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PaperclipPerfector  15d ago (text post)   2958 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 16, 2025

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Why is Ireland seemingly the only island nation without a stereotype of eating fish? Like the British have fish and chips, that Japanese have sushi, etc.

In addition to their historical lack of access to their own fisheries, the fact that Ireland remains relatively underpopulated to this day as a result of the Great Famine meant that there wasn't the kind of Malthusian pressure to exploit every available food source that existed in places like Japan. However, certain kinds of seaweed (dulse and Irish moss) are considered part of the traditional Irish diet and are seeing a resurgence in popularity nowadays alongside other more quotidian sorts of fish and shellfish.

Eating fish on Fridays was a big thing in Ireland until quite recently.

As a Cajun traditional Catholic, I am well aware of fish on Fridays, and that Ireland was big into Catholicism until very recently.

My question was more ‘why isn’t Ireland known for at least a few fish dishes the way every other coastal population is?’.

The English don’t really eat fish either. Fish and chips is an imported dish from Spain, possibly/probably Jewish:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-surprising-jewish-history-behind-fish-n-chips/amp/

(For contrast)

https://forward.com/yiddish-world/551553/no-british-fish-and-chips-is-not-a-jewish-invention/

Fish and chips is also much less common that stereotype has it. Growing up I ate far more Sunday roasts, beef stews, pheasant, toad-in-the-hole, bangers-and-mash and shepherd’s pie than fish-and-chips. But fish and chips is unique, popular and has a high profit margin so it became the British dish internationally.

The English don’t really eat fish either

Aside from the posts below pointing out that these stories are mostly pro-immigrant propaganda, there are loads of traditional English dishes for fish that aren't deep-fried cod. The thing is, British food is not particularly popular worldwide; few people could name more than 10 British dishes.

This also kind of answers the Irish question: what Irish food of any kind can people name? Potatoes, Guinness, and Beef stew (with potatoes and Guinness) are about the limit of it. It's historically a small and poor nation, long a part of Britain anyway with little time to develop their own cuisine.

In all seriousness, can you name some? I’d be interested.

As a Brit I barely ate fish growing up, and when I did it was basically just cod. I had fish pie occasionally but that’s just cod in a pie. And fish fingers which is cod in the shape of fingers. I suppose we had whitebait.

There’s kedgeree and various French things but I don’t count them as British food.

various French things but I don’t count them as British food

one problem with this is that once you get past the iconic dishes, you're left with a lot of simple preparations that have commonalities all over Europe, or dishes that have murky origins and aren't wholly any one country's to claim. There are fish stews and preparations for baked, steamed, smoked, and fried fish that all have origins in the UK but can also be found in many other nations. Kipper is perhaps the most British of the smoked fish, although you'll find preserved Herring in much of Scandinavia and the low countries as well.

Tartar sauce, for example, is obviously derived from the French sauce tartare, but the British preparation as served with fish is very much unique from the French approach.

Fish pie itself is definitely one Britain can claim, and is often much more than just cod. One ingredient you'll find in both fish pies and tartar sauce that is uniquely British is hard boiled egg (sounds odd but offers a nice textural contrast). Stargazy pie is another well known fish pie dish, although it's odd appearance doesn't present it well

'Potted' fish, whether crab or many other types of fish, is British but again not only practiced here. Other shellfish preparations for the likes of whelks and cockles are typical of British seafood. One shellfish dish that might not seem overly British is prawn cocktail; the US has plenty of shrimp cocktail recipes, and prawns served with a cocktail like sauce isn't especially British, but the prawn cocktail you would order on a pub menu would undoubtedly be British in origin.

Thank you, that’s very interesting. FWIW I would classify ‘French stuff’ as the kind of thing my Francophile grandmother used to make: white fish as a vehicle for sauce, essentially.

Fish and chips is probably less common in the British diet than stereotype would have it, but it's still a very stereotypical British dish. Likewise I'm sure Irishmen wouldn't turn their noses up at a nice piece of Salmon, but my question was why the Irish aren't known for it. They're seemingly the only coastal people who don't have a stereotypical fish dish- most Americans can easily list some Irish dishes, but they won't come up with any that are seafood. It'll be 'corned beef and cabbage, potatoes, soda bread' and an equivalent for Britain would probably start with fish and chips, for Japan with sushi, for Hawaii might start with luau food but would certainly include fish, etc.

Fair replies all (including those below). I’m biased because I never liked fish and chips much and everyone abroad acts as if it’s the only thing we ever learned to make.

I would say the vast majority of inland food is mutton pork or beef based. Boil in the bag puddings similar to haggis, mutton and dumplings, stews, that sort of thing. Lots of game. Thus the scornful French nickname ‘les rosbifs’.

There were jellied eel and kippers and cockles and things, but I think they were given outsize proportion because they were eaten in ports, and mostly by the poor.

For most of English history a full English breakfast was considered to be kettled fish and some other gross shit, the recent changes are more present in our minds - living in current year - but broadly speaking if you ask a person from a random year in the last 1000, they'd think of English as fish-eaters, I think. Edit: Also Kippers

I'm 90% sure that's a myth made up for the usual "did you know you have refugees to thank for everything?" propaganda. (I'm not kidding, they literally had a pro-refugee ad with a talking plate of fish and chips lecturing someone about the jews)

Historically if you lived in Derbyshire you probably weren't eating much fish, but anyone on the coast had it as a major part of their diet. Herring, sole, mackerel, river eel, etc. usually smoked, salted, or jellied unless you were getting it right off the boat.
Shellfish weren't as popular among the rich as in France, iirc, but steamed mussels and cockles were very common.

Portuguese traders spread fried fish and fried foods generally to most of the world at the same time, and my suspicion is that the explosion of trade just coincided with oils and fats becoming cheap enough to cook food in (and the growth of restaurants where it's more practical)

I found this Reddit thread, including this second-to-top answer:

Historically because the English owned the waters, so you couldn’t legally fish as everything was exported.

There’s also the religious aspect where fish was seen as something just to be eaten on Fridays when red meat isn’t allowed.

And also we produce cheap and good quality meat.

Thanks, that’s reasonable. I guess it’s interesting why fish on Friday led to fish being despised as opposed to the development of fish dishes people still like on non-Fridays, as in lots of other Catholic countries(Italy, southern Louisiana, Portugal), but poor fish availability is probably part of it.

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