Beer and food pairing in the 1950’s (part two)

We’re getting to the meat now, so to speak. With specific beer and food pairings, sort of. As well as some non-parings.

First one of the latter:

“Bottled beer is becoming too popular at table. To bombard the tongue with bubbles of gas while eating is wrong. For an appetizer, yes: and at least one strong light ale now brewed with a slightly bitter tang, sold in something less than half-pints, makes an excellent aperitif. Beer, while it assists the appreciation of good food, also makes bad food endurable, and by the standards of former rough, farm-worker's fare food to-day is insipid. Mrs. Carlyle at the Frome inn could not stomach the meat, but she ate the bread with the aid of her pint of porter. In refreshment rooms a good frothy ale — and here's every excuse for bottled  — often gives a flattering zest to rigid sandwiches or cardboard-tasting pie.”
"Beer in Britain", 1960, page 105.

I wish he’d named that Strong Light Ale. Even though that’s a bit of an oxymoron. Light Ale was, by definition, not particularly strong. If it were, it would be called a Pale Ale. I guess with “something less than half-pints” he means a nip bottle. Which was a popular bottle size for stronger beers. Probably to save drinkers the shock of the price of a half or a pint.

I’m with him on fizzy beer. But it’s a problem that’s easily solved with a spoon. A minute or so’s agitation knocks most of the CO2 out of a beer.

Beer certainly will liven up crap food, or at least take your mind off it. In 1958 memories of rationing, which had only finally ended a few years earlier, in 1954, were still strong. And the often unpalatable food that was served up as a result. People had plenty of experience of eating rubbish food.

Now for some examples of cooking with beer as well as drinking it as an accompaniment to food:

“Beer has its place in food as well as with it. Welsh rarebit, when the cheese is blended with a little four-X ale, is delicious. The Suffolk farmer's pig absorbed a quantity of old ale in the curing process, being immersed for three weeks in a liquor of it before smoking. The flavours of beer, oak smoke, and barley-fed pork were combined in the result, and the fat was very rich. When a friend, thinking to give me a treat, partnered one of these hams with audit ale, he overdid it, especially as we were in a small sloop on a choppy sea. Mild beer would have been fitter. On the whole, mild is the best accompaniment to a square meal. Bitter has its virtues, and can give the motorist's appetite an edge which the walker's has gained naturally. Old beer is too sweet for a full meal: it is the ale of evening, of a companion rather than a crowd, and its accompaniment should be slight—a biscuit, or walnuts.”
"Beer in Britain", 1960, page 107.

It’s weird that he’s still calling Mild four-X Ale. True XXXX Ale hadn’t existed since before WW I. True, there were still beers called XXXX in the 1950’s, but they were just ordinary strength Mild Ales of around 3% ABV. A proper XXXX Ale was 8-10% ABV.

That marinated pig has me salivating like a dog outside a butcher’s shop. But I can see the author’s point about Audit Ale not necessarily being the best beer to slop back on a sloop. It was powerful stuff, even in the 1950’s:

Audit Ale 1951 - 1958
Year	Brewer	Price per pint d	OG	FG	ABV	App. Atten-uation	colour
1951	Friary Holroyd	46.5	1084.6	1022.1	8.17	73.88%	51
1953	Friary Holroyd	45	1084	1025.1	7.67	70.12%	51
1955	Dales (Brewed by Wells & Winch)	36	1062.2	1023.5	5.00	62.22%	115
1955	Greene King	36	1083.2	1017.7	8.59	78.73%	100
1955	Wells & Winch	36	1062.2	1023.3	5.03	62.54%	115
1958	Lacons	54	1095	1017.8	9.65	81.26%	90
Source:
Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/002.

I’m also with him on Mild going particularly well with food. It matches perfectly with hearty pub meals like pies, stews or fish and chips. That’s me drooling again, imagining a crusty pie, covered in rich gravy with a pint of Harvey’s Mild to wash it down.

Not all Stouts were good with food:

“Sweet stout is popular, but to me it is as mawkish as a Victorian ballad. A bitter tonic stout, on the other hand, is the best awakener of the sedentary man's digestion, or stand-by if he is hard-pressed and has only ten minutes in which to snatch a bite. A tonic stout is worth a bushel of indigestion tablets, not to mention tranquillizers.”
"Beer in Britain", 1960, page 107.

Proof, incidentally, that not all Stout other than Guinness was sweet in the 1950’s. Again, I’d have to agree with him. For most English dishes a beer like Mackeson is way too sweet. Though perhaps it might work with pudding. This talk of “tonic” is very 19th century, when doctors often recommended a Pale Ale like Bass to aid digestion.

At first I thought this next paragraph was a mention of the elusive commercial style of Home-Brewed. But I’m sure it’s meant more literally – beer brewed by someone at home.

“Finally, there is — or was — homebrewed. There was a jolly miller once who lived on a hill in Suffolk. The sails of his mill twirled merrily in March, and as often as you paid his bill he celebrated the fact with a pint of his home-brewed. It was cloudy — most home-brewed was — but very good, and an inducement to prompt payment. I remember too on my entry into a farmhouse being met by two powerful mingled odours. One came from a batch of loaves fresh from the oven. As to the other ... I sniffed questioningly. The old farmer tapped his nose, put a finger to his lips and opened a door. In a little room a mash-tub was steaming. He was breaking the law; but his tough old age and his son's and daughter's blooming health demonstrated that they understood the basic principles of good living.”
"Beer in Britain", 1960, page 107.

Home brewing wasn’t necessarily illegal in the 1950’s. It was perfectly fine, as long as you bought a licence. As late as 1960, just a couple of years before licences for home brewing were abolished, more than 1,000 were issued:

Brewing licences 1945 - 1960
	Brewers for sale
Year ending 31st March	No.	Duty paid £	Other brewers - not for sale	Total
1945	703	249,637	3,734	4,437
1946	680	255,863	3,512	4,192
1947	648	248,690	3,224	3,872
1948	625	240,265	3,073	3,698
1949	602	229,913	2,998	3,600
1950	567	212,902	2,673	3,240
1951	539	201,909	2,406	2,945
1952	524	199,122	2,225	2,749
1953	501	199,893	2,015	2,516
1954	479	197,056	1,758	2,237
1955	460	192,395	1,523	1,983
1956	426	192,956	1,396	1,822
1957	416	192,387	1,412	1,828
1958	399	198,331	1,317	1,716
1959	378	191,053	1,189	1,567
1960	358	196,675	1,055	1,413
Source:
1962 Brewers' Almanack, page 67.

Beer and food pairing in the 1950’s

As I keep telling you, there’s very little that’s new. Like beer and food pairing. People have been doing it for longer than you might imagine.

This is one of the earliest references to a ploughman’s lunch. A meal with a much shorter history than you might imagine. As Martyn Cornell has pointed out in great detail.

"PLOUGHMAN'S LUNCH "- AND OTHERS
By Adrian Bell

GONE are the days when the public-schoolboy of 12.5 drank four-X ale for breakfast. There are octogenarians of a physical and mental alertness which shows that it did them no harm; it occasioned, one said, "much cheerfulness." Beer for breakfast seems unthinkable now that the milky breakfast is universal; yet beer was taken for breakfast by farm men for so long as horses were used. By eight o'clock a carter with a load of corn for a destination 12 miles distant had been travelling three hours. He drew up at an inn and had his quart of mild along with his bread and fat bacon.”
"Beer in Britain", 1960, page 105.

A couple of pints for breakfast would certainly have cheered up my schooldays. Though I’m pretty sure some of the sixth form used to slip off down the pub that backed onto the playing fields at lunchtime. What really killed of breakfast beer was WW I and the restricted pub opening hours in brought along. Before the war, when pubs opened at 6 am, workers would nip in for a quick pint before their day’s graft.

I really like this next paragraph. It should be nailed to the screen of those “drinks” writers who only ever discuss wine, or, at a pinch, brandy and whisky.

“It is only the mystique that has grown up about wine, carefully fostered by gourmets who have seldom known an open-air appetite, that has disguised the truth that for an unsophisticated palate beer is a far better partner of food. Wine is too insistent: even at its suavest, every sip imposes its individuality and usurps the palate. Draught ale out of a cool tankard defers to the steak, the fowl, the cheese: it is like good prose to wine's poetry, and like good prose does not draw too much attention to itself.”
"Beer in Britain", 1960, page 105.

There was a great one on Saturday Kitchen recently. A “drinks” writer was looking for something to pair with a curry. After briefly mentioning, in a slightly condescending way, that many would pair beer with a curry, she inevitably went and picked a bleeding wine. Now, I quite like a glass of wine myself, but it’s totally and utterly pointless drinking it with spicy food. The combination does neither party any favours. A strong Stout, like Guinness FES works best with spicy dishes in my opinion.

And here’s that early reference to Ploughman’s Lunch”

“Beer can create balance where there is unbalance; it is a grand corrective to starch. Cheese, of course, is the third partner. In a certain inn to-day you have only to say, "Ploughman's Lunch, please," and for a shilling there is bread and cheese and pickled onions to go with your pint, and make a meal seasoned with gossip, and not solitary amid a multitude. Or, if you prefer, bring your own food: it is all one to the landlord. Where else can you have this conversational sort of picnic but in the ale-house?”
"Beer in Britain", 1960, page 105.

If you could be arsed to read Martyn’s article, you’ll know that the text was changed for the book version of “Beer in Britain”. In the original newspaper supplement it said “Ploughboy’s Lunch”. And that, while the term had been thought up by the Cheese Marketing Board in 1956 to encourage cheese sales, snacks of bread and cheese to accompany beer had been around much longer.

Next we’ll be looking at some specific examples of beers matched with food. It’ll be so exciting.

Schlenkerla Eiche and stuffed cabbage

My tea. What could be more interesting? It fascinates me, dominating my thoughts from just after breakfast until just before tea.

Sharing is a very positive word. Couple it with fascination for my tea and what do you have? A beer and food pairing! That I'm sharing!

I just scored some Schlenkerla Eiche. I've been told the smoke character is very different from their other beers.

"Still smells like bacon to me, dad."

"Give it a taste, Andrew, and tell me what you think."

"No dad. I'm ill." [Exit Andrew in wheelchair.]

"How do you think the smoke in the beer goes with the food, Dolores?"

"I told you I don't like smoked beer. Why do you make me try it?"[Dolores takes a sip.] "Happy?"

"Does it go with the food?"

"I'd have cooked Schweinehaxe if I wanted bacon."

"I'd call that complementary."

"Call it what you want, I'm not drinking any more. Can I eat my food now? It's gone cold while you've been taking all those stupid photographs."

The acrid smokiness of Schlenkerla Eiche, like the smell of cordite floating over the trenches of the Somme, perfectly complements the stuffed cabbaginess of the stuffed cabbage.

"How's that Dolores? Does that sum up the flavour combination?"

"Write want you want, Ronald. I'm eating. Lexie will get yours if you don't hurry up."

"I'll take that as a yes."