{"id":10434,"date":"2026-04-09T16:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T16:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/10434\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T16:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T16:06:09","slug":"the-death-of-gentlemans-relish-proves-that-britain-has-lost-its-taste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/10434\/","title":{"rendered":"The death of Gentleman’s Relish proves that Britain has lost its taste"},"content":{"rendered":"

My dear friend the Colonel and I have tea together from time to time at one of the country\u2019s most august establishments. He\u2019s not really a colonel, although he does have a military background, a commanding bearing and a resolutely British manner. He is also a creature of habit, and his order is always the same: a pot of English Breakfast tea, two crumpets (well done), and a side order of The Gentleman\u2019s Relish<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The last two times we have taken tea, however, he has been told that his favourite accompaniment has not been available. I didn\u2019t think anything about it until I discovered this morning the horrible truth: The Gentleman\u2019s Relish, a piquant anchovy paste whose recipe is as closely guarded a secret as that of Coca-Cola<\/a> and which was first put before the public in 1828, is no more. Its production has been ceased by current owners, the food production conglomerate, AB World Foods.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a quiet death, all right, and only epicureans with a taste for tradition, like the Colonel, will mourn its passing. Very much an acquired taste, it comes in a discreet white pot (a future design classic?) and is a rather unappealing grey, sludgy paste with a distinctly fishy aroma. It has a peculiarly strong flavour, not for the faint-hearted, a fact acknowledged by the instructions for use: \u201cTo appreciate the fine flavour of this relish,\u201d it reads, \u201cit should be used VERY SPARINGLY\u201d. <\/p>\n

The official communiqu\u00e9 from AB World Foods, however, spoke of part of our food culture whose time has come and gone. \u201cWhile we recognise that this Victorian relish has a niche and loyal following,\u201d said a spokesperson, \u201cit sadly does not have wider commercial appeal and, despite our best efforts, retailer distribution has dwindled.\u201d<\/p>\n

What kind of a world would it be if only food which had \u201cwide commercial appeal\u201d was available? No more Manx kippers, only fish fingers. Goodbye to Jerusalem artichokes<\/a> and hello Potato Smileys. Sorry, no Simnel Cake, but we do have Mr Kipling. I\u2019m not saying that The Gentleman\u2019s Relish is a staple of the British diet, and it\u2019s definitely hard to make a case for the contemporary resonance of an item whose proper name is in Latin (\u201cPatum Peperium\u201d, translated as \u201cPepper Paste\u201d) and whose principal purpose is to be spread on hot, buttered toast.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, it is a small piece of our culinary heritage that is dying out, and, while I wouldn\u2019t say that news of its demise has broken the internet, there are plenty of posts on social media that offer a lamentation. \u201cLook what you\u2019ve done with your bloody avocado toast, granola and kefir,\u201d read one contribution on X. \u201cAnother small tessera of the mosaic of Britain\u2019s oddities and specialities bites the dust,\u201d read another.<\/p>\n

One contributor even suggested it was a sign of a more fundamental, sociological change. \u201cI\u2019d take an educated guess,\u201d she wrote, \u201cthat the problem is a lack of gentlemen in today\u2019s society.\u201d She may well be on to something. Even its very name \u2013 \u201cThe Gentleman\u2019s Relish\u201d \u2013 speaks of a somewhat antiquated concept, a platonic ideal of yesteryear, and harks back to the time of Empire, No place for this tasty little curiosity in these days of weight-loss jabs, faddy diets, girl dinners and cupboards full of kimchi, Dubai chocolate and Chamoy Pickles.<\/p>\n

But what if you knew that Nigella Lawson<\/a> said it was one of the 10 British foods she can\u2019t live without, alongside Bramley apples, Maldon Salt and Colman\u2019s English mustard? \u201cIf you\u2019re an anchovy lover, this has your name on it,\u201d she says, proclaiming that a layer of Gentleman\u2019s Relish is \u201cwonderful on a toasted English muffin with a poached egg on top\u201d.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the writer Jessica Mitford<\/a> told Radio 4\u2019s Desert Island Discs that it was the one luxury item that she would take to her desert island, James Bond was partial to its particular delights (he partook of it in \u201cFor Your Eyes Only\u201d) and no less a kitchen authority than Mrs Beeton, in her best-selling Book of Household Management, refers to it as \u201can excellent bonne bouche which enables gentlemen at wine-parties to enjoy their port with redoubled gusto\u201d. <\/p>\n

Ok, so Jessica Mitford, Mrs Beeton, James Bond and certainly my friend the Colonel, are not exactly the arbiters of modern tastes. But food is about romance, a sense of place and the reflection of a shared history. In that, there is reason for us all to mourn the death of Gentleman\u2019s Relish. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My dear friend the Colonel and I have tea together from time to time at one of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,1812,1398,1793],"class_list":{"0":"post-10434","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-food","10":"tag-food-and-drink","11":"tag-nostalgia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116375609867757436","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}