The most disgusting British foods ever
As a food historian, I’ve tried my fair share of bizarre recipes. Here’s my list of the top 10 most revolting British foods. Some have (for good reason) been lost to the ravages of time, while others are still on the menu today – albeit only for those of a very strong constitution…
British food has a bad reputation for being bland and stodgy. Some suggest that our culinary unsophistication is a remnant of our Puritan past or perhaps a leftover from the frugal wartime years. Arguably, the stereotype itself is unjust. I for one think there’s nothing better than a warming roast dinner on a chilly Sunday afternoon, a vinegary heap of fish and chips scoffed down at a windy seafront or the refreshing berry delight of an Eton Mess in summertime. Before the turn of the 20th century our food was broadly celebrated rather than mocked. However, take a look at some of these ‘delicacies’ and you might be excused for thinking that British food’s rep is actually rather generous…
1. Blancmange
We’re not talking here about that pink, over-sweet gelatinous mess of school dinners past. While that packet mix is foul enough, blancmange in its original form was even weirder. Blancmange literally means ‘white food’, and in the medieval era it referred to a dish of white meat or fish, rice, almond milk, sometimes with (white) breadcrumbs, and sugar. This was actually an elite dish due to the then-fashionable mix of sweet and savoury flavours and expensive ingredients. Safe to say, it hasn’t stood the test of time.
2. Jellied eels
Continuing the gelatinous theme is jellied eels, a traditional dish for London’s poor that originated in the 18th century. Eels, then abundant in the river Thames, were boiled into a stock and, since the fish are naturally gelatinous, simply allowed to cool to set them in their own jelly.
3. Fish curry ice cream
Agnes Marshall was known as the ‘Queen of Ices’ in the Victorian era, publishing numerous ice cream recipe books, selling elaborately shaped ice cream moulds to go along with them and even founding a successful cookery school in London. She is credited with having first paired ice cream with a wafer, though the cone was still eaten with utensils into the 20th century. Her strawberry, banana and even cucumber ice cream recipes are entirely delicious, but her ‘souffles of curry à la ripon’ – i.e. fish curry ice cream – is a step too far for me! The recipe calls for onions, sour apples, coconut, almonds, and herbs fried with fish, curry paste and powder added, and the whole thing puréed and mixed with aspic and whipped cream. Frozen, this savoury ‘treat’ was garnished with prawns.
4. Snail water
Found abundantly in our gardens, it’s no surprise that at some point we tried to eat snails. But not in the sophisticated French way! British recipes from the 18th century describe a thing called ‘snail water’, which meant distilling them in milk or wine and adding a range of additional ingredients like raisins, rosewater, liquorish or even crushed earthworms. Unsurprisingly, this dish wasn’t consumed for pleasure, but rather acted as a remedy against consumption and other respiratory illnesses.
5. Mock banana sandwiches
There’s nothing more British than the ‘keep calm and carry on’ attitude of World War Two. Those on the Home Front had to make do with meagre rations, using up leftovers and finding creative alternatives for favourite unattainable dishes. Researching this period, I was surprised quite how many of these thrifty recipes were delightful – my favourite being a ‘crumb fudge’ that reimagined leftover breadcrumbs into something like a rice crispy cake. But there were plenty of awful wartime foods, not least mock banana. The real – and beloved - fruit could no longer be imported during the war, so home cooks attempted to recreate it using mashed parsnip and banana essence. My attempt at this one was a slightly sweet mush between two slices of bread that wasn’t fooling anyone.
6. Mincemeat omelette
The eccentric TV cook Fanny Cradock was the face of British food in the 60s and 70s, known for flamboyant dishes like piped green mashed potato, prawn cocktail, cheese balls and blue hard-boiled eggs (yes more food dye!). While there was some method in her madness, the one dish the internet seemingly can’t get behind is mincemeat omelette, prepared for her Christmas 1975 TV show. Yes, we are talking sweet mincemeat, that festive staple. Still wet in the middle, oozing mincemeat, and caked in icing sugar, I’d love to know if anybody actually enjoyed eating this 70s monstrosity!
7. Marmite
While you can guess what side of the ‘love it or hate it’ debate I stand on, I’ve got to admit Marmite is a pretty clever invention. Based on similar yeast extracts created by the German scientist Justus von Liebig, Marmite was invented in 1902 at Burton upon Trent as a means of using up the spent yeast from a nearby brewery.
8. Umble pie
Today if you were to eat humble pie it would be a metaphorical consumption - you’d be admitting that you were wrong and accepting the humiliation. In the medieval period umbles referred to the innards or entrails of deer. Umble pie was considered to be a lowly food, while the wealthy scoffed the venison. The similar sound of the word ‘humble’ (the ‘h’ was not pronounced at the time) led to the pun. Eating humble pie in the literal sense sounds even worse than the figurative type!
9. Repotted birds
‘I have seen potted Birds which have come a great way, often smell so bad, that no Body could bear the Smell for the Rankness of the Butter’, wrote bestselling cookbook author Hannah Glasse in 1747. Before the advent of artificial refrigeration, meat could be preserved by being potted, sealed in a container with hot butter. Nothing wrong with that. But Glasse recommended simply recooking the meat when it went off, seasoning it with mace, pepper and salt and repotting it. This recipe reminds us how far we’ve come in both food preservation and hygiene.
10. Brown Windsor soup
A brown, lumpy gruel, with chunks of unknown meat floating in it, brown Windsor soup has become a short-hand for the awfulness of British food. But this one’s a bit of a trick entry because there’s really no such thing as brown Windsor soup! While Windsor soups – white soups made with ingredients like chicken and cream - were favoured by royalty in the Victorian era, the first mentions of brown Windsor soup come from the 1920s as a joke at the expense of English food, linking something so disgusting with the refinement of Windsor. If you remember eating it, perhaps from a tin can, that’s because the joke took hold, leading some to capitalise on it – so the joke essentially invented the dish!
Eleanor Barnett is a food historian at Cardiff University, with a PhD from the University of Cambridge. She writes the monthly historical recipe column for BBC History Magazine and as @historyeats on Instagram posts daily food history content to a large audience. Her book Leftovers: A History of Food Waste and Preservation (Apollo, £10.99) is out now.
