Culinary Terroir in the North of England

posted by Geoff Andrews at Friday, September 10, 2010

Andrew Hussey's culinary tour of northern Britain, shown on BBC Four this week, was an excellent insight into the relationship between food and identity and gave some popular meaning and application to the concept of 'terroir' in a working class British context. In search of 'lobscouse' in Liverpool, meat and potato pie in Wigan, Tripe in Bolton (available at the excellent market there) and West Yorkshire rhubarb, Hussey made real connections between place, (particularly revealing in the cae of the rhubarb), history, language and popular memory. A recognition too, of how much food heritage has been lost to the power of the supermarket. Hussey demonstrated that there is after all knowledge and sophistication in the British palate - and you don't have to dip bread into olive oil to discover it.