The ultimate comfort food

‘You are what you eat.’ The old phrase always reminds me of Denzil, John Sparkes’s character in the comedy sketch show Absolutely, who quotes it to his girlfriend and then adds: ‘And you have obviously eaten something very stupid.’ Pete Brown, on the other hand, has taken it as the theme of his book about British food. By examining nine classic ‘dishes’ — fish and chips, the full English, cream tea, crumble and custard, pie and peas, a cheese sandwich, spag bol, curry and the Sunday roast — he builds a picture not just of the grub itself but of the people who put themselves outside it.

It says something about the British, for instance, that cheddar sells more by volume in this country than all other cheeses put together. To sample a sandwich of the stuff, Brown heads to the Kent town whose earl gave the bread-based snack its name. While there, he learns that Sandwich was where Henry V’s archers practised before their victory at Agincourt. The sign telling you this is in French as well as English.

Brown’s cheese sandwich finds favour, thereby contradicting Douglas Adams, who said: ‘There is a feeling which persists in England that making a sandwich interesting, attractive or in any way pleasant to eat is something sinful that only foreigners do.’ But not even the most English of Englishmen think we have nothing to learn from other countries and their food. Philip Larkin liked spaghetti because ‘you don’t have to take your eyes off the book to pick about among it, it’s all the same’.

Brown also tackles the corresponding question: what does the rest of the planet think of us? ‘Britain,’ says Jackie Mason, ‘is the only country in the world where the food is more dangerous than the sex.’