Daniel Gray is an accomplished writer of football books, but his latest offering is an entertaining homage to Britain’s favourite meal fish and chips. Gray ponders the delights and social history of fish and chips and travels the country visiting chippies from Dundee to Devon. This mouth-watering book is as much about who we are as what we eat.

In the debated story about how fish and chips came to be found come themes of immigration, race, war, class, women’s equality, and local and national identity. It is not a comprehensive social history but is fundamentally a celebration of fish and chips. The book is primarily a love letter, hopefully not a eulogy and was written as prices rose in the spring and summer of 2023.

Gray notes that the modern fish and chip shops are much more diversified affairs than they had been previously and include a variety of drinks as well as other fried ‘delicacies’ such as the famous deep fried Mars bar.

We are introduced to oddities like the Orange Chip in the Black Country. Shops there have, since the middle of the twentieth century, been dousing their chips in a batter that includes paprika, orange colouring or turmeric. Hull has American chip spice – a paprika powder scattered at the counter.

Gray travels the length and breadth of the country and provides glimpses of places you want to visit like Val D’Orso in Glasgow. Gray loves every element of the shop,

“…the art deco arms of the seating booths; the beige tables they bookend; the mid-century flooring in faded planet Mars maroon and dying house plant green; and the gallery of photographs and clippings that camouflage the walls, transforming them into a museum of everything that matters from family history to Juventus Scudetto wins.”

The first fish and chips originated in the Lancashire Mill towns such as Oldham and the first chip shop was in Mossley.  Fish and chips are now part of the British identity, but they somehow taste better when consumed at the seaside. Possibly because we are on holiday or having a day out. There is certainly a pleasure in eating outside. Gray describes an outing on a school night,

“Eating outside extinguished etiquette. Under the sky, we could talk with our mouths full and pincer our food with eager fingers. Wooden forks were plunged into a plump chip and left dormant, like tiny Excalibur swords welded into Maris Pipers. There would be no pots to wash, either. After a while we’d find a wall to roost upon, now rinsing our waxy mouths with Panda Pops. Everything felt slow and tranquil, especially compared to our other dining arenas of the boisterous school dinner hall and the family dining table with its sibling squabbles.”

We no longer have our fish and chips wrapped in newspaper but for a long time it was part of British folklore. Professor John K. Walton, a leading fish and chips academic, wrote in ‘Fish & Chips & The British Working Class, 1870 -1940,’    

“Eating out of newspaper, like eating out in the street more generally, put forward a claim to unpretentiously democratic values and a spontaneity and informality that were widely prized in some kinds of working-class culture.”

The fish and chip industry has played a significant and enduring part of our culture. For example during World War One it was deemed an essential trade and, in his book, Professor Walton revealed that the continued availability of the dish prevented starving people from rebelling, as had happened in Germany and Russia.

After the Second World War there was also an acknowledgement that fish and chips had contributed enormously to the war effort. Chippies had played a symbolic role, bolstering the national mood through bleak times. And they had fulfilled a physical one, keeping workers well fed for a few pence.

Lancastrian playwright Bill Naughton identified that: “There was about fish and chips a sound democratic touch that no other food possessed; the poorest person could stop alongside the poshest…You were all one in the kingdom of fish and chips.”

‘Food of the Cods’ is a slim volume, but it provides an inviting insight into the nation’s favourite cuisine. Gray enlivens the tastebuds and encourages the reader to want to go and enjoy their favourite meal at their designated fish and chip emporium. Right now, I’m off to the chippy.

Food of the Cods: How Fish & Chips Made Britain by Daniel Gray is published by Harper North. Price £12.99