[HN Gopher] One of the most famous Victorian dishes is a hilario...
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One of the most famous Victorian dishes is a hilarious lie
Author : pepys
Score : 97 points
Date : 2022-01-17 04:32 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| mbg721 wrote:
| If you invented a soup that has thoroughly-researched period-
| appropriate ingredients and a much older cooking method, then the
| only lie is the name, right? If Britons at the time would just
| have called it "soup", then...mission accomplished?
| Daimanta wrote:
| Ok, so this peaked my interest, so I did some googling. If this
| soup were to be genuine, references to it should exist.
|
| In the 1968 'Report on soups' by the British Ministry of
| Agriculture (https://archive.org/embed/op1268165-1001), there is
| a reference on page 19 to this exact soup (called 'Windsor soup',
| 'Brown soup' or 'Eton soup'). It even lists the a basic list of
| ingredients. So this means this soup indeed exists.
|
| Now some further digging. Are there old references to either
| 'Windsor soup', 'Brown soup' or 'Eton soup' in non-fictional
| media?
|
| The 1892 'The encyclopaedia of practical cookery' does not list
| this soup, although it is quite sparse on soups.
|
| The 1844 'A New System of Domestic Cookery' list a large amount
| of soups, none even vaguely hinting at the same name.
|
| However, the 1906 'High-class cookery recipes'
| (https://archive.org/embed/b21528597) lists a 'Windsor soup'
| which should have a 'brown colour' as the basis. I think that
| should qualify as a 'brown roux' basis which at the very least
| lends some credence to a brown 'Windsor Soup' although I cannot
| verify the color myself.
|
| Anyway, that's the result of about 15 minutes of googling. At the
| very least, it makes me a bit sceptical of the article.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| This seems like a general issue with how information travels
| without modern internet.
|
| IMO, its just a matter of multiple groups of people around the
| world making similar dishes and with multiple sets of definitions
| of what that particular dish is. And at some point, it all
| collided and mashed together individual histories.
|
| Maybe it was just their version of a meme.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Those meatspace-memes did exist. My parents grew up on opposite
| ends of the US, and knew the same childhood parodies of the
| theme songs of short-lived TV shows.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| It doesn't seem specific to traveling with or without the
| internet. But it is nice to remember that misinformation isn't
| just the internet's fault.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Interestingly if you search for "Brown Windsor Soup" in 19th
| century books on google there's quite a few hits. Click through
| and view the highlighted text - and its always "Brown Windsor
| Soap" - SOAP not SOUP. Presumably Googles AI enhanced OCR has
| misread.
|
| 1.
| https://www.google.com/search?q=%22brown+windsor+soup%22&biw...
| veltas wrote:
| > It's really, really weird, this mass hallucination going on.
|
| Honestly, all things considered, it's not that weird.
| milliams wrote:
| Interestingly, as a Brit I've never in my life heard of "Brown
| Windsor soup". Admittedly I've never watched the Goon Show but
| it's hardly "deep...into the British psyche". Perhaps it's a
| generational thing (I'm in my 30s)?
| gadders wrote:
| 50, UK born and bred (southern). I think I have heard the name,
| but no idea what it's like or ever eaten anything that claimed
| to be it.
| gadders wrote:
| UPDATE: I just asked a guy who works with me who's 61 and he
| said straightaway "it was a comedy invention created as a
| satire on British cuisine."
| dcow wrote:
| It's fascinating that wikipedia can't be corrected.
| technothrasher wrote:
| As an American, I'm pretty much on my own for even knowing what
| the Goon Show is, let alone Brown Windsor Soup. I even met
| Harry Secombe once in the late 90's at a hotel in Bournemouth,
| and nobody knows who the heck I'm talking about when I mention
| it.
| mattbee wrote:
| I'd never heard of it (42) but I asked my wife and she figured
| it must exist because the Major orders it in Fawlty Towers.
