MELTING POT OR A BOWL OF MIXED SALAD?

Bites of life
The history professor and food specialist Panikos Panayi tells Harriet Swain that dishes don't have a specific nationality Interview by Harriet Swain


Soon after starting research for his book on the multicultural history of food, Panikos Panayi found his name on a rightwing website, under the heading "Know your enemy". A serious, slightly diffident professor of European history at De Montfort University, he had committed a supposedly hostile act by raising the possibility that fish and chips may not be entirely British. Frying was a typically Jewish way of eating fish, he had suggested, while chips were probably pre-dated by French pommes frites. The idea proved so controversial that it prompted newspaper headlines. Some interpreted the attempt to deconstruct a British national dish as akin to attacking the nation itself.

It was a clear demonstration of how intimately connected people perceive food and national identity to be. But according to Panayi, this perception is wrong. He argues that dishes don't have a nationality. Examine any one of them closely and you are likely to find influences from all over the world, not only in the ingredients but in the way they are served and eaten. Rather than being a symbol of nationality, he says, "what people eat is a really important symbol of the integration and assimilation process". In his view, it is impossible to understand what British food, and especially eating out in Britain, is about without also studying immigration.

Taken from: The Guardian, Tuesday April 15, 2008