The Supersizers Go...Victorian

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The third episode of The Supersizers Go was not as interesting to me as the previous two, simply because I knew a lot about how the Victorians ate already. I didn't realize how much I knew until I'd watched the episode, but it's all come down to us via Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and other period literature, not to mention Mrs. Beeton or even the American Fanny Farmer. Also, it doesn't look like a whole lot changed between the Victorian era and the Edwardian period, which was covered in Edwardian Supersize Me. Still, those Victorians were sufficiently different from us in their eating habits to seem quite alien, but this was definitely the transitional period between the past and modern times.

The Victorians apparently still ate tons of meat. The "eww" cut of meat presented this time was a whole boiled calf's head, complete with grinning jaw, prepared with much disgust and gagging by food writer Sophie Grigson, the designated home cook for this episode. Giles and Sue are partaking of said head in the screenshot above. (I've avoided posting a closeup of the calf's head in case you should be browsing this site during lunchtime or something.)

The great meat pie (the coffin) still lived on too. Here Sue is serving a slice of game pie to Giles during Christmas dinner.

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The Victorians did introduce a lot of food from the colonies - remember, this was a time when Great Britain was the uncontested world superpower. A lot of exotic fruits and vegetables graced their tables, and curries were introduced - even though the recipes were quite different from the original. Victorian curries were basically precooked stews to which powdered spices (curry powder) was added, mostly without prior frying in oil. (Nowadays most curry eaten in the UK is cooked using more or less Indian sub-continent or Southeast Asian recipes, and the stew-type of curry has virtually disappeared - but yet it was transmitted via 19th century Britain to Japan and continues to thrive there. Food history is odd, isn't it?)

Dinner parties with showy food, preferably prepared by your own French chef, were the way to entertain and for the nouveau riche middle class (merchants who had made money from the expansion of the Empire and the Industrial Revolution) to try to make an impression. Queen Victoria and her large, rather stodgy family were their model for how to behave. A typical middle class family had six servants including a cook, a butler, and a ladies' maid. Men of the house were at the office for most of the day, tending to the needs of the Empire. Ladies were tightly corseted in and expected to be decorative, demure and uninterested in sex (or food), though they were also supposed to run their households like small armies. Breakfast became earlier and dinner was later, to accommodate the new urban 9 to 5 working day.

New foods introduced during this time included gelatin-based items like jelly babies and jellied desserts, and canned (tinned) food like Spam-like canned pork and corned beef, not to mention Bird's Custard, an eggless cornstarch (cornflour) based custard powder mix which is still a staple ingredient in the UK. (And with more food being manufactured outside of the home, food adulteration and contamination became a problem.)

As the series progresses, one common running thread is that people of the past ate a whole lot more of the animal. Nowadays most people - or at least those in English speaking areas - would cringe at the thought of eating the ears, eyes, snouts and so on of an animal, but 'back in the day' they ate and even enjoyed the whole thing. Even now, non-Anglo cultures still eat the 'other' parts of an animal quite enthusiastically (pickled pig's ears as tapas in Spain, chicken feet in China, deep fried chicken cartilage in Japan, even head cheese) but it seems like English-speakers have gotten more and more squeamish about anything but the nice looking parts of meat.

Charles Darwin, one of the most famous of the scientifically curious Victorians, was even more adventurous about the food he ate. Ever curious, he tried things like roast squirrel, rodents, various birds (owl, hawk) and so on. Even candied maggots. (Some people are trying to bring back that spirit of culinary adventure...)

The Victorians also started taking up sport for leisure and health, especially bicycling. On the other hand, sugar consumption rocketed as cheap sugar flooded in from the colonies, and smoking tobacco was supposed to be good for you.

One positive thing about the Victorians was that at least a few of them such as French chef turned social reformer Alexis Soyer did develop a social conscience, and tried to do something about the desperate living conditions of the poor. As in previous periods, the poor rarely ate any meat, and subsisted on a lot of cheap carbohydrates (epitomized by Oliver Twist's bowl of thin gruel) and vegetables. It seems to me that this image of meat being something desirable and enriching is something that persists to this day in a lot of ways - most feasts and family gatherings still revolve around a large quantity of meat of some kind!

