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Comment by Aromasin | Hacker News Reader

I always find it incredible what just a few short years of rationing during WW2 did to British cuisine for decades after. It was as extravagant and flavourful for the middle and upper classes of the 19th century and prior as any other culture. Just looking at a few menus from the period, they were decadent to the extreme and could hold a candle to the cuisines world over.

The UK started rationing in 1939 and finished in 1954. In that time, the tastes of the nations changed to the extent that we still feel that impact today, with the fondness for beans on toast and other beige foods. Think about how many times we've all heard the running joke that Brits have poor taste and don't season their food. It's sad really.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdo...

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Can you give some examples of 19th century British cuisine? I imagine they would have used quite a bit of spices and stuff from all over the world.

As a semi-random-ish example, consider the first-class menu from the Titanic:

https://www.housebeautiful.com/lifestyle/news/a6039/titanic-...

Egg a la Argenteuil, "Chicken Maryland", mutton, galantine... there's a lot of items, and that's just what's available at lunch.

It's actually not heavily spiced. That was a medieval fashion which kinda drifted out once the spices became more available. That's when spices got moved mostly to desserts.

The 19th century cuisine is much more like what we think of as French cuisine today. But in fact, the French got it from the English, and the English re-imported it to give things a "gourmet" air.

The third class menu, on the other hand, basically serves slop for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Anyone up for some rice soup and boiled potatoes? If you look at the bottom left, you'll see gruel listed. Actual gruel.

I'm not sure what they're talking about here aside from dishonest snarkiness. The menu for third class isn't half bad at all, and absolutely far from slop unless breakfast items like fresh bread and butter with marmelade can be called "slop". By the standards of average general diets among those third class passengers, it's downright good.

The gruel thing is funny though, but then maybe at the time the word didn't have the same emotional connotations

Although they are somewhat older than the 19th century, check out novels by Georgette Heyer, if interested. The genre is Regency romance, sort of romantic (& some adventure) type of novels of 18th century England, and theyinclude a good amount of talk about the cuisine of that period.

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