SC - garlic in British Isles

[marilyn traber]

As an English cook in England I can assure everyone that lots of garlic is
eaten in England (I've served the boiled garlic dish to an all English group
in February and twice last weekend to a mixed English/German/French/Italian
medieval event and every scrap was eaten on both occasions!)

My understanding (and I haven't checked the sources) is that in medieval
times the English were famous for the amount of garlic they ate.  The story
I read (somewhere, but it's NMP so I didn't bother to track it down) is that
plenty was eaten until Victorian times.  Queen Victoria wasn't keen on it,
so Isabella Beaton left garlic out of her recipe book (I believe there was 1
recipe including garlic in the first edition).  This then became the bible
of middle-class England, so the use of garlic died out.  This fitted with
general tendancies of the period, to use fewer spices and have plainer
dishes (except for commercial sauces and the odd curry for people returning
from the Raj).

The return of garlic is strongly connected to recent immigration to the UK
from the Carribean, Indian sub-continent and other parts of the
Commonwealth, particularly the second group.  They set up restaurants,
fromthe 1970s onwards, and the UK now has one of the most varied cuisines,
certainly in Europe, probably in the world.  It is said that you name a
cuisine, and somewhere in England will be a restaurant selling it - maybe
not exactly as at home, tho!  In fashionable restaurants I believe one of
the popular current influences is Pacific Rim cookery.

Caroline
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