ITT people believing the self-deprecating jokes white cultures have been telling about themselves are actually 100% true
It’s not that though. It’s Americans doing the same overused “joke” about UK, completely different country. You can’t self-deprecate another culture.
White Americans say the same thing about themselves - that they don’t use spice. Salt is spicy, they love mayonnaise, etc.
Well, those memes aren’t saturating the space
Heard plenty of fellow white people make these jokes…
You mean in this post or irl?
There are several comments about Americans here. And as far as the real world, it’s a very well known trope in America. So much so, it became a news story in the 2016 election, when Clinton was accused cultural appropriation for claiming she always carries a bottle of hot sauce in her purse.
Everywhere. Not saying it’s not happening, everyone does a bit of self-deprecating humour some times. But the amount of slander Americans do against non-americans is just on another level.
Around here, they seem to take the brunt of it.
Do the “white people cant herbs and spices” joke have anything to do with the colonels secret recipe and the black-guy-love-fried-chicken bit?
No, KFC isn’t what anyone would consider spicy. The black people and fried chicken thing is a separate stereotype.
Funny how much the yanks bring this up to distract from their own food culture.
Nonsense. You can’t bite into an American meal without immediately tasting a wonderful selection of flavours, like:
- salt
- corn-derived sweetener
Ive had many great meals in the UK and less so in the USA
Don’t be too harsh on them, the second great war is the only time most of them got a holiday outside of the country.
The Bude Tunnel wasn’t even finished yet back then.
I’ve never been, but I hear it rivals the great pyramid in its splendour.
Imagine coming here and missing out on that Just because the war was too early.
Everyone always forgets that Chicken Tikka Masala is a British dish and one of the most popular meals in the country
The British claiming tikka masala is like NYC claiming pizza.
It’s quite well established that it’s a British dish. Curry in general isn’t, but Tikka masala is. It’s like Canada claiming Pizza Hawaii.
Its not so clear cut: https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/1145119758/who-created-chicken-tikka-masala-the-death-of-a-curry-king-is-reviving-a-debate
“It’s kind of like: who invented chicken noodle soup?” says Leena Trivedi-Grenier, a freelance food writer who probed the various origin claims in 2017. “It’s a dish that could’ve been invented by any number of people at the same time.”
“How do you colonize and enslave an entire country for a century and then claim that one of their dishes is from your own country?”
Still possible it was created by the South Asian diaspora in Britain but there’s a reason the likes of Nigel Farage want CTM “remigrated” and not so for the likes of Shephard’s Pie or Yorkshire Pudding.
The rest of the world thinks that Britain doesn’t use spices, what we don’t know is that for some reason, we seem to use them in our confectionery.
We really like ginger.
I like Gingers as well.
Ginger is tasty
People think Britain doesn’t use spices. Read Mrs Beeton’s recipes from the 1800s. It’s ALL the herbs & spices - all spice, curry, chilli, cardomom, fenugreek, ginger, mace, nutmeg, pepper, saffron etc. British cooking really hasn’t changed that much if you look at it in its entirety.
Sure, privately and those who have time. But the public houses aren’t going to stock a full cabinet of spice, replacing a spice cabinet is spendy.
The evidence is out there to see. Perceptions may be distorted by the hardships the UK suffered of rationing during WW2 and after. But the reality is that herbs and spices were always important and still are.
The British eat so much Indian food it’s crazy. There’s a Nando’s on damn near every corner in London.
It’s just like how in America there is a Mexican restaurant in every small shitty town.
But there’s also Mexican food in the nice towns too
And Chinese and interestingly Indian food is catching on also.
i think in germany it would be turkish food?
It’s specifically Kebabs. They cornered the market of fast-food completely. Not the regular restaurants though, those are all Vietnamese.
those are all Vietnamese.
and we are all better off for it
Oh very much so. I’m a huge fan.
I’m assuming those are meant to be unrelated statements?
Cause Nandos is Portuguese-African fusion food
:-p My mistake.
But it’s generally spicier than beans on toast, is my point
Nando’s is South African
South African and Portuguese fusion food.
The history is that South Africa had a lot of Portuguese immigrants during the Portuguese civil war, and that then made a whole new cuisine that’s a fusion of South Africa and Portugal.
And the owner was from that region, and brought that cuisine over to England, big hit, made a chain of it
I think they were connecting two seperate cuisines which heavily feature spices, not goving Nandos as an example of indian food.
Anyone shit talking fish fingers is going to get a visit from me and my sledgehammer in the middle of the night. You’ve been warned!
