Fish and Chips

The two halves came separately. Fried fish in batter arrived with Sephardic Jewish immigrants from Portugal and Spain, eaten cold and documented in London by the 1830s; fried potato in some form spread from the north of England around the same period. Who first sold them together is disputed between Joseph Malin in London around 1860 and John Lees in Mossley, Lancashire. Rail-borne trawler fish made it cheap, and by the 1920s there were around thirty-five thousand shops. It was one of the few foods never rationed in either war, on the grounds that removing it would damage morale. Cod and haddock dominate, with haddock preferred in the north and Scotland. The accompaniments split regionally: mushy peas, curry sauce, gravy, scraps or bits in the north, and non-brewed condiment rather than vinegar in many shops.

What you actually see

• The regional splits - haddock in the north and Scotland, cod in the south.
• The accompaniments - mushy peas, curry sauce, gravy or scraps by region.
• The batter - beer or plain, thick or thin, argued about locally.
• The wrapping - paper, once newspaper until food rules ended it in the 1980s.

When to go

Year-round; coastal towns near landing ports have the freshest fish, and Friday is traditionally the busiest day. Many shops close between lunch and evening service.

Honest expectations

Quality varies enormously and a bad one is greasy and heavy. Cod stocks in some areas are under pressure, and shops increasingly source from Iceland and Norway. Seagulls in coastal towns take food from hands and are genuinely aggressive.

Nearby

Every town in Britain; Whitby, Aldeburgh and the Yorkshire and East Anglian coasts have particular reputations.