Welcome back to Eating the Past, I’m your host, Sarah Berry.
The other day someone asked me what Victorians would think of Flamin Hot Cheetos, like would it be way too hot and spicy for them or would it just be so unusual they wouldn’t touch it. I love that I live in a world where someone would ask me this question. And so sincerely.
It is a very common stereotype that Victorian food was horribly bland…boiled meats, beige vegetables, potatoes maybe, monotonous and cheap meals consisting of porridge, beans on toast, and tea. Industrialization and poverty of course did mean that the urban working class often ate this way, but this was not the default, not by a long shot. If you open up a 19th century British cookbook you might be surprised how often you’ll find strongly flavored food.
For example, Victorians LOVED cayenne pepper. They put cayenne in soups, sauces, meats, curries, pickles, savory snacks, and sprinkled it on toast or used as a relish. Recipes for “deviled” dishes – meaning foods seasoned with cayenne pepper and mustard— were especially popular during the nineteenth century. Deviled kidneys, deviled biscuits, and deviled ham all regularly appeared on Victorian tables. Some recipes called for a shocking amount of cayenne, more than I would ever use because I don’t like my food that spicy. No, they were not lightweights when it came to spices.
I looked through an 1831 book called The Cook’s Oracle in the USU Library archives and I found more than 50 recipes with cayenne pepper. The author adds cayenne to chicken, lobster, beef, duck, fish, stuffing, soup, beets, salad dressing, even wine. It’s added to a recipe for chili pepper vinegar that is already pretty fiery. It’s everywhere, there is an entire section dedicated to cayenne pepper. This book has been digitized and is available online by the way.
Part of this growing taste for spice came from Britain’s imperialist relationship with India. British officials, soldiers, merchants, and their families stationed in India developed a taste for the cuisine and brought those flavors back home with them. Curry became fashionable and very common in Britain, especially among middle- and upper-class households eager to embrace something exotic and modern. The oldest British curry recipe I’ve found is from Hannah Glasse’s cookbook "The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy" (which was written in 1747), so by the 19th century it wasn’t unusual to include recipes for curried foods in major British cookbooks.
Eliza Acton included a whole section on curries (both British and traditional Indian) in her 1845 book "Modern Cookery." Another famous Victorian cook, Isabella Beeton, also included numerous curry recipes in her 1861 Book of Household Management. Curried chicken, curried rabbit, curry sauce, kedgeree, and spicy chutneys all became common features of upper-class Victorian cuisine. By the mid-1800s, curry powder had become a standard pantry ingredient in many British homes.
These curry powders were inspired by Indian spice blends but adapted for British tastes. Commercial blends often included turmeric, ginger, coriander, cumin, black pepper, and cayenne pepper. Victorian advertisements promoted curry powder as convenient and beneficial to digestion.
Of course, British curry was often quite different from regional Indian cuisines. Recipes were frequently modified to suit British tastes and ideas about food. But Indian cuisine still transformed the British palate in lasting ways. Chicken tikka masala, for example, actually originated at a curry house in Scotland as a modern Indian fusion dish. Or so the story goes.
So while nineteenth-century Britain certainly had its share of boiled dinners, it was also a world of cayenne pepper, curry powder, and spicy foods that challenge the assumption that Victorian cooking was always bland.
So returning back to the original question about how Victorians would respond to Flamin Hot Cheetos. I honestly think they wouldn’t have batted an eye at the spice level. The color, however, may have been a concern. Back then, bright red-orange colored candies and jellies were often adulterated with toxic vermilion mercury – at least until stronger food laws were passed in the 1880s to ban metals in food dye. Neon colors probably would have been suspicious, and likely toxic.
However, they would have been very impressed by the modern industrial mass-produced nature of our snack foods. The biggest shock for the Victorians though (I think) would have been the texture. Extruded PUFFED corn wasn’t invented until the 1930s. So that might have been a little off-putting for them.
Thank you for joining me, and until next time on Eating the Past, every Sunday at noon before The Splendid Table on your UPR station.
