Interesting Chippy Articles
- Stephen Peel
- Feb 13, 2024
- 8 min read
Fish and chips: our favourite takeaway is having an identity crisis
It's one of our most-loved traditions - but is it British or is it Jewish?
My parents had a Saturday night ritual: Strictly, X Factor, fish and chips. This put them on a par with the late Queen who reputedly enjoyed the same supper when holidaying at Balmoral. There the similarity ended – HRH would send a footman to the nearby town of Ballater to procure it, while my dad had to trek out in the dark himself to collect a takeaway from Frydays in Mill Hill East, widely reported to be the best fish and chip shop in north west London*. The queues out the door as the Yom Kippur fast goes out each year are legendary (mostly pre-orders).
Fish and chips as a dish is considered to be quintessentially British, but the truth is that the dish found its way here with Sephardic Jewish migrants from Spain and Portugal in the mid-1800s. Matthew Plowright at the Migration Museum in Lewisham says: “Food serves as a powerful conduit for cultural exchange. Understanding the origins of our favourite dishes deepens our appreciation for the journeys and stories behind them.”
Many believe the first fish and chip shop was opened by Joseph Malin (who was in fact Ashkenazi) in Cleveland Street in London’s East End in 1860. Fried fish was largely associated with the Jewish community in Britain for most of the 1800s – an association that at the time went hand-in-hand with antisemitism. Many people complained about the ‘nauseous odour’ associated with the fish and made disparaging associations between fried fish and the relatively poor regions of London in which these shops and the Jewish communities were concentrated.
Rock and Sole Plaice in Covent Garden, one of the UK’s oldest fish and chip shops, was founded by Jewish migrants in 1871. On National Fish and Chip Day in June, current owners Ahmet and Ali Ziyaeddin paid tribute to its heritage by wrapping each order in a twist on classic fish and chip paper, with the story of the dish’s journey to the UK printed on each piece.
During the Blitz, the shop was used to host weekly meetings to discuss how to feed Londoners made homeless during the bombing. The shop itself was severely damaged by a bomb blast across the road.
The British government safeguarded the supply of fish and chips during both world wars and it was one of the few foods not subject to rationing. Fish and chips are so embedded in Britain’s national identity that the British soldiers identified each other during the D-Day landings by calling out ‘fish’ and the response (or password) was ‘chips’.
By the mid-20th century, there were over 35,000 fish and chip shops in the UK and the dish became associated with ‘Britishness’ in contrast to the Italian, Chinese and Indian restaurants opening up. Headlines like ‘It Takes a Stiff Upper Lip to Love Fish and Chips!’ and ‘Patriotic Food for Posh and Poor’ were seen. However by now these shops were largely run by Chinese, Greek Cypriot and South Asian immigrants, whose own cuisines were also heavily reliant on frying.
By the 1950s the National Federation of Fish Fryers was marketing it as a British dish and referring to it as ‘Britain’s favourite food’. In 1965 The Beatles were filmed eating fish and chips during the making of a promotional film for their single I Feel Fine.
Henry Mayhew mentions the fried-fish sellers in his book London Labour and the London Poor (1851), where he remarked on the odour of the frying making the sellers quite unpopular. John Isaacs’ fish-and-chip shop opposite Whitechapel Station was where Brady Club members popped in after club for ‘the best chips in London’. Youngsters would congregate outside on the wide pavement and chat and eat their fish and chips wrapped in newspaper.
Charles Dickens mentions ‘fried fish warehouses’ in Oliver Twist (1838) and in 1845 Alexis Soyer, in his book A Shilling Cookery for the People, gives a recipe for ‘fried fish, Jewish fashion’, which is dipped in a batter mix of flour and water before frying. This was indeed the way it was done. From the 15th century, Jews living in Portugal ate peshkado frito – white fish, normally cod or haddock, coated in flour and then fried. Sephardic Jews fried fish on Fridays to eat on Shabbat; the batter was believed to preserve the fish so it could be eaten cold the next day.
Earlier this year Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblet wrote in The Forward: “Floured fish fried in oil predates the arrival of Sephardic Jews, as evidenced by recipes in earlier English cookbooks, and the use of oil or butter to fry fish dredged in flour is common to many cuisines. A brief recipe for frying floured fish in oil and preserving it in vinegar even appears in a Roman cookbook thought to have been written by Apicius in the fifth century.”
She says that whereas the Jewish tradition is to eat fried fish cold on Shabbat, the fried fish in British fish and chips is a different dish. “The fish is battered, it may be fried in beef tallow, lard, or oil, and it is served piping hot. It has its own long history, and there are regional differences in type of fish, batter, cooking fat, and condiments, and even the name of the dish varies. Their different histories have been conflated to produce the oft-repeated Jewish origin of British fish and chips. The role of Jews in the early history of England’s fried fish trade and chip shops, however, is a whole other story.”
In September 2020, in a film by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Gary Lineker publicly thanked Jewish refugees for bringing fish and chips, “this national delight”, to Britain to counter the UK government’s narrative that the refugees trying to enter the UK today are a threat to the nation. The film was intended to spread a simple message, says president of the New York-based IRC David Miliband, “that when we welcome refugees, they strengthen our communities at every level and sometimes in unexpected ways.”
