英国《好管家》百年食谱研究：英国人吃的鱼为何越来越窄

从食谱里打捞被忽略的吃鱼史

英国消费者餐桌上的海鲜高度集中：约八成来自鳕鱼、黑线鳕、三文鱼、金枪鱼和虾五个类群。人们容易把这种谨慎归为民族口味，但埃克塞特大学的Ruth H. Thurstan把目光投向家庭厨房留下的稀少痕迹——食谱。她以英国《好管家》杂志为样本，按每十年选取若干年份，收集1923至2025年间发表的1192份鱼与贝类食谱。食谱不记录人们实际吃了什么，却显示读者被期待认识、买得到并愿意烹饪哪些鱼。

灵活的开端与标准化的转向

1920年代的食谱呈现出宽泛而灵活的鱼类文化：鳎鱼、牡蛎、虾、三文鱼与比目鱼、龙虾、鲱鱼并列，出现牡蛎鸡尾酒配橄榄、腌鱼奶油、牛奶比目鱼排等做法，近三分之一食谱给出替代鱼种建议，有些只写“鱼”或“白肉鱼”，可能因为供应并不总能预料。1950年代起，食谱更多假定使用处理好的鱼柳而非整鱼，冷冻产品变得常见。1970年代成为转折点，此后每个十年中，鳕鱼、黑线鳕、三文鱼、金枪鱼和虾的提及次数最多，鳎鱼、鲱鱼、牡蛎和龙虾则减少。

供应、贸易与营销塑造的“熟悉”

作者指出，食谱中出现的鱼种数量并未崩塌，变化在于注意力集中到更少的鱼身上。供应因素重要，但图景更复杂：鳕鱼在英国水域减少，却因远洋船队和进口继续留在食谱中；鲱鱼和牡蛎数量下降但未从市场完全消失，却淡出杂志版面。什么保持熟悉，更多取决于日益全球化的供应链与营销，而非本地船队捕获什么。近年食谱出现韩式辣酱鳕鱼、味噌虾串等全球风味，但鱼仍主要是那五类。

窄口味不是宿命

英国船只登陆的本地鱼贝类多样，其中许多用于出口，而今天吃到的鱼大多来自进口。作者认为，现代偏好更像供应、贸易与食品零售变化的结果，而非恒久的文化特质，这提示饮食习惯或许比想象中更可改变。研究也有边界：一本杂志只面向特定读者，食谱展示的是可见与向往之物，不等于实际烹制与食用。不过大众杂志不同于面向鱼类爱好者的专业食谱书，它呈现的是普通家庭厨师面前的选项。作者提出，恢复随季节与渔获调整的灵活性，并接受沙丁鱼、绿青鳕、贻贝等本地可持续海鲜，可能有益于海洋与沿海社区；已有供应商在尝试，但需进入主流。食谱本身无法保障渔业未来，却可与供应商和消费者的选择一起成为方向正确的一步。

Walk into a British supermarket and you will see prawns from south-east Asia, salmon from Norway, lobster from Canada and tuna from the Indian Ocean.

Seafood is among the most traded foods globally, yet around 80% of the seafood British consumers eat comes from just five species groups: cod, haddock, salmon, tuna and prawns.

It’s tempting to assume Britain has long been a nation of cautious fish eaters with a few trusted favourites. Histories of certain species, such as cod (the mainstay of the national dish, fish and chips) and herring (kippers on toast, anyone?) can reinforce that narrative. But my new research exploring a century of recipes from one of Britain’s longstanding domestic magazines suggests a different story.

Records of which fish people cooked at home are surprisingly patchy. Retail data are mostly short term and commercially owned, while long-running household surveys rarely record fish to species level. National statistics track what is landed and traded, but the home kitchen, where food choices are made and lifelong habits are formed, leaves far fewer traces.

Recipes offer a window into this hidden past. They don’t measure what people ate, but they do show which fish readers were expected to recognise, be able to buy and want to cook. Britain’s fish supply and trade have changed dramatically over the past century, so I wondered whether the fish in recipes had changed too.

British Good Housekeeping magazine was first published in the 1920s and continues today as Good Housekeeping UK. Its focus on home life and steady output of recipes make it well suited to tracking changing food culture. Sampling several years per decade, I collected 1,192 fish and shellfish recipes published from 1923-2025.

Recipes published in the 1920s reflect a broad and flexible fish culture. Sole, oysters, shrimp and salmon appeared alongside halibut, lobster and herring, in dishes such as oyster cocktails with olives, kipper cream and halibut steaks in milk. Almost a third of recipes included suggestions for substitute species. Some recipes (such as fish baked in custard) simply called for fish or white fish, probably because supply was not always predictable.

From the 1950s, that flexibility gave way to more standardisation. Recipes increasingly assumed prepared fillets rather than whole fish, and frozen products became common.

The 1970s marked a turning point. From then on, cod, haddock, salmon, tuna and prawns accounted for the most species mentions each decade, while sole, herring, oysters and lobster appeared less often. My research shows the number of fish species represented in recipes in each decade didn’t collapse, but attention became concentrated on fewer of them.

Shifting staples

What explains the shift? Supply matters, but the picture is more complicated. Cod declined in British waters but remained a recipe staple, as distant water fleets and then imports kept it on sale. Herring and oyster populations also declined but did not disappear from markets entirely, yet they faded from the magazine’s pages. What stayed familiar depended less on what our local fleets caught than on increasingly globalised supply chains and marketing.

Within this glossy monthly magazine, at least, fish recipes are more globally adventurous than ever: recent examples include gochujang sticky cod and miso prawn skewers. Yet the fish remain largely the same five. Britain’s cooking globalised, but the range of fish within these pages stayed narrow.

British boats, including many small vessels, land a diverse mix of locally caught fish and shellfish, but much of that is exported. In contrast, most of the fish eaten today is imported.

Britain’s narrow appetite for fish is often assumed to be a long-standing cultural norm. These recipes suggest otherwise. Viewed through this lens, modern preferences look less like an enduring national trait and more like an outcome of changing supply, trade and food retail. This raises the intriguing possibility that eating habits may be more open to change than previously thought.

One magazine can only reveal so much. Good Housekeeping was written for a particular readership. Its recipes show what was visible and aspirational, not what was prepared and eaten. But unlike specialist fish cookbooks, which are aimed at people already keen on fish, a mass market magazine shows which fish were put in front of ordinary home cooks.

A century ago, British cooks expected the fish on offer to change with the seasons and the catch. Reviving that flexibility, and a taste for local, sustainably caught seafood (such as sardines, pollack or mussels) could benefit our seas and coastal communities. Some suppliers are already pioneering this approach, but it needs to reach the mainstream.

Recipes written with versatility in mind won’t secure the future of Britain’s fish stocks and fishing communities alone, but, combined with thoughtful choices by suppliers and shoppers, they could be a (very enjoyable) step in the right direction.

Ruth H. Thurstan works for The University of Exeter. She received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 856488).