Speaking of British dark cuisine, it is really world-famous! For example, the most classic "stargazing" pie, which looks appetizing at all, but is a famous British dish!
British cuisine: stargazing
Japan is also an island country like the United Kingdom, so why is there such a big gap in their cuisine?
In fact, Britain and Japan have many similarities, such as being isolated island countries, Britain and the European continent across the sea, while Japan is across the sea from the East Asian continent, Britain retains the royal family, Japan also retains the royal family, and both countries are highly economically developed countries.
However, there are many differences between the UK and Japan, and the biggest difference is probably the food of the two countries.
Japanese cuisine
Needless to say, Japanese cuisine has become a high-end food in addition to French cuisine, and most people can casually name a few representative Japanese foods, such as sushi, sashimi, tempura, kaiseki, sukiyabe, and so on.
By contrast, British food is much more drab. The country's representative food turned out to be fish and chips such as unskilled fast food, and the only commendable English breakfast was only fried eggs, boiled beans, bacon, sausages, etc., in short, the main thing was a monotonous and unpalatable.
English breakfast
Some people may say that the UK is home to a global cuisine, including Western, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian cuisines, but all of these delicious dishes are foreign, and none of them are local British food.
Not to mention that compared to East Asia, which has a rich food culture, even if you look at Western Europe, the food in the UK is very unpopular.
Needless to say, French cuisine is known as the "mother of Western cuisine" and synonymous with haute cuisine, while southern European countries such as Italy and Spain are also gastronomic countries, and even Germans, who are very coarse in terms of food, have good meat.
British "Black Cuisine"
Only Britain is left with its own unique food, a real "gastronomic desert"!
So, why is British food reduced to "dark cuisine"?
In fact, the reason is not complicated, because Britain was the first country in the world to complete the industrial revolution, hundreds of years ahead of most other countries.
It was precisely because industrialization came early that it interrupted the food culture of the British homeland.
The Industrial Revolution in Britain
Before industrialization, Britain, like most other countries around the world, was predominantly agricultural.
In the agrarian era of Britain, there was no shortage of cuisines. For example, folk specialty food, as well as court aristocratic cuisine, have some good food.
Early British cuisine had much to offer about it, and for a while it even overtook French cuisine to become the mainstream of European cuisine.
However, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the food Xi and culture of the British during the farming period were soon abandoned!
In the post-Industrial Revolution era, the social productivity of Britain increased dramatically in a short period of time!
In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, labor-intensive enterprises urgently needed a large number of workers to work in factories.
At that time, several large cities in Britain were quickly overcrowded, and so many workers had to eat huge amounts of food every day, and the food produced on the farms around the cities could not satisfy the appetites of so many people.
However, due to the extremely underdeveloped transportation at that time and the terrain in Britain was not very flat, it took a long time on the road, so you could only choose food that could be stored hard.
In Britain at that time, the only food that could be stored and filled was potatoes.
This is also the origin of the British love of potatoes, almost any dish has to add potatoes.
At the same time, the Industrial Revolution also promoted the progress of navigation technology, and industrial fishing brought down the price of fish meat, and ordinary people could afford to buy fish to eat.
English State Dinner: Fish and chips
Potatoes and fish, a staple food and a meat, gradually evolved into the British national dish "fish and chips".
Suffice it to say, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, these foods in Britain have not been eaten for good, but for the ability to quickly replenish the calories of the workers on the production line, so that they can work hard.
"Look up at the stars" faction
In this historical background, food in Britain is simply used to satisfy hunger, and naturally ignores the "color and flavor"!
The reason why Japan has a lot of delicious food is that it entered the industrialization relatively late.
Japan's industrialization took place after the Meiji Restoration, in the late 19th century, when ocean navigation and international trade were already very advanced, and goods from all over the world could be transported to Japan's major cities by freighters.
With an abundance of ingredients, Japanese cuisine has come a long way from the agricultural era!
In the agricultural era, Japanese people did not eat meat other than fish.
However, after industrialization, pigs, cows, sheep, chickens, ducks, geese, including all kinds of seafood, became a regular servant on the Japanese table.
Wagyu beef
Coupled with being good at packaging, the Japanese food is now very delicate and has become a high-end dish.
In general, industrialization has led to the progress of human civilization as a whole, but it has also invisibly destroyed people's pleasures and opportunities to enjoy food.
The dark dishes born during the British Industrial Revolution are not fundamentally different from the dishes eaten by today's migrant workers, including takeaways!