Fish and chips Period AOrigin theory BVerified

Fish and chips took shape in Britain around the middle of the nineteenth century, roughly between 1840 and 1870. That this pairing of fried fish and fried potato could not have appeared in Britain much earlier is a firm point of history.

The starring cod and haddock were native to British waters, long a fixture on tables around the fishing ports. The potatoes served alongside them, though New World in origin, had settled into British eating by the close of the eighteenth century. The ingredients themselves were already at hand.

What changed was that the fish could now reach inland cities cheaply. Railways linked the coastal ports to the industrial towns, and steam-powered trawling drove catches sharply upward. Cod and haddock landed that morning could travel the rails packed in ice and reach an inland worker in under a day. The records show the dish spreading first in the port towns and seeping inland along the lines from there.

To this were added cheap frying oil and shops that sold fried food by weight to working people. In the smoke-filled cities, the crowds wanting a hot, cheap supper met the rails that carried in the sea's fish—and at that meeting point, fish and chips arose.

Two questions run through the history of fish and chips: where the technique of frying fish came from, and which shop sold it first.

On the pedigree of the fried fish, recent scholarship has gone a good way toward an answer. Sephardic Jews brought pescado frito—fish fried in advance for the Sabbath, meant to be eaten cold—and this technique, carried to Britain, joined with the French-derived fried potato, the chip. Panikos Panayi, a historian of European history, in his 'Fish and Chips: A History' (2014), grounds the dish in exactly this confluence of two streams: the fried fish Jewish, the chips French. The Royal Museums Greenwich and Historic UK trace the same line. The original pescado frito, however, was a separate dish that came without chips; something can be called fish and chips only from the moment fried fish and fried potato are joined on one plate. The phrase 'fish and chips' itself appears in print no earlier than an 1887 Sheffield Daily Telegraph—some time after the dish was already abroad in the world.

The other question—which shop first sold fried fish and chips side by side—remains in the fog. From the south, Joseph Malin (Bow, London, around 1860, recognized by the National Federation of Fish Friers as the world's oldest shop); from the north, John Lees (Mossley, Lancashire, around 1863, whose shop bears a sign proclaiming it 'the world's first fish and chip shop'). John K. Walton, a historian of working-class culture, writes plainly that no contemporary record survives to show which came first, and that the point cannot be settled. The founding shop still cannot be identified.

The dish spread out from the towns where fish, packed in ice, ran the rails to inland tables. The founding shop may sit in the fog, but the thick thread of it—the line that carried the sea's fish inland—can still be followed clearly.