Leave my motherfucking fish fingers out of this!!!
I have eaten fish fingers in the UK and fish sticks in the US. The UK ones are delicious. This meme is not from someone who has ever eaten them.
You, I like you.
Do you like fishdicks?
Fish don’t have hands. Where do the fingers come from?
… you don’t want to know
Fish fin
gers was just added on as time went by
Neither does mozzarella but who doesn’t love dipping fried and breaded mozzarella fingers into some marinara.
Fingers are for sticking in something, including but not limited to mouth.
if your fish have fingers, you might want to check your water for mutagens
What do you guys think tea is made of?
Yeah that’s definitely not matcha.
Dammit Hony, now I need to order yet another good Darjeeling Fall leaf tea…
Haha, with such a reply I might have to get one myself to try. I love tea.
Get some. There is a reason Darjeeling is often referred to as the “Champagne of Teas”.
Britain stole all those historical artifacts and culture but couldn’t steal a recipe.
We’ve stolen lots of recipes. Modern British cuisine is basically a massive rip-off of every other country’s cooking smashed together.
Fusion, if we’re being polite about it.
it was never about spices i think. they just wanted to sail around the world and do stupid shit
No, no it was all about subagitation and money. You know, the thing us crackers do best.
No, no it was all about subagitation and money. You know, the thing us crackers do best.
Subagitation? The fuck does unlawful intercourse have to do with this? (I had to look this goofy word up in a dictionary because it’s so unusual)
Well fack my spell checker and lack of tea. But to be fair, there was a LOT of unlawful sex involved too.
I’m wondering if they meant subjugation
Navy beans and tomatoes are both native to the Americas, does that count?
France too! French cooking is WILDLY overrated, they coast by on their desserts and pastries and those are just good cause butter
The best Italian restaurant I ever ate at was in Paris, and I’ve been all over Italy.
It was a near thing. But the French do not fuck around with their cooking.
those are just good cause butter
Paula Dean’s food is good because of butter.
Julia Child’s food is good because of experience.
You obviously must have gotten all of your information about French cooking entirely from tiktok videos rather than personal experience.
The thing that makes French food good is their liberal use of butter.
Isn’t it because they considered spices for peasants?
I know that it’s mostly a joke, yet it is worth mentioning that those valuable spices were exclusively used by the rich and wealthy. Ordinary people and their food did not benefit from the spice trade at all. If you delve a little bit into culinary history and find out what the aristocrats did with (for example) extremely rare and precious nutmeg the British Empire fought wars over, you want to dig up their bones, revive them, just so that you can kill them again.
i’m not looking it up i’m just going to pretend i know
I mean, that’s true, but hasn’t been the case for at least a century, so why do they still eat like the aristocrats are hoarding all the spices?
We don’t. It’s a bit.
The part people forget is that we didn’t just take the spices, we took the whole cuisine and the people who could cook it.
The general British public has been eating a multicultural diet for a very, very long time. So when you see bangers and mash, rather than wonder why it isn’t spiced, consider that we’re just being retro and tomorrow we’ll have Indian and the next day Chinese and…
What you call Chinese comes with fries and gravy, man.
Edit:🤣🤣🤣 must’ve hit too close to the mark to piss you guys off so much that you go through and downvote every comment I’ve made.
Not usually
Apparently you really offended all the people who do get chips and curry sauce from the Chinese. Which always felt a bit sacrilegious to me, like these places are known for amazing rice and noodles so let’s get fried potato which we can get at basically any other food place in the UK.
They really can’t take any sort of criticism.
Gravy is something Americans put on everything.
And even in Belgium, we don’t get fries with our Chinese food.
So sounds like you are projecting.
Americans absolutely do not put gravy on everything. Thats the british and canadians.
Speak for yourself. I love putting gravy on my sugary cereal
Easy now, they’ll go through and downvote every comment you’ve ever made. 🤣
You guys are hilarious. I couldn’t imagine being so confidently wrong all the time.
WW2 rationing really messed up their culinary scene
WW2 rationing really messed up their culinary scene
What? That doesn’t make sense. Even if it was a decade of rationing, that wouldn’t completely wipe out and replace a culture’s cuisine. Just look at all the other countries that had rationing during ww2 and other wars, and their food is still flavorful.
