#tolkin

Okay. So the funniest thing about this whole British people feel like good food is a fantasy thing is it comes from  the class structure in their country. So, It used to be that spices were incredibly rare to the point that it's half The reason the British Empire colonised half the world. It was to get their hands on spices. They were purely for the upper class used by the upper class. Now, the problem with colonising half the world to get your hands on spices is that eventually when you get your hands on enough spices the price of spices come down, you also eventually become a multicultural empire and you're inherently not only making the resources more wide spread but also the subjugated workers. So they would ship the subjugated Indian workers to other British colonies, the subjugated African workers to other British colonies, the subjugated Native American  workers to other colonies and so on and so forth. So you start spreading a bunch different ethnicities around and having them intermingle, and bring their staple cooking styles with them. And that creates a very unique food culture, where the lower class, who now comprise not just lower class British people but the Indians, Chinese, Africans, Arabs, ect, have access to cheap spices and new cooking techniques because the price of spices is drastically reduced and everyone who isn't aristocracy is kind of merging and intermingling.

So Spices become the thing of the Common Man. spice becomes available to the working masses. Suddenly salt and pepper aren't a luxury. They are a goddamn Necessity. cinnamon, cumin, everything becomes a goddamn necessity and you get people spreading spicy flavorful food amongst the working class. So when the British upper crust, especially during the Georgian and Victorian era saw that this was happening. They were like,” oh, oh God. I don't want to eat spices anymore because the working poor man is eating spices. So instead We're going to focus on traditional British only meals from now on”. Now the funny thing about traditional British only meals is that they're very fucking plain because for the majority of their history as a fucking island nation, the people who really dictate a national identity, the working class, haven't had access to the resources that make food flavorful.

So they've been relying on very meaty plan, flavours,  oniony kind of flavours ect. The kind you get out of boiling , mashing, stewing and reducing the shit out of your ingredients. Maybe they would have salt maybe. But mostly it's  The flavours that you get out of the actual food itself instead of the things like spices and herbs that you add to food to make it flavorful. So the upper crust played themselves, started eating very Bland, very flavorless food, and insisted that this was the real traditional British cuisine ,and that created the idea that British cooking is Boring, right?

Rhaegar and Lyanna & Beren and Lúthien

“… and words him fail

recalling Lúthien dancing fair

with wild white roses in her hair,

remembering her elven voice that rung

while stars in twilight round her hung.”

---

”And how she smiled and how she laughed,

the maiden of the tree.

She spun away and said to him,

no featherbed for me.

I'll wear a gown of golden leaves,

and bind my hair with grass,

But you can be my forest love,

From Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales.