Quote Originally Posted by Steve Ashton View Post
Ya know, it's interesting. Many of those things we call National or ethnic dishes are in fact "poor people food." Bouillabaisse, if you have it on the docks of Marseilles, is fish stew made from whatever the fisherman did not sell out of his catch that day. Soul food in the US is what ever was really cheap or free along the edges of the field after harvesting the good stuff.
Haggis made from the offal cuts is much the same way. Lots of cheap oats to fill you up and enough of anything else you could find to make it go down better.
We seem to hold Bouillabaisse, Soul Food, Haggis etc in some sort of reverence that I think would shock the tenant farmers who figured out how to make something to eat with what would probably not be welcome on the table up at the big house.
As a former chef, who's also done research into medieval food, you're spot on. Some of the dishes that we used to prepare for the restaurant and people paid high proces for, were originally peasant food, and dishes that are now common place and looked down on were origianlly nobility dishes. Its a funny old world.