| dgellow wrote:
| 1. create a myth
|
| 2. debunk it
|
| 3. everybody click and complain
|
| 4. profit?
| jsmith99 wrote:
| I've never watched the Goon Show either, but I've _listened to_
| most extant episodes. Perhaps that 's why the name seemed so
| familiar.
| milliams wrote:
| I guess that shows what I know about my country's cultural
| history :)
| bazzargh wrote:
| Weirdly, I _have_ watched the Goon Show. But only one episode
| - the last episode of the radio show was on tv too. (I grew
| up listening to my dad 's tapes of the others)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Goon_Show_of_All
|
| It is, of course, on youtube.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF745ywyvVY
|
| FWIW, I hadn't heard of Brown Windsor Soup till I watched the
| recent adaptation of Around The World in 80 Days.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Admittedly I've never watched the Goon Show
|
| Being a radio show, you could watch it with your eyes closed.
|
| As radio shows go, it was actually very visual.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Same, I've never head of it either.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Yup, same, I'm 45 and I never heard of the stuff.
|
| At a guess, you had to be in the generation that actually
| watched the Goon Show.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Veen wrote:
| I'm in my early 40s and have never heard of it either. Maybe
| it's a Southern thing.
| glassneedles wrote:
| I'm Scottish but moved down to Sussex as a kid and have been
| here for almost 3 decades. I've never heard of it either.
| Seems a generational thing as both my parents were familiar
| with it as an old dish.
| cm2012 wrote:
| It's more of a Utica expression
| JackFr wrote:
| Reference:
|
| https://youtu.be/4jXEuIHY9ic
| darrenf wrote:
| 47, lived in Surrey my whole life, never heard of it.
| YawningAngel wrote:
| I'm from the South, it isn't. Ironically, the notion that
| Brown Windsor Soup is famous itself appears to be a hilarious
| lie
| ChrisSD wrote:
| I've done a small straw poll from a range of ages (20's to
| 70's). Only the older people (60's+) seem to have vaguely heard
| of it but none knew what it is or had any particular reaction
| to me mentioning it.
|
| Note though that my sample size for older people is very small
| due to the lack of 50's+ in my immediate vicinity (one person
| in their 60's and one person in their 70's).
| coldcode wrote:
| Elvis did not have bananas on his bacon sandwich, but
| blueberries? I will never believe such poppycock.
|
| Actually I have never tried either, so maybe either works!
| laputan_machine wrote:
| "Everybody in England was brought up believing in brown Windsor
| soup," says Glyn Hughes, author of The Lost Foods of England.
| "What is really, really strange is how deep this is into the
| British psyche. Walk up to anyone in the street and ask them
| about brown Windsor soup, and they'll say that it was terrible
| and horrible but everybody ate it in the Victorian era."
|
| I have never heard of Brown Windsor soup until today. An article
| that's debunking a myth itself contains a myth.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I concur, lived here for a long time and I've noticed stuff
| like Spotted Dick, Toad-in-the-hole, Haggis, and Faggots (which
| are a kind of meatball).
|
| If I were to point at a dish that was probably more popular in
| the past it would be fried eel, which you can still find in
| certain places in London.
|
| BWS, never heard of it, family is British and they've not heard
| of it either.
| andybak wrote:
| Weren't eels usually boiled or steamed?
| lordnacho wrote:
| I messed up, I meant Jellied Eels.
| philk10 wrote:
| yeh, which is how you get the liquor they are served with
| at the Pie, mash and eel shops
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I'd say that copious amounts of hard liquor would be the
| only way to get me to consume any boiled or steamed fish
| :-)
| jimmytidey wrote:
| Fried eels would be too palatable
| jgrahamc wrote:
| I'll just add my voice to the growing list of "British people
| who has never heard of brown windsor soup".
