Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives (33 page)

With its royal connections, majestic roof, and heraldic imagery (not to mention the odd chunk of pirate ship), Middle Temple Hall has undeniable pedigree. For over four centuries it has witnessed the social, practical and ceremonial life of one of London’s greatest institutions. To misbehave within its hallowed walls, under the beady eye of the
law, would be unthinkable – which was what made my first meal there something of a trial. The reason for my dining at the Inn was my friend Nick, who, after a successful career in our mutual profession of architecture, had decided to become a barrister. This, as you might expect, involved him in a lot of hard work, but it also involved something rather less expected: his attendance at no fewer than 18 formal dinners in Hall. When Nick asked me to join him at one of these compulsory feasts, at first I thought it sounded like a jolly night out, but I soon realised my mistake when he warned me to dress soberly, and to expect some elaborate (yet unspecified) rituals. It was thus with some trepidation that I met Nick on the front steps, and we proceeded into Hall – he in knee-length black gown, me in my funeral kit – along with 200 similarly clad individuals already taking their places at table. As we scrambled to two of the last remaining seats, the head porter banged his staff on the floor and bade us all rise to face the room, whereupon the Benchers, resplendent in silken robes, proceeded in stately procession to their table, grace was said in Latin, and we all sat down.

Nick and I found ourselves opposite a young female lawyer and a much older male one; the latter, to my relief, immediately began engaging us in conversation. Since he seemed to be the only one of us remotely at his ease, we happily let him take the lead, and when the first course arrived – a homogeneous green soup – it seemed only natural that he was the first to be served and to take up his spoon. This pattern continued all evening, and at some point it dawned on me that the entire procedure was somehow codified: there could have been no other explanation for the curious combination of elaborate manners and indifferent food of which the meal consisted. While our host continued to behave as if he were leading some sort of panel discussion, the food got steadily worse: after the tasteless soup, we were regaled with grey lamb served with waterlogged vegetables and industrial mint sauce, followed by chemical-tasting fruit trifle with artificial cream – not the sort of food you normally get dressed up for.
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Apart from the bottle of Bordeaux Nick bought for us to wash it down with, the meal felt a bit like being back at school, which, as I later discovered, was more or less exactly what it was. Had I not been so overawed by my surroundings, I probably would have noticed earlier
that the table at which we were sitting was laid up in groups of four, with the side plates on alternate sides so that they formed a series of natural barriers. These sets of four, known as ‘messes’, are one’s designated company for dinner at the Inn, and it is forbidden to talk to anyone in an adjacent mess, apart from asking for the salt. The most senior barrister in each mess, who sits nearest the Bench Table facing the room, is designated ‘mess captain’ for the evening, and it is his or her duty to make the juniors feel welcome, to steer the conversation towards interesting topics, and to encourage everyone to express their opinions. In short, for the duration of the meal, they are expected to act as host, mentor and teacher.

The system is as old as the legal profession itself, dating back to the fourteenth century, when the Inns of Court replaced the clergy as arbiters of English law. The Inns were originally run like universities, and with their inner courts, lockable gates, chapels, libraries and dining halls, they resemble Oxford and Cambridge colleges, those other great educational inheritors of medieval monasticism. In the case of Middle Temple, the monastic inheritance is explicit: the site once belonged to the Knights Templar, whose title, Lamb and Flag emblem and ancient chapel were all adopted by the Inn.
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Even the Inn’s social structure derives from the warrior monks: the Knights’ habit of living and dining together in pairs, for both companionship and discipline, is the origin of the chambers system and the messes in which barristers still dine.
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From the outset, dining was integral to life at the Inn. Students were expected to ‘keep terms’ (live on site) and attend regular meals in Hall, where a specially appointed barrister, the Reader, read out articles of law, or presided over mock trials in which students could test their skills. However, the arrival of printed books in the sixteenth century marked a decline in formal training, and by the seventeenth century it had died out altogether. Students resorted to dining in Hall simply in order to try to learn something from their elders, and in 1798 the arrangement was formally ratified with the introduction of compulsory dining – a move that did little for the Inns’ reputation, since it gave the (essentially correct) impression that ‘gentlemen could eat their way to the Bar’.
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Formal lectures were reintroduced in 1852, but by then, obligatory dining was considered too valuable to lose.