The most enduring legacy of the Victorians in terms of food culture may be Christmas. Things like the Christmas tree (imported by Prince Albert from his homeland in Germany), Christmas cards, Christmas stockings, kissing under the mistletoe, Christmas crackers, roast goose with stuffing (later superceded by roast turkey), mince pies and plum pudding were all started or popularized as Christmas traditions by the Victorians. With a few changes, this is still how Christmas is celebrated in the UK and in much of North America.

So...what did the Victorians leave us with? A willingness to try different foods, even from far-flung lands, a fondness for sweets, a twinge of social conscience? Not too bad. However, Sue did gain 3.2 kilo (about 7 lb) in a week despite her tightly laced corset.

Next week the intrepid Supersizers tackle the 1970s.

List of foods and recipes mentioned in this episode

Breakfast at home (Giles and Sue, at 8 AM)

  • Mutton cutlets
  • Fried potatoes
  • Smoked mackerel and anchovies
  • Omelette
  • Tinned meats (corned beef, Spam-like canned pork surrounded by gelatin)
  • Angels on horseback (oysters wrapped in bacon)
  • Pears
  • Oranges

Lunch (Giles at his club, at 1 PM)

  • Beef curry
  • Rabbit curry
  • Vegetable curry
  • Club claret
  • Bakewell pudding

Dinner at home (Giles and Sue, 8 PM)

First Course:

  • Fried sole in anchovy sauce
  • Mutton curry
  • Sherry

Second Course:

  • Boiled Calf's Head
  • Brains in butter and herb sauce
  • Fried calf's ears in tomato sauce
  • Carrots
  • Tipsy cake
  • Claret

Charles Darwin themed picnic (Sue and Giles at the Natural History Museum)

  • Roast squirrel with furry feet
  • Candied maggot

To drink during an afternoon of bicycling in Hyde Park

  • Stower's Lime Cordial

A snack after all that exercise

  • Fish and chips at London's first ever chippie (unfortunately they didn't show the name of the store)

Giles brushing his teeth

  • With charcoal and honey (toothbrushing was invented, but not toothpaste)

A social climbing dinner party prepared by a French chef

Served a la Russe, or in courses hot from the kitchen

  • A toast to the Queen

First course:

  • Red Deer a la Royale
  • French beans
  • Potato croquettes
  • Claret

Second course:

  • Pigeons a la Duchesse (pigeons stuffed with veal forcemeat, sewn back together, covered with bechamel sauce, fried, and covered with more bechamel)
  • Lambs tongue with spinach
  • Claret

Roast course:

  • Partidges with truffles
  • Chicken quenelles
  • Snipes on liver toast
  • Snipe heads (whole snipe heads...you were supposed to suck on them)
  • Champagne

Entremets:

  • Russian jelly
  • Claret jelly
  • Champagne jelly
  • Rice cake with almonds
  • Torte Frangipane
  • Fried salsify and eggs a la tripe (the savoury)

Giles eats street food

  • Mystery cooked meats, possibly contaminated

Sue serves the poor at a soup kitchen

  • Beef soup
  • Gruel

Tea and a séance (Sue at home)

  • Victoria sponge
  • Garibaldi biscuits
  • Macaroons
  • Indian tea

At the pub (Giles)

(The Victorians and the Temperance Movement instituted strict licensing laws)

  • A pint
  • A pie
  • Dog's Nose (a drink made of gin, cold ale and warm ale)

Sue and Sophie go shopping at Sainsbury's (first store opened in 1869)

  • Bird's Custard Powder
  • Heinz Ketchup
  • Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce

Victorian Christmas Dinner

First course:

  • Brown Windsor Soup
  • Potato Croquettes
  • Baked Cod's Head

Second course:

  • Cold Game Pie (made with 8 different kinds of game birds, plus ham, bacon, chicken, tongue)
  • Boiled Red Cabbage
  • Roast Goose and Stuffing

Third course:

  • Plum pudding
  • Bird's Custard
  • Furmity (a spicy porridge, also called frumenty)
  • Mince pies (with minced beef in with the spices and mixed fruits and nuts)

Supersizers Go recaps

Filed under:  tv bbc nutrition

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Comments

When you think about it, it really makes sense to eat all parts of the animal. Being picky about which parts you eat is something that has really come from affluence. Being Chinese, I have no issues eating lungs, intestines and chicken feet etc (but a whole head, that's another issue altogether).

