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A ploughman's lunch is an English cold
meal A meal is an eating occasion that takes place at a certain time and includes consumption of food. The names used for specific meals in English vary, depending on the speaker's culture, the time of day, or the size of the meal. Although they c ...
based around
bread Bread is a staple food prepared from a dough of flour (usually wheat) and water, usually by baking. Throughout recorded history and around the world, it has been an important part of many cultures' diet. It is one of the oldest human-made f ...
,
cheese Cheese is a dairy product produced in wide ranges of flavors, textures, and forms by coagulation of the milk protein casein. It comprises proteins and fat from milk, usually the milk of cows, buffalo, goats, or sheep. During productio ...
, and fresh or
pickled onion Pickled onions are a food item consisting of onions (cultivars of '' Allium cepa'') pickled in a solution of vinegar and salt, often with other preservatives and flavourings.ham Ham is pork from a leg cut that has been preserved by wet or dry curing, with or without smoking."Bacon: Bacon and Ham Curing" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 2, p. 39. As a processed meat, the term "ham ...
, green
salad A salad is a dish consisting of mixed, mostly natural ingredients with at least one raw ingredient. They are typically served at room temperature or chilled, though some can be served warm. Condiments and salad dressings, which exist in a va ...
, hard
boiled egg Boiled eggs are eggs, typically from a chicken, cooked with their shells unbroken, usually by immersion in boiling water. Hard-boiled eggs are cooked so that the egg white and egg yolk both solidify, while soft-boiled eggs may leave the yolk ...
s, and
apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...
, and usual accompaniments are butter and "pickle", which in Britain denotes a
chutney A chutney is a spread in the cuisines of the Indian subcontinent. Chutneys are made in a wide variety of forms, such as a tomato relish, a ground peanut garnish, yogurt or curd, cucumber, spicy coconut, spicy onion or mint dipping sauce ...
-like condiment.Petrini and Watson (eds) (2001) ''Slow Food: Collected Thoughts on Taste, Tradition and the Honest Pleasures of Food'', Chelsea Green, p.164 As its name suggests, it is most commonly eaten at
lunch Lunch is a meal eaten around the middle of the day. It is commonly the second meal of the day, after breakfast, and varies in size by culture and region. Etymology According to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED''), the etymology ...
time. It is particularly associated with pubs, and often served with
beer Beer is one of the oldest and the most widely consumed type of alcoholic drink in the world, and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from ce ...
. Beer, bread, and cheese have been combined in the English diet since antiquity, and have been served together in inns for centuries. However, the specific term "
ploughman A plough or plow (Differences between American and British spellings, US; both ) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses, but in modern farms are draw ...
's lunch" is believed to date from the 1950s, when the Cheese Bureau, a marketing body, began promoting it in pubs as a way to increase the sales of cheese, which had recently ceased to be rationed. Its popularity increased as the
Milk Marketing Board The Milk Marketing Board was a producer-run product marketing board, established by the Agricultural Marketing Act 1933, to control milk production and distribution in the United Kingdom. It functioned as buyer of last resort in the milk market i ...
promoted the meal nationally throughout the 1960s.


