Okay, but I mean the smack barm pey wet at least is pretty obviously just a case of âokay, the people round here arenât well off, so what is the cheapest thing we can make that will still taste nice?â
Like, you donât develop a meal that uses the water from mushy peas because itâs a fun thing to doâ you do it because someone will buy it who might not have been able to afford actual mushy peas.
In regards to the Wigan kebab, carbohydrates within carbohydrates are a British tradition, as evidenced by the existence of the chip butty (or chip cob, or chip barm, or chip batchâ or the thing in the video, since the âsmackâ in a smack barm seems to be at least chip-adjacent, even if itâs a different shape) and the crisp sandwich. But also pies in the UK donât tend to have fruit in themâ we have meat pies, with gravy and often pretty soft pastry.
Please take a moment to imagine walking through a crowded street cupping a thin pastry container filled with scaldingly hot meat and gravy in your bare hands. Putting it in a roll seems like a perfectly practical measure.
And Babbyâs Yed? Iâm honestly not even sure what people are finding weird about that (barring the name, I mean, which I agree is rather odd). Like, itâs a steak and kidney pudding. Itâs meat with pastry wrapped around it. Itâs essentially just another pie, but with a slightly different shape.(Possibly people are weirded out by the fact that itâs served with chips and gravy? But chips and gravy is a fucking delight and I have no idea why it isnât more popular in the South.)
I mean, this isnât actually âBritish foodâ. Thatâs why theyâve got a British person going in there and talk about how weird it is on camera. This isnât what everybody in the UK eats all the time. This is working class British food from a particular area.
This is literally just the British equivalent of all those dishes made with the left over parts of the animal, or with animals or plants that nobody wants to eat, or with a lot of one specific plant because itâs cheap to grow. This is that âpoor people making good meals out of whatever theyâve got lying aroundâ thing that Tumblrâs always talking about, except that this time itâs British people doing it, which means itâs apparently okay to mock them.
