Could cave men cook fish and chips?
Deep-fried fish and deep-fried chips have appeared separately on menus for many years — though potatoes did not reach Europe until the 17th century. The originally Sephardi dish Pescado frito, or deep-fried fish, came to the Netherlands and England with the Spanish and Portuguese Jews in the 17th and 18th centuries. The dish became popular in wider circles in London and the south-east in the middle of the 19th century (Charles Dickens mentions a “fried fish warehouse” in Oliver Twist – first published in 1838) whilst in the north of England a trade in deep-fried “chipped” potatoes developed; one (sometimes disputed) claim records the first chip shop as existing on the present site of Oldham’s Tommyfield Market. It remains unclear exactly when and where these two trades combined to become the fish and chip shop industry we know today, though Joseph Malin opened the first recorded combined fish and chip shop in London in 1860. The fish-and-chip shop originates in the UK, where it has usu
