unoriginalname38 – the blog of Dave Cole

Edwardian SuperSize Me

The BBC had a programme last night where Giles Coren and Sue Perkins ate like Edwardians for a week. Coren is The Times' restaurant critic and helpfully provides a menu here for an Edwardian week. It is a huge amount of food to consume and is only possible when you have plenty of time to burn off the excess calories. Particularly given that people at the time were principally living off unrefined staples, it reminded me to a great extent of Metropolis by Fritz Lang. The comparison is obvious, but is strengthened by the proximity in time - perhaps fifteen years if the Edwardian period ends with the sinking of the Titanic, as Metropolis came out in 1927.

An awful lot of it is about conspicuous consumption, with some dishes being a mass of flavours , ingredients chosen on their price rather than anything else, such that you wouldn't be able to distinguish what you were eating from grey mush.

One of the most incredible and barbaric dishes they ate was duck à la presse. Barbaric because it requires strangling the duck and incredible because of the preparation - have a look at this recipe - that requires the blood of the duck obtained through a contraption called a duck press.

Anyway, I'm looking for funding for my new film, SuperSize One's Self. I intend to eat at the Savoy in London three times a day for a month and will only SuperSize when they offer. I undertake to dress for dinner.

xD.

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