot, actually. And it may surprise people that the people who ate out the most in Georgian London were probably the poor, because they were living in houses of multiple occupation, sometimes rooms of multiple occupation, where there might be nowhere to cook, nowhere to store food safely. If you had living in one room with other people, you know, things probably get nicked, you might not be able to afford fuel. So the poor and the Costa Mongers were part of. The poor would be eating out at a cookshop, at a pub, the Costermongers. It was interesting that they sold things like might sell eel pies, but they wouldn't actually eat the eel pies themselves because they were aware of how they were made. Made from dead eels rather than with. When you make an eel pie, if you cook an eel, you have to start with a live eel because it decays very quickly. So they. They knew that the pies that they were selling had, were made with dead eels. And so they didn't eat them themselves. They. They went for something else. And also the Costa Mongers, you know, like, if they were successful, then they would eat. They would. If they could afford it, they would eat as well as anybody else would. Would eat. So, yeah, they're a sort of little community of their own within London.
- [21:31]
Lauren Good
Before I move on, if those listening would like to learn more about food and feasting in the Georgian period. I've recently spoken to Amy Boyington on the podcast about her book the Country House Dining Room, which reveals the weird and wonderful eats and etiquettes from the period. You can find the link to that in the description of this episode. Now, Peter, we're moving into the afternoon. You say that treats like the Chelsea bun and the Bath bun come from the Georgian period. Why did these soar in popularity?
- [22:04]
Peter Ross
Yeah, it's interesting. The Chelsea bun is sort of the key 1. The Georgians have an obsession with buns. So all those famous buns that we know about still today, the Chelsea bun, the Bath bun you've mentioned, they do seem to date from the Georgian period. It may be that we were influenced by the French that you could eat sweet breads breakfast, but in fact we've been making sweetened bread. So a Chelsea bun or A bath bun is an enriched dough that might have eggs and butter in it and maybe some dried fruit. But they do seem to have this obsession with buns. And the most famous place you could eat them would be at the Chelsea Bun House. There were several Chelsea Bun Houses. It's quite difficult to unpick which one's which, but there was one called the Royal Bun House. And what really interesting about the Royal Bun House, which was close to what we'd now call Sloane Square tube station, so just around the corner from there, is that although they were cheap a penny a bun, it wasn't limited to the poor who would get a treat on a Sunday or something, Everybody came and ate these buns. I can't find a recipe from the Jordan period for Chelsea buns, but I'm sure they're exactly like the ones they are today, sort of square and fruited. So when I say everybody, I mean everybody went for a Chelsea bunny. It was rather a nice, elegant building, had a sort of veranda outside so you could step straight from your carriage onto a covered way and then into the Chelsea Bun House. Inside, it looked rather like a elegant museum. And the sorts of people who went there included King George ii, his Queen and his children. George iii, Queen Charlotte and some of their princesses would stop there to get a Chelsea bunny. Interestingly, what runs past there is the King's Road. And it's interesting that the King's Road is called the King's Road because it was once a private road only used by the King and courtiers and people who could get a pass to use it. So they would be coming past this rather elegant bun house. So successful was it, that Queen Charlotte actually rewarded the woman who ran the Bun House with a silver tankard set with gold coins in the bottom. And we know this is absolutely true because she mentions them in her will. They did exist that she got them. So, yeah, they were so popular that people would be queuing up to get them. And then on the day on Good Friday, which was when they stopped making Chelsea buns and made hot cross buns. And interestingly, in Georgian London, they only sold hot cross buns on Good Friday, the Friday before Easter. Not like, you know, some shops today, but they sell hot cross buns all year round. So if you imagine you're getting this special bun which symbolizes Easter to a certain extent, just for one day, thousands and thousands of people, literally thousands of people, would turn up at the Chelsea Bun House, 4 o' clock in the morning, they'd been baking them Say, from early hours, and there would be riots some years to try and get your Hot Cross bun. The pubs around there noticed that there were crowds gathering so they would break licensing laws and open up early in the morning. The neighborhood complained about all these people queuing up and they could sell. There's rumors that they sold 25,000 hot cross buns in a single day from the Bun House. Some people said that 50,000 people turned up, but if they did, then half of them will be disappointed if they only sold 25,000. But it was an obsession. I mean, if you imagine there are no sweet shops for the ordinary people, you know, you couldn't go in and buy a Mars bar, for instance. So getting a sweetened bun, maybe you're only sugar hit if you had not much money.