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| I'm Scottish, in my sixties, and _can_ remember seeing brown
| Windsor soup on menus, almost certainly while on holiday in
| England with my family when I was young, so 1960s or early
| 1970s. I can 't remember if I ever tried it though. I'm in my
| sixties.
|
| A web search turns up this pre-decimalization advertisement:
| https://englandspuzzle.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Batche...
| . Just plain "Windsor soup", but dark (dare I say brown?), and
| so clearly not the Francatelli recipe mentioned in the article.
| It's also on a 1926 menu in the Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail,
| shown here:
| http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/brownwindsorsoup.htm . Binns
| was a department store in Sunderland, England.
|
| So it definitely existed, but appears to have fallen out of
| fashion decades ago.
| lokar wrote:
| It made an appearance in the 2021 series around the world in 80
| days
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_the_World_in_80_Days_...
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Never heard of it either.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Me neither, nor my girlfriend. Seems like they are vastly
| exaggerating the number of people that have heard of this!
| speedbird wrote:
| Same. Nearly 60. Familiar with plenty of less than appealing
| "traditional" Brit food but never heard of this.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Yup, never heard of it.
| dcminter wrote:
| Another Brit who's no familiarity with it. I have listened to a
| few of the Goon show episodes but it didn't ring a bell. I
| don't think my parents were fans, so perhaps I'd have heard it
| referenced if they were.
|
| On the other hand, I rescued my late mother's recipe books when
| we cleared their house and I _can_ offer up a recipe for
| "Brown Stew" if anyone's interested. Still not "Windsor"
| though.
| cannam wrote:
| > I can offer up a recipe for "Brown Stew" if anyone's
| interested
|
| Is that the Good Housekeeping recipe book by any chance? That
| has a number of brown things, including stew.
|
| "SAVOURY SAUCES
|
| "Vast as the number of individual savoury sauces may be, most
| of them can be divided into White (simple or rich), Brown and
| Egg sauces, plus a group of Miscellaneous ones such as Mint
| Sauce."
|
| Though it is actually a pretty good cookery book in many
| ways.
| dcminter wrote:
| Maybe. It's handwritten, but may well have been transcribed
| for convenience. She certainly had GH (as did I in a much
| later edition) I'll see if I can fish it out in the
| morning.
| kaashif wrote:
| One of the Top Hacker News Posts Is a Hilarious Lie
| agd wrote:
| UK native and have never heard of 'brown Windsor soup'.
| 692 wrote:
| I suspect from the fact it was mentioned in the program
| "Hancock's Half Hour" in the fifties. you probably have to be
| 70/80+ to know about this.
|
| it's totally new to me
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > you probably have to be 70/80+ to know about this
|
| Not necessarily. "Hancock's Half Hour" and "Goon show"
| episodes were sold on vinyl records at the time (and are
| still to be found on the big internet retailer on Vinyl, CD
| and MP3).
|
| If the media were in the house, years later, kids would play
| them for amusement.
| interstice wrote:
| I grew up listening to the goon show (parents were fans)
| and also do not know about brown Windsor soup.
| 692 wrote:
| absolutely, I'm also guessing not many people did listen to
| these new format versions of these shows either.
|
| the only time I've ever heard the Goon show or Hancock's
| Half Hour, has always been whilst listening to the radio
| (typically 2 or 4) that makes a reference to the shows and
| plays a few seconds clip
|
| Within my limited field of family and friends I would say
| that people have heard about them, but have not really
| listened to them
| Symbiote wrote:
| An older relative (must be in his 80s now) had Hancock's
| Half Hour on cassette tape, and I listened to them while
| visiting.
|
| The funniest one I remember is "The Blood Doner", which
| turns out was a TV episode (most were just radio).
|
| "The Radio Ham" is also good.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blood_Donor /
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEUvyaNu0uw
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Radio_Ham
| [deleted]
| Latty wrote:
| Yeah, can confirm as another Brit this is definitely not true--
| as of the present day at least. Never heard of this.
