From English Cuisine, Orwell Celebrates Only Desserts

April 15, 2017

Although written in the now distant 1949, the cult novel by George Orwell – ‘1984.’ has been widely quoted and sought after in recent months. According to data provided to global media by Amazon, Orwell’s dystopia has climbed to fifth place among the best-selling novels following the well-known statement by Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway that she does not present lies, but alternative facts. Unfortunately, this ‘newspeak’ and ‘doublethink’ are not the only things that remind Earthlings of life in the totalitarian system of the imaginary Oceania, a superpower where the state employee and main character Winston barely survives. Orwell inscribes prophetic sentences into his novel, describing life under the eternal control of the state (Big Brother), devoid of any pleasure, emotions, and meaning.

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Food is a Metaphor

The great writer of ‘1984.’ also dealt with English cuisine, and he was a critic of it. For him, it was primitive, heavy, and somewhat barbaric. He wrote with delight only about pastries, biscuits, bread, and pies.

In such a meaningless and gray reality, food has no taste or smell. Coffee only reminds one of the warm, fragrant drink that was consumed in some distant, better times, while the synthetic taste of Victory gin, which Winston enjoys, shares only the name with ‘today’s’ gin. Besides serving as one of the metaphors through which Orwell conveyed life in Oceania to the readers of the novel, he also addressed food in some other books and essays dedicated to food such as ‘In Defence of English Cookery’ or ‘British Cookery.’ In the latter essay, Orwell did not speak of British cuisine in superlatives. On the contrary, for him, it was ‘if I were to generalize, primitive, heavy, and somewhat barbaric.’ The writer further states that a guest in his homeland does not get a true impression of British cuisine by eating in hotels and restaurants where the food is undoubtedly poor (cheap restaurants) or an imitation of French cuisine (luxury restaurants). According to him, the best dishes are served and cooked in middle-class and working-class households that do not experiment with food but stick to proven good traditions and available ingredients.

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With a Cup of Tea

Of course, that cuisine is not without its flaws. Orwell bluntly criticizes the excessive addition of animal fats to dishes, the inability to cook vegetables so that they retain their flavor (tendency to overcook), and the incredible ‘talent’ to turn ingredients into mush. However, when it comes to English specialties, especially pastries, biscuits, bread, and pies, he does not spare compliments. In his essays, he often highlights juicy Christmas biscuits enriched with fragrant spices and dried fruits, ‘treacle tart’ or pie with sugar syrup, Scottish ‘shortbread’ or butter cookies, as well as ‘scones.’ He writes about them with delight, noting that warm, freshly baked ‘scones’ are ideally served with a cup of afternoon tea, spread with fine homemade jam or butter.

Scones (English Pastries)

Ingredients:

350 g plain flour
100 g sugar
5 tablespoons baking powder
1⁄2 teaspoon salt
170 g butter softened at room temperature
240 ml milk
1 egg

Preheat the oven to 200 °C and grease the baking paper with butter. Mix the flour with the baking powder and a pinch of salt. Sift to combine well. In a separate bowl, mix the milk and egg. Rub the butter into the sifted flour, add sugar and salt, then the milk and egg mixture. Flour your hands and knead the mixture until you get a soft dough. On a floured surface, roll out the dough to about one centimeter thick. Use a glass or cookie cutter to cut the dough into circles with a diameter of four to five centimeters. Brush the dough with milk and bake until golden yellow (about 15 minutes). Serve with jam and clotted cream or simply dust with powdered sugar.