Friday 29 August 2014

Oh I do like to eat beside the seaside

Why do fish and chips taste so much better by the sea? Is it the sound of the waves? The salt? Or a healthy dose of sea air?

Fish and chips - Bee Wilson: The Kitchen Thinker Ruth Lewis

In February Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University, made an announcement. Fish and chips taste better when you eat them at the seaside! Prof Spence gravely revealed that the flavour was improved by the 'ambient sound' of the waves crashing. Thanks, Prof. Without a degree in neuroscience, we'd never have worked that out for ourselves.

Come to think of it, though, I wonder why fish and chips do taste so much better by the sea. It is something we all know to be true. Battered plaice consumed daintily with cutlery in the city can never match the sensory pleasure of a paper parcel of seaside haddock devoured with greasy fingers to the music of screeching gulls. But why?

The sound of the waves is only part of it. There's also the salt. The saltiness of the chips and the batter is deliciously echoed by the salt air on your cheeks. Almost the moment you arrive in a seaside town, the chippy calls. There's also the expectation that seaside fish and chips will be super-fresh and straight off the boat (even if it's actually Icelandic and frozen at sea, as is often the case).

Then there's the mysterious power of the open air to make everything taste better. It gives you the hearty appetite you need for deep-fried food. It is sometimes pointed out that fish and chips are healthier than you'd think. In Modernist Cuisine Nathan Myhrvold found that deep-fried food is only in contact with the oil for half the cooking time; the rest of the time it cooks in its own water.

When fried by a master, fish steams in its batter as if en papillote. Any illusion that it's diet food, however, is shattered by the mound of crispy blond chips.

The sea air is important for another reason: to diffuse the cooking smells. In the 1850s the great social researcher Henry Mayhew found that the fried-fish sellers of London (of whom there were 350) were unpopular lodgers 'on account of the odour from the frying'.

Even when the fish was fresh, the smell was 'rank', and in the crowded urban streets the clothes of the fish friers became 'impregnated'. In the purifying sea air the oil smells far less offensive.

Beyond all this there's also the simple fact that fish and chips, when done well, is one of the world's greatest meals. We can't say for sure who deserves the credit. Fried fish was a Jewish speciality, eaten cold for Saturday breakfast. Meanwhile, hot fried potatoes were eaten by the Irish.

Who first put the two together? Some say it was John Lees of Lancashire, others that it was Joseph Malin of London, about 1860. It was a great idea, whoever it was. By 1910 there were more than 25,000 fish-and-chip shops in Britain.

Now that fish stocks are so depleted, this iconic meal comes with a dollop of guilt (which can partly be assuaged by seeking out sustainable friers). Sometimes I crave fish and chips, then spend too long worrying about the ins and outs of pollack versus cod, and end up with Thai curry instead.

Only on a seaside holiday can we enjoy fish and chips in the uncomplicated way we did as children, with seawater in our hair and the sound of waves crashing in our ears.

Read more from Telegraph Food

How we moderate
blog comments powered by Disqus

More from the web


Back to top

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2014

Terms and Conditions

Today's News


Style Book

Weather Forecast