- [25:43]
Lauren Good
This is before the age of afternoon tea, you say in the book. But you do talk about the rise of tea gardens as well, and how the Georgians enjoyed hot rolls in an afternoon. When do we see this becoming an enjoyable thing to do in the period?
- [25:57]
Peter Ross
Tea gardens sort of emerge in the middle of the Georgian period. They. They often attach to spas where people went to drink the water. And there are lots of little spas around London. But the tea gardens develop probably because the tea has become cheaper. So therefore it's more affordable. Interesting. Those people who go to the tea gardens, they're not necessarily the leisured wealthy classes. They may be what we might call the merchant classes, shopkeepers, for instance. So on a Sunday they could trek out of London. And quite a few of these tea gardens were on the borders of London. What would be Hampstead, Clapham Common, those sorts of areas. So if you imagine they're walking out maybe along the North Road, out to Hampstead, you would go to one. There was one at a famous pub called Jack Straws Castle, which was a pub until very recently, which had an attached tea garden. There's images of it. It's rather elegant, has little alcoves where you could go and have your tea and your buns. You could also get some beer from the pub itself. So in the images that we can see, people are quite well dressed and maybe literally in their Sunday best. And what's interesting about the image is it's families. You can see that there's men and women and children. And children are not often seen eating out in Georgian London. And interestingly, women are not often seen eating out in Georgian London. So they become popular towards the end of the 18th century and into the
- [27:22]
Lauren Good
19th century, moving into the evening. And I think women and Children might have been seen in these events. But please tell me if I'm wrong, Peter, was the Frost Fairs, which have always captured my imagination. To those wondering what a Frost Fair was. Can you explain?
- [27:41]
Peter Ross
Yeah. So frost fares were when the Thames froze over enough for people to walk on the ice. It's very rare for this to happen, so maybe once in a generation, if you were lucky. And it usually froze between upriver from London Bridge as far as Blackfriars Bridge, which wasn't there in the early Georgian period, but certainly by the later Georgian period, it was. So around the city of London, it would freeze. One of the reasons it froze is because London had such narrow arches that if ice did start to form, it would start to create a barrier and slow the river down enough for it to freeze. So 1814 was a very famous Frost Fair. And so because it was frozen, people saw it as an opportunity to make money. So that's what's going on in Georgia. That's going in London today. It's always been going on in London. So they started to set up booths, little stalls on the frozen ice. The watermen, who are the people who usually carry people on the river, then started to block the stairs that were went down to the river and would charge people to walk on the ice. And then you'd go and get a drink or something to eat. They were used to cook roasts on the ice. Incredibly expensive food. So, again, it was probably only open to those who had enough money to go and pay for some slices of roast lamb or to get an expensive drink from a tent that had been set up, called something like the Moscow Arms or something. So it was an opportunity to make money, but an opportunity also. They used to have little printing presses. You could have your name put on a little piece of paper saying, this was printed for you with your name on. On the frozen ice. And amazingly, a piece of gingerbread that was sold on the Frost Fair in 1814 survives today in what's now the London Museum, about to open this reopen this year. It looks a bit like a thick bar of chocolate. Somebody obviously treasured it and noted that they'd bought it on the frost fair of 1814 and it's ended up in the museum, which is just amazing. It survived.