Although modern Bar students receive rather more training than their seventeenth-century counterparts, their attendance at dinner is still taken very seriously indeed. Tickets must be handed in to the head porter on arrival, and once the Benchers have arrived in Hall, nobody may leave without written permission from ‘Master Treasurer’ until after Second Grace (people of a nervous disposition thinking of entering the legal profession might like to think again). As an extract from the current Middle Temple rule book suggests, breaches of etiquette are taken equally seriously:

… if any irregularity has been detected in either Grace, it is the custom for the senior Ancient to send a note, preferably in Latin, in to Master Treasurer, while the Benchers are taking dessert, ‘humbly’ drawing attention to the omission and requesting a ‘solatium’ [recompense]. This usually takes the form of a bottle of port presented thereupon by the offender to the Ancients.
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Reproofs in Latin and 40 per cent proof apologies notwithstanding, dining rituals at the Inns of Court serve a practical purpose. Successful barristers need to be quick-witted, confident, persuasive and courteous – skills that no textbook can teach them. With their moots, debates and challenges, dinners in Hall give students a chance to test their mettle against whatever life in court will throw at them, as well as keeping senior members of the Inn on their toes. Even the seemingly draconian rule forbidding communication between messes serves a purpose, forcing students to learn how to get on with whomsoever they happen to find themselves sitting next to. Above all, the legal profession is a social network, and, as the Inns have recognised for centuries, there is no better way of socialising – or networking – than by sharing meals regularly with other people.

Needless to say, most meals in Britain today are far removed from the sort of rarefied dining practised by the Inns of Court. More than half
the meals we eat are eaten alone; the majority of those consumed on the hoof, in front of the telly, or sitting at a desk.
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Our lifestyles are increasingly fuelled by food, not structured around it; not least because of the enormous social changes that have taken place over the past century or so. In 1871, there were six children in the average British household; by the 1930s that figure had shrunk to two; by 2003 it was less than one.
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Thirty-six per cent of households now consist of couples and 27 per cent people living on their own. Our splintering domestic arrangements mean that we are relying increasingly on restaurants for our social dining. Over a third of the food we consume in Britain is now eaten outside the home; a figure that by 2025 is expected to rise to half, close to the current level in the USA.
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The trend has even got the supermarkets worried: with a ‘share of stomach’ worth £34.5 billion in 2003 and rising fast, the catering industry is closing the gap on their dominance of the convenience-foods market.
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The supermarkets have responded by stocking takeaway brands such as Pizza Express in their stores, and ready meals claiming to be ‘restaurant-quality food to eat at home’.

Whether we eat out or in, there is no doubt that formal dining in Britain is on the wane. A quarter of households no longer even have a dining table large enough for everyone to sit around.
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But although most of our meals (or ‘meal occasions’, as the food industry insists on calling them) consist either of fast food or ready meals (‘meal solutions’), there is one kind of occasion for which only one sort of meal will do. Whenever we have a really significant event to celebrate, a feast is still overwhelmingly the way we choose to do it. Tables may be shrinking and lifestyles speeding up, but nothing has yet replaced feasting as a celebratory mechanism. Dinner parties may no longer be quite the make-or-break social events of a century ago, but even they retain a certain potency. Being asked to dine at someone’s house remains something of an honour, and an unmistakable token of friendship.