| have_faith wrote:
| Ditto, never heard of it.
| evancox100 wrote:
| For anyone interested in a great cookbook of classic American
| desserts with meticulously researched background and origin
| stories, I highly recommend "Bravetart" by Stella Parks. Some of
| the recipes can also be found on the Serious Eats website, but
| the historical background material is largely reserved for the
| book.
| cja wrote:
| Is this article an early April fools joke?
| vr46 wrote:
| Never heard of it, and whoever Glyn Hughes is, is talking
| poppycock, balderdash, utter claptrap, absolute piffle when he
| states,
|
| "Everybody in England was brought up believing in brown Windsor
| soup," says Glyn Hughes, author of The Lost Foods of England.
| "What is really, really strange is how deep this is into the
| British psyche. Walk up to anyone in the street and ask them
| about brown Windsor soup, and they'll say that it was terrible
| and horrible but everybody ate it in the Victorian era."
|
| Complete bollocks.
| derefr wrote:
| Glyn Hughes died 11 years ago, aged 76. And even then, he said
| " _was_ brought up ", not "is." He was presumably speaking
| about people brought up around the time he himself was -- in
| the 1940s.
| vr46 wrote:
| A labour of love by the poor man rather than an exhaustively-
| researched magnum opus, and clearly the interesting focal
| point is how resilient complete nonsense can be.
| [deleted]
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| In 80 days around the world, the main character Phileas Fogg,
| eats it all the time. Serie is now on the BBC.
| giantg2 wrote:
| First thing that came to mind about food lies is city chicken.
| Obviously wrong time frame and location, but definitely seems
| like a big food lie, and possibly problematic for people of some
| religions if they actually think it's chicken.
| gfd wrote:
| Sounds like a case of Mandela effect:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandela_effect
| notahacker wrote:
| Reminded me of how someone once summarised the Mandela effect
| to me
|
| "Remember when Nelson Mandela died in prison? No, neither do I"
|
| I've never heard of brown Windsor soup, never mind been brought
| up believing in it.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The "Mandela Effect" is the dumbest of all meme "Effects." It
| should be renamed the "I didn't pay attention to apartheid or
| notice when or how it ended" effect. Until you linked me to the
| wiki page, I hadn't realize it was coined by a "paranormal
| consultant."
| kevinwang wrote:
| Additional context (some of which Hughes might disagree with) on
| Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_soup
| pwagland wrote:
| The initial edit of the page, in 2013, had this:
|
| Brown Windsor soup is a hearty British soup that is said to
| have been popular during the Victorian and Edwardian eras.[1]
|
| It was one of the starter dishes on the menu at the fictional
| Fawlty Towers
|
| It is unclear whether this often-written-about soup is indeed
| Victorian, or was invented as a joke in the 1950's - perhaps
| conflating the well-known White Windsor Soup with the equally
| famous Brown Windsor Soap. There do not appear to be any
| references to it before about 1953.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Windsor_soup&oldi...
|
| Edit. The current version says:
|
| > Windsor soup or Brown Windsor soup is a British soup that was
| popular during the Victorian and Edwardian eras.[1][2][3] The
| practice of calling it 'Brown Windsor' did not emerge until at
| least the 1920s, and was usually associated with low-quality
| brown soup of uncertain ingredients. Although originally an
| elegant recipe among famous chefs of the 19th century, the
| 'Brown Windsor' variety became an institutional gruel that
| gained a reputation as indicative of bad English food during
| the mid-20th century and a later source of jokes, myths and
| legends.
|
| So, given that the author of the article "tried to update it" I
| don't know what they were trying to update it to?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >Brown Windsor soup is a hearty British soup that is said to
| have been popular during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. //
|
| Perhaps to say something like "Brown Windsor soup appears to
| be a fictional foodstuff referenced in British comedies from
| the mid-20th Century. Some people insist it is a real
| foodstuff and recent recipes founded in fictional universes,
| such as the Harry Potter cookbook, include an actual recipe
| (with no evidence that it is in anyway historic)."
