Fish and chips: the dish that tastes of sea, coal and working-class history

By GoPocket · 30 Jun 2026 · 4 min read

There is a precise smell that belongs to London as much as Big Ben and the thin November rain: that of hot oil, fried cod and malt vinegar poured in a stream over a mountain of golden potatoes. Fish and chips is not simply a dish: it is a collective ritual that cuts across social classes, generations and neighbourhoods. It is born from hunger, grows with industry, survives wars and arrives intact to this day, wrapped in its greaseproof paper like a letter sent from the past.

Two origins, one revolutionary marriage

Fish and chips is the offspring of two migrant traditions that met in Victorian England. Battered fried fish arrived with Sephardic communities, Spanish and Portuguese Jews who found refuge in London after centuries of persecution: it was their way of cooking the catch in advance, to preserve it and eat it cold during Shabbat. Chips, fried potatoes, came instead from Northern England and Scotland, where street vendors served them steaming to factory and dockyard workers. No one knows for certain who first had the idea of combining them, nor when exactly the combination became established as a single dish — the history of popular food rarely leaves precise documents.

The hunger of industrialisation

To understand why fish and chips became London's food, you must imagine the Victorian city: overcrowded, smoky, full of workers leaving factories and dockyards without time or money to cook. Street-side fryers, often Italian or Eastern European Jewish immigrants, offered a hot, nourishing and cheap meal that required no plates, cutlery or kitchens. It was eaten in the street, standing up, often wrapped in old sheets of newspaper — a practice that survived until the end of the twentieth century, before hygiene regulations banned it. It was the fast food of the industrial era, long before anyone invented that term.

The cod and the North Sea

The protagonist of the dish is almost always cod, fished for centuries in the cold waters of the North Sea and the North Atlantic. The British fishing fleet was among the largest in the world, and cod was abundant, economical and perfectly suited to battering and frying: the firm white flesh withstood the heat without falling apart, forming that golden and crispy crust that became the hallmark of the dish. Over time, haddock and plaice appeared alongside cod, but it is still the cod that defines the authentic experience for many Londoners.

When chip shops saved national morale

During the First and Second World Wars, fish and chips enjoyed favourable treatment compared to many other foods: while rationing tightened everyday life for the British, this dish remained largely accessible to the population. It was not a bureaucratic oversight: it is believed to have been a deliberate choice, linked to the recognition of its social and symbolic value. In a country under bombardment, with families divided and cities dark from blackout, knowing that you could still buy a hot portion from the local fryer had enormous psychological meaning. The chip shop was a point of normality in the midst of chaos, a place where you queued together, talked, still felt part of a community.

Malt vinegar and ritual battles

Every Londoner has firm opinions on how to eat fish and chips, and discussing it can turn into a debate as lively as politics. Do you put the salt before or after the vinegar? Do you use paper or a plastic tray? Do you eat sitting down or walking along the Thames? And then there is the question of mushy peas, peas reduced to a green purée, which for purists in the North are indispensable and for many Londoners in the South remain a culinary mystery. Malt vinegar, pungent and dark, is however the universal condiment: its smell is so tied to the dish as to be almost an autonomous olfactory experience, capable of instantly recalling memories and afternoons spent on the riverbank.

Today: between nostalgia and new life

Fish and chips has lived through decades of relative decline, overtaken by pizza, curry and the thousands of fast foods that have colonised London's streets. Yet it resists, reinvents itself, finds new admirers. Today there are versions with sustainable fish, gluten-free batters, sweet potato chips — contaminations that would have horrified a Victorian grandmother but which demonstrate the vitality of a dish capable of evolving without losing its soul. And when evening falls on London and the air smells of rain, there is still something profoundly right about the idea of stopping in front of a brightly lit chip shop and waiting for your turn, paper in hand, as it has always been done.

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