A couple of years ago, my friend Karen invited me to join her for Seder, a meal traditionally eaten by Jewish families on Passover eve. With origins stretching back more than 3,000 years to the original night of Passover, Seder is a ritual devoted to the retelling of the Haggadah, the story of the Israelites’ delivery from slavery in Egypt.
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Traditionally
narrated by the male head of the household, the story is accompanied by prayers, blessings, songs – and food; although as I took my place beside Karen at her mother Susan’s table, all I could see of the latter was a puzzling array of dishes, including large flat matzo biscuits, sprigs of parsley, some grated horseradish, a burnt egg, a greyish-brown paste which I later discovered was called
charoset
, and, strangest of all, some sort of animal bone. Even the edible offerings looked decidedly unappetising, which, as I soon found out, they were supposed to be.

Bracing myself for a voyage into the gustatory unknown, my main concern was to avoid offending anyone at table by doing something wrong. However, I need not have worried. As well as a sacred ritual, Seder is a sort of edible history lesson aimed at children; and as I listened to Karen’s Uncle Harold reciting the Haggadah (in Hebrew, with whispered translations from his niece), I was gently guided through the meal and its various meanings. Parsley, I discovered, is dipped in salt-water at Seder to represent the tears of the Israelites, matzo symbolises their hurried departure from Egypt without time to raise dough to make bread, horseradish is eaten to represent the bitterness of slavery, and the burnt egg is a symbol of mourning and of new life. But the food that appealed to me most was
charoset
: made of finely chopped apples, walnuts and sweet wine, it is supposed to represent the mortar with which Jewish slaves were forced to construct the buildings of their Egyptian oppressors.

As I tasted each of these foods in turn, the Haggadah came alive for me – increasingly so as the evening advanced, since by the time we came to the bitter herbs a second time, I was getting mightily hungry. That, of course, was the whole point: unlike most celebratory meals, Seder is not simply about filling oneself up in the pleasantest way possible. The food has a symbolic, rather than a nutritional purpose; indeed the most significant ‘food’ on the table – the animal bone, which turned out to be a lamb shank – is not even edible. It is there to recall a defining moment in Jewish history: the night when God told the Israelites to sacrifice a lamb so that they would be spared the planned slaughter of the firstborn. This sacrifice (Pesach) is what gives Passover its Hebrew name, and its annual celebration provides a link back to a time when all major feasts were preceded by ritual slaughter: when the
giving of life in order to receive it was fundamental to the order of the meal. Today that sacrifice is celebrated only in memory, but I am happy to report that the other part of Seder – the feast that follows the ceremony – is still very much alive, and that Karen’s mother Susan is a very fine cook.

The pleasure of eating requires, if not hunger, at least appetite …

Meals like Seder remind us of the ancient origins of table rituals. Whenever we sit down together to eat, we repeat the actions of our distant ancestors, whose beliefs and customs structured civilisation itself. Our forebears had no choice but to follow the rhythm of the seasons, but their festivals did more than merely echo the natural world; they attempted to reconcile the everyday rhythm of human life with the divine. Sacrifice was used to appease the deities, while fasting and feasting – the two extremes of ritualised eating – responded to the eternal seasonal cycle of want and plenty.

The Muslim festival of Eid-al-Adha gives some idea of the transformational power that harvest festivals must once have had in ancient cities. The feast (whose Arabic name means ‘festival of sacrifice’) is a joyous celebration of spiritual renewal that comes at the end of the Hajj, the ritual pilgrimage of Muslims to Mecca. The meal itself is usually a large family lunch at which special foods are eaten, mainly dishes of meat, traditionally from an animal ritually slaughtered by the male head of the household. In Cairo, the sense of anticipation intensifies with the arrival of the many sheep and goats brought in from the countryside for the festival. Crammed into every available space, such as makeshift pens, balconies and rooftops, the animals fill the air with their plaintive bleating as they await the knife. The scale of the bucolic invasion ensures that Eid affects more than just its celebrants. On the day of slaughter itself, the city is transformed into a spontaneous outdoor slaughterhouse, with animals
running amok in the streets and gutters coursing with blood. To those of us brought up in the sanitised West, such scenes can be shocking, but there is no denying their power to bring the dilemmas of human existence to the very heart of the city.
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