Victorian street food

Victorian street food was a huge industry.  In the north you would find tripe sellers; I remember the one in Dewsbury market that sold nine different varieties of tripe, including penis and udder (which is remarkably like pease pudding).  Another popular street food was pea soup with, according to where you lived, either pig’s trotters or bits of ham chopped up into it.  Peas boiled in the pod and served with butter were similarly popular.  Stalls known in my youth as whelk stalls also sprang up, selling jellied eels, whelks, winkles and prawns, all by the pint or the half-pint.  You could splash a bit of vinegar on them and eat them at the stall or take them home with you.

That is from the new and excellent A History of English Food, by Clarissa Dickson Wright.  This book also offers up a good deal of confirming evidence for Paul Krugman’s prior hypotheses about English food.

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