From Peanuts to Pan-Fried Sea Bass: Pub Food has come a Long Way!

Jul 8
10:33

2011

Martin Breese

Martin Breese

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This article describes the recent history of Pub Food in the UK.

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The food available in pubs and bars has come a long way in 50 years – where once all that were available were pickled eggs and salted snacks,From Peanuts to Pan-Fried Sea Bass: Pub Food has come a Long Way! Articles full top restaurant-quality meals are now widely available to accompany your pint!

The “pub” has always been a place where good conversation and fine ales could be found – but if you felt a hunger coming on... well you would have been advised to find a restaurant: pubs sold drinks and drinks only.

Strangely the provision of “pub grub” may have its origins in the extremely dubious practice of adding salt to beer: the reason for this was simply to ensure the customer developed a thirst that could only be slated by... buying more beer! Fortunately eventually laws were passed to prohibit the salting of beer. So what could the desperate publican do then? Ah, salted snacks to the rescue! First came salted potato crisps but by the 1960's many a bar-fly would be asking for “a pint and a packet of salted peanuts, please, barman!”

Soon the discerning drinker in search of food to go with his pint would be demanding more “sophisticated” fayre – which would appear on the bar in the form of jars of boiled eggs or onions pickled in vinegar, little polythene envelopes of salted biscuits complete with a tiny triangle of “plastic” cheese and a minuscule onion... and if you were especially lucky a small meat pie (with sauce, if requested!) or maybe even a very basic sandwich – made of processed bread - with the choice being “cheese or ham?”

Then, to the horror of dentists, tooth-breaking “pork scratchings” would spread their way out to pubs from the British Midlands; potato crisp flavours would proliferate – some would not survive long (roast beef and mint source, anyone?) but others would go on to become staples of the bar room: salt and vinegar, cheese and onion, prawn cocktail...

However the pub trade was in for hard times. Concerns about “drink driving” and the cheap alternative of supermarket booze lead many rural pubs to close- and those left standing soon realised that their survival would lie in the provision of good food (for examples see the author's Pub Food Meal Deal Directory).

From the early “chicken in the basket” and “scampi and chips” we have reached the present day when it is not uncommon to find confit de canard, braised oxtail stew with mint and chive dumplings, steak with Guinness and oyster pie... as well as the good old fish, chips and beans!

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