|
| The quoted part you give would be like saying "Endor is a
| moon planet orbiting the Outer Rim planet of the same name,
| said to have been a forest moon a long time ago." without
| mentioning that its origin is [as far as evidence suggests]
| in fiction.
|
| Couple of links with a little more but mostly the same as has
| been covered in this thread:
| https://www.lovefood.com/news/57860/the-curious-tale-of-
| brow... https://delishably.com/soup/The-Mystery-of-Brown-
| Windsor-Sou...
|
| It would be interesting to see what Keith Floyd (Floyd on
| Britain & Ireland, By Keith Floyd, 1988 includes a recipe
| https://images-na.ssl-images-
| amazon.com/images/I/91F2K-ZRDxL... shown in the Amazon
| preview) has to say about this. I wonder if the BBC have any
| details in their archives if the recipe was in the TV series
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1720675/?? [fwiw
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03gprry seems to me to be
| the most likely episode if any mention it?]
| Freak_NL wrote:
| The relevant part from the article:
|
| > Hughes has spent years challenging the Victorian roots of
| brown Windsor soup--"I keep trying to correct the Wikipedia
| page, but I've given up"--and has faced considerable fury for
| his efforts.
|
| Once Wikipedia decides something is a fact, it can be hard to
| alter it; no matter the sources you bring. If something stood
| there in an article for over a decade and the article is
| guarded by a certain type of editor, just give up.
| pwagland wrote:
| As I mentioned in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29969166, it is unclear
| what they were trying to "fix" given that the article has
| said for the last nine years that Brown Windsor Soup doesn't
| appear to exist before 1950, (later updated to 1920) and
| appears to have been a joke.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| No love for the Toast Sandwich?!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toast_sandwich
| episode0x01 wrote:
| Yeah I mean I unironically like doing this at times. Texture
| contrast is great!
| hinkley wrote:
| Every time I play Civ VI, Sean Bean tells me, "History is the
| version of past events that people have decided to agree upon."
| gadders wrote:
| Imagine if we brought a Spartan back to life and he told us Black
| Broth was a similar made up soup.
| irrational wrote:
| The highlights for me:
|
| "People don't like it when you challenge their beliefs. ... It's
| so small and unimportant, you don't bother to investigate it. It
| makes you wonder: how many things do we believe that if we were
| to look into them, we'd find they were complete nonsense?"
| jahnu wrote:
| They/we really don't! :)
|
| A guy I used to know was telling about a British children's TV
| show where all the characters names were actually double
| entendres.
|
| It just so happened that I had recently read the fascinating
| story about how this wasn't true at all, despite the press
| writing that it was and so on and it was just a successful
| urban legend.
|
| He said no it's really true, he'd seen it himself on TV. I
| later sent him over email the article describing the legend.
| Anyway he got really mad at me for just saying that and went
| round telling people I was an asshole for destroying this story
| for him. I was really surprised that someone could be so upset
| by that.
|
| http://doyoupunctuate.com/captain-pugwash-dirty-pirates/
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Ah, the old Captain Pugwash urban legend! I think I used to
| believe that a long time ago.
|
| I can understand why he got upset though if you rained on his
| parade in front of other people. It was probably a pet story
| he enjoyed telling. Something I have also been guilty of!
| jimmytidey wrote:
| However 1950s BBC radio was full of double entres that the
| higher up management didn't understand. Round The Horn in
| particular.
| dcminter wrote:
| I adore the wordplay in RtH.
|
| On a similar note, however, a colleague tried to shock me
| (he thought I was more straightlaiced than I am) by asking
| if I'd heard Cardi B's WAP. I took great pleasure in
| retaliating with the song "My Girl's Pussy" from 1931 which
| is what you might call a great deal of entendre without
| very much double.
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