History

''
Pierce the Ploughman's Crede ''Pierce the Ploughman's Crede'' is a medieval alliterative poem of 855 lines, lampooning the four orders of friars. Textual history Surviving in two complete 14th-century manuscripts and two early printed editions, the ''Crede'' can be dated o ...
'' (c. 1394) mentions the traditional
ploughman A plough or plow (Differences between American and British spellings, US; both ) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses, but in modern farms are draw ...
's meal of bread, cheese, and beer. Bread and cheese formed the basis of the diet of English rural labourers for centuries: skimmed-milk cheese, supplemented with a little lard and butter, was their main source of fats and protein.Thirsk and Clay (eds.) ''Chapters from the Agrarian History of England and Wales: Volume 2,'' CUP, 1990, p. 216 In the absence of access to expensive seasonings, onions were the "favoured condiment", as well as providing a valuable source of
vitamin C Vitamin C (also known as ascorbic acid and ascorbate) is a water-soluble vitamin found in citrus and other fruits and vegetables, also sold as a dietary supplement and as a topical 'serum' ingredient to treat melasma (dark pigment spots) ...
. The reliance on cheese rather than meat protein was especially strong in the south of the country. As late as the 1870s, farmworkers in
Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devo ...
were said to eat "bread and hard cheese at 2 d. a pound, with cider very washy and sour" for their midday meal.Royle 2012, p. 193. While this diet was associated with
rural poverty Rural poverty refers to poverty in rural areas, including factors of rural society, rural economy, and political systems that give rise to the poverty found there.Janvry, A. de, E. Sadoulet, and R. Murgai. 2002“Rural Development and Rural Pol ...
, it also gained associations with more idealised images of rural life.
Anthony Trollope Anthony Trollope (; 24 April 1815 – 6 December 1882) was an English novelist and civil servant of the Victorian era. Among his best-known works is a series of novels collectively known as the '' Chronicles of Barsetshire'', which revolves ar ...
in '' The Duke's Children'' has a character comment that "A rural labourer who sits on the ditch-side with his bread and cheese and an onion has more enjoyment out of it than any
Lucullus Lucius Licinius Lucullus (; 118–57/56 BC) was a Roman general and statesman, closely connected with Lucius Cornelius Sulla. In culmination of over 20 years of almost continuous military and government service, he conquered the eastern kingd ...
".Trollope, ''The Duke's Children'', 1902, p. 253 While farm labourers usually carried their food with them to eat in the fields, similar food was for a long time served in
public house A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and wa ...
s as a simple, inexpensive meal. In 1815, William Cobbett recalled how farmers going to market in
Farnham Farnham ( /ˈfɑːnəm/) is a market town and civil parish in Surrey, England, around southwest of London. It is in the Borough of Waverley, close to the county border with Hampshire. The town is on the north branch of the River Wey, a tri ...
, forty years earlier, would often add "2d. worth of bread and cheese" to the pint of beer they drank at the inn stabling their horses.Cobbett, "To the Chancellor of the Exchequer", ''Weekly Political Register'', 15 December 1815, 329 In the 19th century the English fondness for serving cheese and bread with beer was noted, as "the very dryness and saltness heighten thirst, and therefore the relish of the beer".McMichael, George (1883)
Notes on the Way through Ayrshire - Parish of Dunlop
accessed 01-04-22
In the early 20th century, bread and cheese was still the only food available in many rural pubs: in 1932 Martin Armstrong described stopping at village inns for a lunch of bread, cheese and beer, noting that "On these occasions in country inns when bread, cheese and beer seem so extraordinarily good, the alternative is generally nothing; and compared with nothing bread, cheese, and beer are beyond compare".Armstrong, "Comparatively speaking", in ''The Weekend Review'' v.6 (1932), 128 While ''
Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a c ...
'' states the first recorded use of the phrase "ploughman's luncheon" occurred in 1837, from the '' Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott'' by John G. Lockhart, this stray early use may have meant merely the sum of its parts, "a lunch for a ploughman". The ''OED''s next reference is from the July 1956 ''Monthly Bulletin'' of the Brewers' Society, which describes the activities of the Cheese Bureau, a marketing body affiliated with the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. It describes how the Bureau By the 1950s, the traditional combination of bread, cheese, beer and onions was certainly being referred to by forms of the name later used to promote it. In 1956, author
Adrian Bell Adrian Hanbury Bell (4 October 1901 – 5 September 1980) was an English ruralist journalist and farmer, and the first compiler of ''The Times'' crossword. Early life Bell was born at Stretford, Lancashire, son of Robert Bell (1865-1949), e ...
reported: "There's a pub quite close to where I live where ... all you need say is, 'Ploughboy's Lunch, Harry, please'. And in a matter of minutes a tray is handed across the counter to you on which is a good square hunk of bread, a lump of butter and a wedge of cheese, and pickled onions, along with your pint of beer". Only a year later, in June 1957, another edition of the ''Monthly Bulletin'' of the Brewers' Society referred to a ploughman's lunch using that name, and said that it consisted of " cottage bread, cheese, lettuce, hard-boiled eggs, cold sausages and, of course, beer". The
Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popu ...
newspaper ''The Bulletin'' from 15 April 1958 and ''
The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ( ...
'' from 29 April 1958 refer to a ploughman's lunch consisting of bread, cheese and pickled onions. The meal rose rapidly in popularity during the 1970s. This has been argued to be at least partially based on a British cultural "revulsion from technology and modernity and a renewed love-affair with an idealised national past", although it appears the main reasons the ploughman's lunch was favoured by caterers were that it was simple and quick to prepare even for less skilled staff, required no cooking, and involved no meat, giving a potential for high profit margins.Lippert, "The choice is cheese", ''Hotelier and Caterer'', v.22 (1989), 71 The film ''
The Ploughman's Lunch ''The Ploughman's Lunch'' is a 1983 British drama film written by Ian McEwan and directed by Richard Eyre which features Jonathan Pryce, Tim Curry, and Rosemary Harris. The film looks at the media world in Margaret Thatcher's Britain around th ...
'' (1983), from a screenplay by
Ian McEwan Ian Russell McEwan, (born 21 June 1948) is an English novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, ''The Times'' featured him on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945" and ''The Daily Telegraph'' ranked him number 19 in its list of th ...
, has a subtext that is "the way countries and people re-write their own history to suit the needs of the present". The title alludes to the debatable claim that the supposedly "traditional" meal was the result of a marketing campaign of the 1960s devised to encourage people to eat meals in pubs.Cornell ''Strange Tales of Ale'', pp. 17–25


See also

*
Branston (food) Branston is an English food brand best known for the original Branston Pickle, a jarred pickled chutney first made in 1922 in the village of Branston near Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire by Crosse & Blackwell. The Branston factory proved to ...
* English cheese *
Cheese and pickle sandwich A cheese and pickle sandwich (sometimes known as a cheese and chutney sandwich or a ploughman's sandwich from its resemblance to a ploughman's lunch) is a British sandwich. As its name suggests, it consists of sliced or grated cheese (typically ...
, sometimes referred to by retailers as a "ploughman's sandwich"


References


Further reading

* {{English cuisine Cheese dishes Food combinations English cuisine English phrases Meals Dairy marketing