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Notes -
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.
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.
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