- [29:45]
Lauren Good
It is amazing. That part of the book really captivated me because we talked about gingerbread earlier being something enjoyed in the morning. But we see this again happening at these Frost Fairs and you mentioned in the book the incredible forms that they were shaped into. What sort of shapes could you buy gingerbread in at these are when it
- [30:04]
Peter Ross
was sold on the streets, just an ordinary seller. There are pictures where it looks like a bar of chocolate, where it's scored into pieces so you could break bits off. So that that would indicate it was quite a hard gingerbread. You could get lump gingerbread, which was probably quite a soft gingerbread. But I think you're talking about mostly the sort of shaped gingerbreads was often sold at fairs, like Southwark Fair, maybe on the Frost Fair. But also hangings, where there was a big crowd, they might be selling that. So the shapes that they moulded them into, one of the most popular shape is a figure. So we obviously have still have gingerbread men, but they're just cut out. Whereas these are actually literally molded with decoration on them. One of the popular ones was King George on horseback, sometimes decorated with gold leaf, though it probably wasn't real gold, something called Dutch gold. And then watches. So if you imagine a pocket watch, you could get a gingerbread shaped pocket watch, a cock in breeches, which is a cockerel wearing trousers, wearing britches, which is a bit of an odd one. It comes from a sort of continental idea, a cuckold. So a cuckold is. It's putting two fingers up, like they do in Italy, as an insult. It means horns. So anything that looked like it had horns on it is an indication that it's a cuckold. So, yeah, all sorts of different shapes aimed often apart from the cuckold, possibly aimed at children because it would be bought for children. And in fact, they also made those with the Alphabet on broken into 26 squares with the letters of the Alphabet. And it was claimed that if the child could say the letter, they break off the letter A and they could eat the letter A and then they say the letter B, et cetera, to learn the Alphabet. So they were called hornbook gingerbread because they were after the hornbook which taught children the Alphabet. So, yeah, amazing, amazing shapes that turned up. And those are still to a certain extent popular on the continent. Less so here. But gingerbread moulds do survive, English ones showing all different sorts of shapes.
- [32:01]
Lauren Good
I would love to talk about supper next. By 1850, you say that 300 street vendors were selling baked potatoes on the London streets. Again, another thing that we eat and enjoy today. And that although their buyers were mostly working class, this was something that was eaten across the classes in Georgian London.
- [32:23]
Peter Ross
What's really weird about potatoes is we take a very long time to get used to them. Them like the Tomatoes. Tomatoes took even longer because they were a new thing in the 16th, early 17th century. But eventually in the Georgian period, we start eating potatoes quite regularly. But for some weird reason, baked potatoes, which seems untaught, an obvious thing for us, you know, how to cook a potato, doesn't seem to appear until the early 19th century. And then only in the 1820s do they start selling jacket potatoes, baked potatoes, on the streets of London. And it does seem that people have them as a supper late at night. I mean, you can get them at any time of day, but it seems to be particularly as a supper, maybe on a Saturday, the poor could get a couple for a penny, maybe small ones. But it does seem that people took them home to eat at home, not just to eat on the streets. And certainly upper classes, the better classes, were certainly buying baked potatoes on the streets. I don't imagine the aristocracy or the posh people in Mayfair were coming to the East End to get those sorts of potatoes. But they do become incredibly popular in the very late Georgian period because they are. They are, you know, filling and nourishing and hot. They were sold with butter and pepper and salt on the streets of London. And again, there's mention of people buying them and putting them in their pockets and putting their hands in their pockets on a cold night so they could actually warm themselves on their way home and then eat them at home. So keeps you warm and nourishing.
- [33:51]
Lauren Good
Again, you also talk about the presence of indoor markets, which seemed very similar to the ones I've been to in London today. But also as the British Empire expanded, the presence of different culinary influences in London. How did this affect what food was on offer?
- [34:08]
Peter Ross
Although it doesn't directly relate to the empire, the influx of Jewish people from Spain and Portugal in the 17th and 18th century, who were basically refugees into England, they mostly moved to the East End, and they introduced foods that were different to the foods in England. They brought, obviously, things like Passover biscuit, which would be sold to the local community. But the most significant thing they brought was fried fish, which was interesting because you imagine that putting fish into flour or breadcrumbs or batter would be something that people have been doing for a long time. But the Jewish community specialized in dipping little pieces of fish into flour or breadcrumbs and frying it and then selling it on the streets. They would often do this so they could. It could be sold cold on their Sabbath on a Saturday, and they would serve it with a dressing like an oil and vinegar dressing on it. But it became so Popular people would travel to buy fried fish from the Jewish merchants around the East End, around Duke's Place Market. They sold it to the Irish community who also were sharing the East End. So those that community influenced the food. For instance, pickled gherkins in the East End. You could get German bologna in the East End, etc. So it represent. It reflects the communities that were living there, refugees and migrants. But also, remarkably, we have what we would call an Indian food, you know, generically called Indian food. So curries and palaus being sold in London. By the late 18th century, there was a very famous Indian restaurant opened by a man called Dean Mohammed, who was from India. He was the first person to set up what you might call an Indian restaurant. It only lasted a year. There is a plaque on the building where he did it, but he wasn't the first to be selling that sort of food. There's a reference in 1773 to a woman in the Norris street coffee shop who would make and sell curries and palaus. You could go and eat them there. But remarkably, they were also sold as takeaways. So first Indian takeaway, potentially 1773 in London. She would even come to your house and cook it at your house for you. And there are recipes in Hannah glass, for instance, 1747, for curry in an Indian way. You could follow that recipe today and you'd end up with a really nice curry.
