British prime minister Winston Churchill was hostile to Ireland’s neutrality during the Second World War, a period Ireland referred to as the Emergency.
While the rest of the world was embroiled in a war, the fledgling Irish state’s neutrality enraged Churchill, who attempted to hit the Irish where it hurt — their stomachs.
With no merchant navy, Ireland was reliant on the benevolence and protection of its neighbour for many of its critical food imports. Despite Ireland’s friendly status, Churchill and his cabinet often applied pressure.
However, Ireland had some leverage. On one occasion, then minister of supplies, Seán Lemass, withheld the export of Guinness bound for troops in Northern Ireland, forcing the British, in turn, to release agricultural products.
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With the help of 32 contributors, this beautifully realised publication examines our relationship with food and drink, from prehistory right up to the phenomenon that is Ballymaloe House.
“Food is a point of access to history,” says food historian Dorothy Cashman.
“We wanted to introduce a new readership to a different way of viewing history. Sometimes, people are put off by overtly political history or are exhausted by social media. This is a different way of viewing it, and it’s maybe slightly more accessible.”
While, at 800 pages, this book is not meant for one sitting, its accessibility stems from the endlessly fascinating stories and characters that suck the reader in to one or a series of its 28 chapters.
The scope of topics is remarkable, from bog butter, beekeeping, and banqueting in the medieval castles of Gaelic chiefs to examinations on Irish state dining, the co-operative movement, and pub food.
“One of the amazing things we found was how far back cooking goes in Ireland,” says Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire, senior lecturer in the School of Culinary Arts and Food Technology, Technological University Dublin.
“The earliest evidence we found was from around 33,000 BC. We found that all the way through there’s a great importance attached to hospitality and to being a good host. That carries on from the Gaelic and medieval period, right through to the 1950s or ’80s and today. When someone comes into your house, no matter what you have or how bad times are, you still offer them a cup of tea and a biscuit or a sandwich. This long-standing tradition of hospitality is so ingrained in our psyche that we don’t notice it until it’s pointed out to us.”
This hospitality was even afforded to the dead. One remarkable chapter talks us through an account of a wake at Dunquin, in Kerry, where “wake goods were taken from the carts” and set out around the corpse, laid out on the table in the middle of the room.
Tea and bread were served around the deceased, while a barrel of porter flowed freely.
Not everyone benefitted from this apparent goodwill. A chapter entitled Hunger and Starvation in Modern Ireland is less celebratory.
“The narrative that we tend to get in school is that lots of people died during the famine, but that by the time we had our independence that was the end of people dying of starvation in Ireland,” says Máirtín.
“Ian Miller’s chapter shows us it’s not. He gives us some shocking examples. He has a story of a Protestant family down in West Cork who had been quite well-to-do, because they used to supply food to the British navy. Post-independence, that contract had gone and they found themselves down on their luck. When they went to look for help, they were deemed to be too wealthy. So they went home and didn’t come to look for help the second time. They were found starving in their home and died in the poorhouse three days later.”
Food is found in our art, music, poetry, placenames, and our native language. “The simplest example is ‘bóthar’,” says Máirtín, “The Irish word for road. The road had to be big enough for two bó, the Irish for ‘cow’, to pass each other.”
“There is so much knowledge tied in to the Irish language and culture. It’s really important not to forget what’s hidden in plain sight: Centuries of inherited wisdom of our forefathers that’s held within the Irish language and heritage,” says Máirtín.
“In this time of ecological change, we need to understand nature and the traditions of working with the cycles, as our ancestors did. I think there’s a new generation of chefs tapping in to that heritage now. The likes of Cúán Greene and Mark Moriarty and people like that.
“In some ways, it’s influenced by the recent innovations in Nordic cuisine. Many of the graduates from Cathal Brugha St have worked in those countries and have picked that up.”
THE IRONY is that much of the influence for this Nordic revolution can be put down to Myrtle Allen, of Ballymaloe fame.
“One of the pioneers of that movement came to Ballymaloe as part of a Euro-Toques gathering,” says Máirtín.
“He saw how this woman in East Cork was serving simple mackerel and locally gathered Carrageen moss and questioned why they couldn’t do the same in Denmark.”
That pioneer was Claus Meyer, co-founder of the now world-famous Noma restaurant in Copenhagen.
After his visit to Cork, he returned to Denmark and challenged his peers to do away with the truffles, foie gras, and other trappings of Mediterranean-style foods and create a Nordic cuisine using locally sourced food and traditional knowledge.
When Myrtle Allen started out, not only was she challenging the fashions of the time, but also government policy.
The Irish government’s first programme for economic expansion (1958–63) advocated the application of scientific methods to agriculture and to food production.
Traditional reliance was at odds with the desire to promote a more industrialised food industry, with increased mechanisation and increased productivity.
Myrtle’s menu was all about using produce that was locally sourced and cooked in a simple, respectful way.
When Myrtle died in June 2018, at the age of 94, she was referred to by Georgina Campbell as “Ireland’s greatest food hero”. Few would argue.
And that this publication closes with a chapter dedicated to “the matriarch of modern Irish cooking” is a fitting tribute.
“She was so ahead of the posse, What is the zeitgeist at the moment, she was doing 50, 60 years ago and doing so unapologetically,” says Máirtín.
Were she still with us today, she would, no doubt, take some pride in having partly inspired this wonderful history of what is finally becoming a rightfully celebrated cuisine.
- ‘Irish Food History: A Companion’ is available on open access from EUT+ Press. The second print run will be available to purchase from RIA.ie and bookshops from the end of February.