From my parents’ Saturday night ritual, to our annual family breaking of the fast to my own favourite takeaway on a night in, it’s always haddock in matzo meal. That, to me, is Jewish fish and chips.
by the simple things
Forget whether you have jam and then cream or cream and then jam on your scone, the most divisive culinary choices in Britain must be fish and chips.
What’s your poison?
There’s a definite north/south divide here: haddock is the most popular choice in the north while cod is the fish of choice in the south. In major cities and chi chi seaside towns, you might find fancier items such as crayfish tails and Dover sole but, try as they might, nothing truly beats simple crunchy fish and fat chips. If you want to branch out a little, there’s always a fish cake to tickle your fancy, and if you’re in Yorkshire, you might be lucky and get a Yorkshire Fish Cake (originally from Sheffield), which is made up of fish sandwiched between two slices of potato, battered; all your fish and chip raw materials in one easy, crunchy parcel.
Chips with everything
Let’s face it, the chips are almost as important as the fish in this illustrious duo, if not more so. Chippy chips (or chipper chips, depending on your location) should be Proper Chips; hunks of potato in various sizes, occasionally with a bit of skin left on. French fries and skinny chips have no place here.
In some areas of Britain they’ve stopped even pretending the chips aren’t the main event, and we admire that. In London, wet chips (with gravy or curry sauce) make up a fine meal in their own right. In the Midlands you might find chips served with gravy and peas or beans, known as a pea mix or a bean mix, and probably two of your five a day. While in the Black Country, orange is the new black and you can buy Orange Chips, which are chips coated in batter and turmeric or paprika and deep fried.
What to put on your chips (or dip your chips in)
Salt and vinegar happens all over the UK but down south it’s pretty much de rigeur and there’s not an awful lot more choice, unless you’re going for ketchup or fancy yourself as continental and have your chips with mayonnaise.
Gravy is found more commonly in the north, though the preponderance of pie shops in London means ‘liquor’ (or gravy to you and me) has made its way onto the capital’s chippy scene, too. Whether you pour the stuff all over your chips or delicately dip is more a matter of class (and whether you’re wearing a dry-clean only top).
Of course, the chip condiment to end all chip condiments must be ‘chippy sauce’ - a mix of vinegar and brown sauce or simply brown sauce and water. If you’re new to this and are offered ‘salt’n’soss’ in a fish and chip shop in the north, that’s what you’re getting. Say ‘yes’!
But ‘things that go on chips’ vary from one area to another. In Newcastle you’ll find Bolognese and chips, in Liverpool Salt and Pepper Chinese Chips, in Cardiff cheese, chips and curry sauce, and in Weymouth, comforting cheese, chips and beans is considered a local speciality.
And what of the best bits… the crispy bits?
The leavings at the bottom of the fryer have long been recognised as being the best bits. Once upon a glorious time, they were free and considered the rightful property of children and teens, who hadn’t the money for a meal but could usually cobble together enough from between the sofa cushions to buy a buttered bun into which kindly fish and chip shop owners would add ‘scraps’. Or if the sofa was ungenerous, you could just have them out of newspaper.
But were they called ‘scraps’ in your home town? In Lincolnshire they’re often ‘bits’, in South Wales, ‘scrumps’. In Yorkshire they’re sometimes ‘scrags’ and in Cornwall they’re ‘screeds’. They’re ‘scratchings’ in Leicestershire but ‘fish bits’ in Scotland. But whatever you called them, we’d like to start a campaign to make them free again.
And while we’re as big a fan of a Marks and Spencer dinner as the next man, on principle we eschew their tubs of M&S Chip Shop Batter Bits. At £1.05, that’s a gentrification too far, we think.
Give peas a chance
Mushy peas are a northern staple but available everywhere and we don’t think you should trust a chippie that doesn’t offer them. Some pea purveyors have gone still further, however.
We’d like to give a metaphorical medal to those chippies on the south coast that are proficient in the alchemy that is making mushy pea fritters. How you envelop something that is essentially liquid in another liquid and get the whole thing into hot oil is beyond our kitchen skillset.
In Nottingham, we’re told they serve mint sauce on their peas, which seems like such a grand idea, we can’t believe we’d not thought of it ourselves.
Pea wet, meanwhile, (the reduced liquid left from cooking dried peas, or simply skimmed off the top of the mushy peas) proliferates in chip shops in Cumrbia, Lancashire, Durham and Yorkshire, and was apparently an acceptable breakfast (with bread) as far back as the 17th century.
And finally...
We must make mention of all the eclectic and surprising non-fish-and-chips items available in various hallowed corners of this sceptred isle, from Cumbrian patties (mince, encased in mash, battered and fried), to rag puddings in Oldham (minced meat and onions wrapped in suet pastry and cooked in a cheesecloth), via faggot and pea batches in Coventry (speaks for itself) to the Wigan kebab (essentially a pie in a buttered barm - you need a big mouth and a big napkin for this one).
And in this category, Wigan emerges as the clear winner, with not only that potato and meat pie sandwich (why have only one carb when you can have three, after all?) but also the fabulously monikered Smack Barm Pey Wet: deep-fried potato with salt and vinegar served in a buttered barm with a drizzling of pea wet. Wigan, we salute you (and pray for your arteries).
Whether you like your haddock and chips with white bread and butter and a cuppa, or your scampi tails accompanied by prosecco and tartare sauce, the diversity of British fish and chips is certainly something to celebrate.
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