- [36:33]
Lauren Good
It's just incredible that we had an Indian takeaway in the Georgian period.
- [36:38]
Peter Ross
Yes. Amazing, isn't it?
- [36:39]
Lauren Good
Can we how popular these sort of dishes would have been to Georgians in London?
- [36:45]
Peter Ross
Well, you possibly can, actually, because, as I say, they appear in recipe books, and some recipe books include multiple recipes for various things we would generically call curries and pulaus. But also the spice pastes that you could buy, like a curry paste we would buy today, were popular and interesting. They were often bought at Italian warehouses who specialized in what you might call foreign food delicatessens and eventually expanded, including all sorts of foreign foods. So the fact that people were making money out of those things, would it indicate that it was popular? But also because of the expanding empire and because of the dominance of the Indian subcontinent by East India Company, the people who had worked for them had lived in India. Come back and bring those traditions. So traditions, what you have in this country for bottled sauces, chutneys and things, ketchups, a lot of those things actually reflect Indian recipes. And the British have always loved spice a lot more than our continental neighbours because of our empire. So you know, the sources and the paste and things must reflect that they were popular. But there weren't that many places you could go and sit down and eat that food or get a takeaway. So the fact that people mentioned them would indicate that it was sort of unusual.
- [38:07]
Lauren Good
I suppose it shows just how widespread these influences are in the food we eat today as well.
- [38:13]
Peter Ross
Yes, exactly. I mean the origin of something like fish and chips and curries and roasts and things. It does sit in the Georgian period, really.
- [38:22]
Lauren Good
Now we're coming to the end of the day, around midnight in your book and you talk a lot about jellies being eaten. What were jellies?
- [38:32]
Peter Ross
I was very amused by this when I was researching this, by the idea of jellies, because I think I say anybody when I was growing up, you know, jelly was something you had at a children's party in a little sort of paper bowl, you know, a fruit jelly. So the Georgians liked jelly. If you went to somebody's house, a grand, you know, a banquet, a big meal at a rich person's house, you might be served jelly. And it might be, you know, dramatically molded jelly. It would be made in various ways. So gelatine could be used. So that comes from various, boiling down various bones or from the swim bladders of various fish. It could also be made from calves foot, boiling down calves foot to make jelly. But what you end up with is a flavorless jelly. So you don't imagine these things taste savory because, I mean, we make jelly taste, you know, it can be still made from gelatin which comes from animal products. And then you flavor it, it, you flavor it often with fruit. The Georgians mostly flavored it with fruit. But you could make jelly any flavoured at all, wine flavored jelly, etc. And gradually in the Georgian period it becomes very popular at jelly houses and jelly shops. So popular that there were places dedicated to it. And during the day you wouldn't have a dramatically moulded jelly. You go and have it, a little jelly in a jelly glass. You can still track down Georgian jelly glasses if you imagine a sort of long bell shaped cherry glass, that's the sort of thing it was. And you'd buy a fruit jelly from one of the jelly shops during the day. And if you leave it at that, it sounds, you know, that's quite interesting, they ate jelly. But what seems to have happened is that in the Georgian period, jelly gained a reputation. And in at night, some jelly shops, particularly around Covent Garden, became places at which prostitutes would take their Clients, pimps would parade their prostitutes and people before they visited a brothel would go and have a jelly in a jelly shop. Which meant that lots of people who might be called respectable would never be seen dead in a jelly shop at night in Covent Garden, because they'd be thought of, if they were a woman, they'd be thought of as a sex worker. If they're a man, they'd be thought of as a pimp or a client. There are reasons why Georgians thought, thought jelly was an aphrodisiac. And indeed they even thought of it as a prototype Viagra. And that's to do with their idea view of various aspects of medicine at the time, which pointed them in that direction. So much so that people. There's a diarist who writes that basically he had a jelly before he went off with a prostitute or after he'd been with a prostitute. So it gained this reputation. It survived. During the day, people didn't think anything of it. During the day, women could go with their husbands to a posh jelly shop safely, but in the evening it had a whole different reputation.
