London

by Helen Gaffney

The city of London is the capital of England as well as of the United Kingdom and the influences on her food and culture come from all over the world. There are many communities within the city and anything and everything can be found here, particularly with regard to food and drink. It is this very diversity that makes London such a vivid and stimulating capital. Yet beneath the noise and bustle of the modern city lies an older, more traditional world, which in many ways has changed very little over the centuries. A fundamental core of real Londoners still remains, these are the Cockneys, born within the sound of Bow Bells, the chimes of the church of Mary-le-Bow on Cheapside.

London has always been the prime market for farmers and fishermen alike and a well-organized national system exists which ensures that their merchandise is presented at key central markets such as Nine Elms (the successor to the famous Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market), Billingsgate (fish) or Smithfield (meat), for despatch to the food halls of Harrods or Fortnum & Mason's and many others.

London has many food traditions, both simple and grand. Representative of the capital are the eel and pie shops where Eastenders can still tuck into steaming plates of meat pie or eel served with mashed potatoes and green parsley 'liquor'. Eel, Pie and Mash Houses have been around since the eighteenth century, the first ones opening in pre-Dickensian and Victorian London, although unfortunately they are now far fewer. The parsley liquor is a green sauce sometimes, although not always, made with the eel juice left over from cooking eels, jellied eels being another much-loved cockney food.

Green pea soup or London Particular gave its name to the fog that once enveloped London so intensely. It was Charles Dickens who, in 'Bleak House', first named London's famous fog after the particularly thick soup. Another London soup is Water Souchet - a fish soup, thought to originate from the Dutch dish ‘waterzootje’.

Fried fish without chips was the original English street food and even now after evening football matches at famous grounds such as Tottenham Hotspur’s White Hart Lane, mobile fish and chip vans are often to be seen. Additionally, there is hardly a part of London without its corner chip shop. Barrows selling dishes or pints of winkles, prawns, whelks and cockles, sprinkled with malt vinegar, are one of London’s traditions. Another famous fish delicacy is whitebait - the whole fry of herrings or sprats that are deep fried and eaten whole and which used to be caught solely in the River Thames. In Greenwich, whitebait feasts at the Trafalgar Tavern and the Old Ship Tavern were popular events. Fresh whitebait is still caught in reasonable quantities at the mouth of the Thames estuary at Southend and it is here they hold an annual Whitebait Festival in early September - a celebration and blessing of the first catch.

Boiled beef and carrots, another simple but delicious cockney staple, was immortalised in a popular music hall song. The meat needs to be soaked for several hours, depending on how salty it is and its greyish colour then turns a delightful pink when cooked.

Bubble and squeak is the idiosyncratic name of a dish that uses left over potatoes, cabbage and, if there is any, meat. Some people prefer this dish made with left over Brussels sprouts instead of the cabbage. The name is apparently due to the sounds that are emitted during cooking; the vegetables bubble as they are boiled and then squeak in the frying pan.

In the winter, cheerful street vendors roast chestnuts over coal braziers. Of course, there are also scrumptious Chelsea buns - those sticky, spicy buns that have been a great favourite since the seventeenth century when a 'Captain Bun' sold them by the thousands from the Old Chelsea Bun House. George III used to park his carriage outside the shop and, although this royal patronage accounted in part for the success of the business, the buns today are as delicious as ever.

Just around the corner from Piccadilly Circus is an area known as St James's that seems to be one of London's most friendly and unchanging parts. Shops such as Fortnum & Mason are here, a luxury grocery, now also a department store, founded in 1707 by a footman to Queen Mary. Henry Jermyn developed the area in the seventeenth century and after the Great Fire of 1666 it became the much-loved residential area of courtiers and gentlemen. Today, in addition to made-to-order tailors and the like, St James's also has a concentration of uniquely British gentlemen's clubs within easy reach of the Court of St James's or, for that matter, Westminster and Buckingham Palace. Clubs such as Boodle's, the RAC, the Reform, the Carlton, are institutions of great age with an elite membership. The food served in the dining rooms of such establishments is solid clubman's fare - roast meats and stews, mixed grills and the like. However, these clubs have also contributed classics like Reform cutlets and Reform sauce, Boodle's orange fool and fruit cake and that favourite decadent breakfast tipple, Buck's fizz.

Conventional dining is evident in other parts of London as well. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, off Fleet Street, continues to serve dishes comparable to that which made this ancient and famous inn so admired by Dr. Johnson. Dishes such as steak and kidney pudding, roast meats, platters of cold beef and game pies are all to be found there. Another dish, named after a famous writer is Omelette Arnold Bennett, which is a supper dish created for him at the Savoy Hotel when he worked as a theatre critic. The old chop houses, taverns and grill rooms in the City and elsewhere in London earned their reputations by serving the Englishman's favourite meats as a Mixed Grill - lamb chops, kidneys, sausages, steaks and gammon - quickly grilled over charcoal and garnished with tomato, mushrooms and watercress.

If London’s most impressive and simplest foods seem to evoke the past, so do the hundreds of pubs in the city. Many have traditional dark mahogany panelling, etched windows, and the big hand pumps for dispensing traditionally brewed beers. It is not difficult to imagine Dickens’ London in such an atmosphere. Many drinks are to be found here, both local and foreign. London gin is enjoyed around the world, though it is a far cry from the vile concoctions sold in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where the catch-phrase Drunk for a penny; dead drunk 2d., seen over the gin shop in Hogarth's famous etching, could have applied to many of the drinking houses throughout the city. Today London dry gin is considered the finest of all, unrivalled in quality, purity and flavour. It is the perfect base for the Englishman's favourite drink, gin and tonic, as well as for other cocktails.

A multi-ethnic capital, London is a busy international centre. Nevertheless, it is still an intimate town that bears witness to its history: a group of distinctive neighbourhoods and villages, all with their own spirit and personality. Therein lies its continuing appeal to cockneys and non-cockneys alike.