Fish and Chips

Paul and I - who have not yet discovered a topic on which we can't argue - were disputing fish and chips last night. We both agreed that we had heard that it came from an amalgam of two traditions. I said that I had heard that it was Jewish fried fish and Lancastrian chips, while he maintained that it was Portuguese fish and Scottish chips.

I have dug up the reference I half remembered. See A Welsh Born Icon: The history and origin of fish and chips. It is from the early days of the weblog and can't be reached from the Archives.

The great Claudia Roden credits Portuguese Marranos - Jews who had been forced to hide their ethnicity due to persecution - for introducing fried fish to this country when they arrived as refugees in the sixteenth century.

So we're both right. Hurray!