- [41:22]
Lauren Good
What was it about jelly that the Georgians thought had aphrodisiac properties?
- [41:27]
Peter Ross
So it's to do with their view of medicine, really. So their view of medicine was still based on the humors, that if you had an imbalance in your humors, like blood and bile and things, you needed to correct that imbalance by providing something that was opposite to it. So, so they thought, for instance, that sexual diseases were because of an excess sharpness within your body. And so in order to counteract that sharpness, you needed something smooth, like a soup or a jelly. So it would help you. They even might believe that it protected you against catching a venereal disease, for instance. But there's also this idea about signatures that God has created some things in the world that tell you what you can use it to treat. So for instance, some flowers are shaped, maybe they're shaped like the shape of your liver. So if you boiled it down and made a medicine of it, it would help your liver. So if something was shaped like something you needed to treat, they thought it would treat that problem. So you can make jelly from Hartshorn, so from deer's antler, you can even make it from elephants tusks. So if you're making something that's made from something hard, then it might treat something like Viagra. So it might make something you need to be hard, hard because it's made by. From a hard ingredient. It's called signature the idea of signatures, and it seems bizarre to us today, but I think they, you know, they genuinely did believe it at the time. I mean, that was what medicine was based on, the humors and this idea of signatures, which is slightly more bizarre. But that's. That' the reason it grew up.
- [43:12]
Lauren Good
I love this idea about the jelly shops having two faces almost, that they're very different things to different people.
- [43:20]
Peter Ross
Yes, it's like those. There's some cafes that turn into restaurants at night. You know, during the day they sort of shut and then they open up today and they open up as something completely different in the evening. So, yeah, it's very interesting.
- [43:31]
Lauren Good
Finally, Peter, this is such a multi layered, rich world that you paint, filled with so many different foods. We've talked about dishes that many listeners will recognize. But where do you most notice Georgian influences coming up with what and when
- [43:46]
Peter Ross
we eat, the way we eat changed during the Georgian period, which is, which is fascinating. So the early Georgians, up Until the early 19th century, if you went to somebody's house for a big meal or you went to one of those grand pubs in London, big taverns for a meal with your club, for instance, if you went into the dining room, imagine you're in a Jane Austen novel. We're being escorted into the dining room. In the dining room, the table is laid out with the first course already on the table. So all the plates and cutlery there, but the first course is already there. And you sit down. And you don't have servants and staff that come and bring the food to your, you know, serving from the left hand side, etc. They might bring the drinks. So there's essentially a buffet on the table. Everyone helps each other to the food. You ask somebody to pass you a bit of turkey from down the far end. And then when that first course is finished, you sit back and the staff come in, remove that course and they lay a second course, maybe in the same pattern on the table. And then you tuck into your second course again, the staff don't help you to the food. This is called dining a la francaise, dining in the French style. And it survives until the early 19th century, about 1820. Most people are doing this and then something happens that we now do today. You go to somebody's house for dinner, you go into the dining room and the food is not on the table. Cutlery and plates are on the table. You sit down and then the food is brought in by the staff who put it on the table. And then they go around serving you the vegetables or offering you the vegetables and the meat and then that's cleared, and then the second course is brought in by the staff and they serve it to you. This is called Dining in the Russian Style a la Russe. And it seems to come literally from Russia, that period after the Napoleonic Wars. Russia had been our allies during the Napoleonic wars, and there was influence coming from the Tsar and the Tsar's court to this country, brought by celebrity cooks who had been over to Russia. They bring this idea that there's a different way of eating and it's dining in the Russian style. And because it's come from there, it's become from the peak of class, from a Tsar and the court, it's regarded as this is. This is posh. So posh things get adopted. And we today dine in the Russian style. So if you went to somebody's house for a dinner party or you went to a restaurant and the food was already on the table, you'd be shocked, really, because we expect the food to be brought in. We expect it to be served like a waiter, when we go to a nice restaurant, comes and serves it, puts your plate down, gives you the food. So it's interesting that we dine like the late Georgians and not like the early Georgians, in the French style.
- [46:39]
Narrator/Host Introduction
That was Peter Ross speaking to Lauren Good. Peter is a historian of food and crime in Georgian London. To find out more about Britain's eating habits in the 18th century, check out Peter's new book, Insatiable Eating out in Georgian London.