this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2025
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Isn’t that why English food sucks? They considered spices for the peasants and foreigners?
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/26/394339284/how-snobbery-helped-take-the-spice-out-of-european-cooking
Tl;Dr: Spice was a status symbol but colonialism made it more widely available so aristocrats started looking down on it. Got obsessed with gravies instead since it didn't "defile" the original flavor of ingredients. This eventually disseminated throughout European culture, blandifying everything. Also meat is manly (lmao).
Interesting!
English upper-class food used to use a lot of spices precisely because of the foreign, expensive, and exclusive implications.
Probably has something to do with 19th century nationalism or something, idk.
I thought I read somewhere that part of it was also due to culinary changes during WWII supply shortages, but I can't immediately confirm