Also this isn’t ancient history stuff, if what you said was true then we’d see that British cuisine was radically better before ww2, but it’s not the case
It’s a real effect. Wikipedia has a whole section about it in their British cuisine article. A combination of rationing continuing well after the war ended (until 1954), agricultural issues, and a bunch of other stuff put Britain in a position where even after rationing ended, the effects stayed on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_cuisine
It’s not the only reason British food has a bad reputation, but it’s part of it.
i mean, that is one effect. there’s also the fact we have way better refrigerated transport nowadays so what we view as food deserts now, that was just average. a lot of the fruit and veg came canned 70 years ago if you weren’t next to a place that grew it. those awful fruit cocktail in syrup things were damn good back then
Sure, but that ended in the 50s. They can no longer reasonably use that excuse.
Yes, however the joke originated with American military stationed in the UK in wwII and hasn’t been accurate probably since the 50s
Yeah, in the age of social media this line doesn’t work. Y’all show off your beans on toast and baked potatoes with tuna like it’s a treasure chest.
The real problem in my view is that people don’t recognise post-imperial fusion cusines as ‘legit’ British food even though the curry house is the definition of an Anglo-Indian institution. When people in Britain claim the tikka masala it’s not being twee or politically correct, rather it’s earnestly considering an immigration-originated fusion cusine as part of the wider national one.
Also even pre-20th century British food isn’t exactly bad, I’d argue it doesn’t travel amazingly in many cases but a Sunday roast in our climate is sheer perfection. Too many people expect France or Italy from a country with nothing like their climate.
a Sunday roast in our climate is sheer perfection
i’ve got some amazing roast recipes, but they’re “english” or “american” cuisine so bleh. but godsdamn are they tasty when they’re done right.
also, y’all have enough immigrants from the larger empire that claiming anglo-indian cuisine isn’t british cuisine just kind of feels racist (which is parallel to your point). how long do you have to live there before you’re british? I like the french approach. five minutes.
It’s a bit like more traditional Anglo and Celtic American foods in that respect, lots of simple shit that tastes good by itself but is generally considered basic or has had certain context stripped with time. A good example is meatloaf which in some reasons was basically whatever meat and possibly eggs you had lying around after a bit thrown together in an loaf. But then you get shit like cheese curds and it’s just deep fried cheese and it’s great.
Also you can end up with something like my ancestoral food traditions where it’s just soup, cooked meats, and weird increasingly modified trail foods. The trail foods also happen to still be cheap even with modifications, though I guess rice and chili ain’t exactly that complex.
They tried to fix it later though
“Culture”
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I always wonder whether it’s a lingering effect of rationing,which didn’t end until the '50s.
i’m going back to pretending they just boofed it my version of history is happier
Jesus fucking christ, there’s never a shortage of harrowing greed
You’re somewhat correct but also not.
The spice scarcity and making do without is a result of two world wars ravaging a somewhat isolated island nation. See e.g. the Irish potato famine. Some were misfortunate enough to have no food at all - and many had to live with bland, rationed food items.
Those decades were formative and a lot of that stuck around.
And to be perfectly honest… I kinda like it. I like spiced (spicy in the flavourful, not the hot sense) food too, but there’s some beauty in putting together a dish of meat and potatoes where you let the flavour of the meat and potatoes come through. In some sense it’s actually similar to Japanese cuisine, specifically sushi, where the focus is on the fish itself, with minor added flavours (salt from soy sauce, heat from wasabi).
I think the two things we mentioned are not only not excluding each other, but rather cumulative: Spices were not common before the wars and the wars further increased their scarcity for most people, essentially preventing them from becoming part of the popular cuisine in a time period when other European nations became increasingly accustomed to using them.
The limies weren’t even that big into the spice trade, it was the dutch. You mention nutmeg, nutmeg and cloves came from a certain string of small indonesian islands only. There were some english traders there, when the dutch were trying to monopolize the trade.
The dutch sent a delegation, that angered the natives that killed them. The dutch came back and exterminated the natives. Killed every single one of them, and the english and other traders there.
Edit: Adaman islands if memory serves, fuzzy on the years no time to look up.
wow i dont have time to research what they did. tell me what did they do?
They ate it, mostly as a status symbol. They’d carry it around with a small silver grinder to add it to their food. I’m not sure what was so bad about that, other than adding something worth a laborer’s salary for a year on your food. Also, it contains myristicin which if one consumes enough in one sitting can sort of give a high - a really bad one with hallucinations that go in for 48h - don’t try it, it can make you very sick.
I remember reading that in today’s money sugar used to be over £100/kg. Spices probably more. No shit regular people didn’t use them much! But sugar was also considered a spice too.
Haiti basically brought France more money than all of Canada, because it produced sugar.
Garlic was also viewed as for the poors. Because peasants can just grow garlic for themselves.
