Britishness revisited: food and the formation of British identities in the late eighteenth century

Description

On Thursday October 23rd, 1794, Queen Charlotte and her daughters breakfasted at Kew, went to Queen’s House to dress, and then on to St James’s where they were joined by the King, and their son Ernest. They returned to Kew for dinner at 8pm where they were served seventeen dishes: two courses, and a remove. There were French-sounding soupe aux herbes and gallimaufry of mutton, as well as German-tasting herring or Hanover pheasant salad, but the rest of the dishes were British in both provenance and execution. Boiled salmon with lobster sauce was followed by veal tendrons and sweetbreads. There were roasted meats including turkey, veal, mutton, and wild rabbits; fruit tarts; stewed spinach; blancmange; and truffles. So many of these simply roasted meats and umami-rich flavours can be found not only on the King’s Table, but also in the cookbooks used by the middling sorts: those who could afford to eat lots of meat and to taste a variety of dishes, but were not consuming a daily diet of French sauces and pastries. George III held great patriotic appeal amongst these middling sorts, representing a new form of masculinity and respectability. His image pointed to the values of restraint, moderation and domesticity, as opposed to the excesses and luxury usually associated with the upper classes at this time. George III’s seemingly modest meal preferences were therefore politically and culturally significant. 

This paper uses a dataset created using records of food consumed at Kew Palace between 1788 and 1801 to explore what ‘Britishness’ looked like framed by Kew’s dining table - food prepared in a French-inflected kitchen, for a German family, at the heart of the British Empire.  British food was composed of local and imported ingredients, and catered to tastes that were shaped by conquest, trade, travel, and war over centuries. Ben Rogers has shown that roast beef was synonymous with patriotic Britishness, but our research shows that a multitude of other tastes and flavours became intricately linked to this emerging sense of national identity.  This paper discusses the food that made it on to the King’s Table (and the foods that were considered unpalatable), and attempts to unpick the complicated relationship between food and Britishness at this crucial moment in the forging of British identities.

This seminar aims to create a welcoming space for discussion and debate, fostering a professional environment where diverse views and perspectives can be shared. You can find more on this via our seminar page on the IHR website.

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All welcome. This event is free to attend, but advance registration is required.

This will be a ‘hybrid’ seminar with a limited number of places available in person and a larger number of bookings for online attendance via Zoom. Those attending in person are asked to bring a Wi-Fi enabled laptop, tablet or phone.

The session will start at the slightly later time of 17:30.