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England’s contribution to culinary artsAs a marketer, the stories behind the development of products and businesses have always fascinated me. And when I read recently that some monks in America were running a flourishing coffee company, it occurred to me that centuries ago, many religious orders were involved in displaying considerable business leadership.
Catholic monks in France were particularly innovative and seemed to be dab hands at producing the most delectable liqueurs such as Benedictine and Chartreuse.
And while the best known monk in the world, Dom Pérignon, has always erroneously been credited with developing that now very expensive bubbly of the same name, he did in fact achieve something much grander by inventing champagne itself.
The Italians have also invented some delicious liqueurs, such as my favourite, Frangelico.
But interestingly enough, English monks have also made a significant contribution to the culinary world. No, not a liqueur or wine or even whisky – because they realised that even in the Middle Ages, they had no chance of competing with the Scots, Irish and Europeans.
But, they did contribute something to the whole process of eating.
Now, from here on this story could well be urban legend and complete fiction, but I rather like to believe it anyway. Particularly, as I must confess to making it up after noticing just how many cooking programmers there were on television these days.
All going on about growing, harvesting, shopping for, preparing, garnishing, serving and eating food. But not much about who invented so much of the stuff we trustingly swallow every day.
I’d like to know what went through the mind of that fellow who first decided to milk a cow?
And who in heaven’s name thought of putting together on a plate, a chicken’s ovum and a slimly sliced sliver of pig’s backside, expecting one-third of mankind to eat it before having woken up properly?
But, to get back to my story about the English contribution to the culinary arts. It all began when I read the ingredients listed on a bottle of Lea & Perrins “original and genuine” Worcestershire sauce.
It begged debate on how every single meal served in the UK, for heaven knows how long, has not passed a single lip without the addition of this miracle concoction of vinegar, molasses, sugar, salt, anchovies, tamarinds, onions, garlic and a host of secret flavourings and spices.
Picture the scene: An olde English inn a couple of hundred years ago. Two novice monks travelling back to their monastery from a three-month retreat in the north, Fred Lea and Percy Perrins, pop in for a midday meal.
“Oi!” says Fred to the comely waitress, “Ya call this boiled beef? Nay lass, ‘tis putrefaction personified. Bring hither something to lay waste to this ghastly taste.”
He tried some vinegar. Much too sour. His lips looked like a startled sea anemone.
“‘Ere, Fred lad, bung on some of this molasses, that’ll sweeten it up summat,” said Perrins.
Still too tart, so he added a tablespoon of sugar. Then a pinch of salt for no reason other than it being so typically British. Didn’t help.
From the corner of the room, a swarthy seaman from Lisbon said, “Ifa you don’t gotta no pawpsh, banansh or pineapsh, try sardinsh.”
No fruit or sardines being available, Fred bunged in a mushed up anchovy.
Still no joy.
The innkeeper brought out a little hessian bag of tamarind seeds he’d won off a Nigerian minstrel in the previous year’s whist marathon. No one had any idea what they were, but they went into the pot for the heck of it.
The coup de grâce came quite predictably from a gnarled French hunchback alternately sipping mead at the bar and throwing up into a corner.
“Alors, m’sieu. When we in la belle France try to eat sumzing zat is not yet dead, we add ze garlic.”
So, in went a clove of garlic on the basis that if it worked on living organisms, it would work on those long gone.
The innkeeper came back with an armful of sample flavourants and spices left by decades of travelling condiment salesmen and dumped the whole catastrophe into the mixture that was now resembling liquefied axle grease from a long-distance hansom cab.
Fred Lea poured it over his over-boiled beef, hacked off a chunk and popped it in his mouth.
“Gad, Perrins!” he cried, “I can’t taste the meat at all anymore!”
And ever since, millions of visiting gourmets have been eternally grateful.
It was at that moment, I like to believe, that the good Lord decided that these two novice monks had so good a chance of wiping out entire monasteries and religious orders through their cavalier culinary experiments, that he guided them into industry instead.
Chris Moerdyk