I know people make a big deal out of which parts pies and sausages are made of, but when it comes down to it, at least it is part of the animal. I've heard of a drinking chocolate company adding inert silicone into their product to make packets easier to fill - it just passes through your system but that's not exactly what I call food.

In my country, eating most parts of an animal is the way to be grateful to God for the food. Well, we are not a rich country and such, many people only get to eat meat a 1-2 times per year, so meat is more valued than vegetables here. This influence my point of view greatly and so, despite my living abroad for years, I still sometimes feel westerners that look down on other people's cultures to eat "weird" part of an animal as pompous. That said, I have to admit that I myself have several animal parts that I cannot bring myself to eat.

The calf's head look disgusting esthetically speaking, but I love calf's brain (especially curried) but it really ups your cholesterol level. Although I won't touch calf's brain in UK, just because it has history of mad cow's disease.

I enjoyed this episode. I agree that a lot of the diet was similar to the Edwardians and from that perspective the show was lacking. What I was fascinated by was the change of the role of women in society; they didn't want to be seen as enjoying their food because that showed they also liked sex and showing you liked sex was just awful and bad! Yet the Queen was known to be a "Pig" who would wolf down her meals and was grossly obese. Maybe her voracious appetite was a way to deal with the strain of having nine kids in under 10 years - I think I'd need a bit of cake too after being pregnant so long. Although the public weren't scorned for calling her pig (Or maybe they were, they didn't go into that much) but all other women were supposed to nit pick their plates and eat like birds? Or at least be seen to eat like birds - poor Sue having to eat over 3000 calories a day! Cor Blimey, indeed.

Also, I was shocked to discover that it was still "acceptable" for men and women to carry on affairs after marriage. I'm going to have to read more Victorian literature.

Most parts of the animal are still used in Scotland, although pig's ears and trotters and such are used more for gourmet dog treats. You can buy tongue in a tin. Offal is still widely used, but not by me. I hate the flavour of offal meats. But if I had to, like the WWII folks did, I'd eat it and be thankful and curse Hitler with every chew.

I'm not as excited about the 1970's next week.

I'm actually looking forward to next week in the '70s...if only to er, enjoy the fashions :)

(Nowadays (if you take the media/fashion seriously) girls have to maintain a size zero body AND pretend to enjoy sex...maybe the Victorian women had it a bit easier :D)

Love these posts- I don't get that station where I live in the US, so seeing these updates is quite a trip. One thing, though- as a proud Minnesotan, I have to protest the "Spam" inclusion- Spam (or, the brand name of that particular kind of spiced, tinned meats) wasn't invented until 1937, in Austin, Minnesota (home of the "Spam Museum.") Production of spam boomed during WWII (as a ration supply), and the rest is pink, sticky history!

http://www.spam.com/museum/spam_museum.aspx

You are probably absolutely right Ariel - though in the show they refer to the canned, somewhat gelatinous pork as Spam, it was probably a Spam-like product but not exactly Spam. (I've changed the description to Spam-like canned pork) (And I'm not too sure of their assertion that tinned (canned) meats were invented for the British Navy...I've read elsewhere that Napoleon invented canning food for his armies)

I guess I am the only one who has reviewed this TV show that is not that impressed with it. It could've been more of an educational show instead of a slapstick-making fun of different foods during different eras in history. When I first saw the commercial on the Food Channel for this series..I was all excited to see how foods from different periods in history were made. But instead had to watch two people spitting out food, getting drunk and licking their fingers in some of the most posh restaurants---disgusting to me...and to their guests who were experts in historical-culinary fields! I wish another TV series would be made that took this great aspect on learning about foods served/prepared in other eras in history more seriously. The only reason I continue to watch all the episodes in this series is to make notes of the names of the foods-during the era they were served so I can research how they were made myself. Which I had hoped this series would've shown to the viewer since it is on a food-network channel. All the other part of the episodes...I am just Fast Forwarding through all the silly/slapstick 'tripe'. (No Pun Intended)