All Episodes Talk: Under The Tent - Page 2 - The Great British Bake Off

On 12/7/2021 at 11:40 AM, MartyQui said:

I did like the little bits that they used to do to explain some of the history behind some of the bakes (like eel pie, ugh).

I'm watching the eel pie recipe over lunch and reliving my brief but immense disappointment that they didn't go from the eel pie segment to a technical challenge of... Eel pies!  Now *that* would have been some exciting TV - buckets of wriggling live eels, a board, hammer, and nail in the equipment for killing and skinning (they remain wriggling and seemingly live even after decapitation)... And some brilliant young baker figuring out a vegan workaround. 

I *don't* actually wish they had done this - eels are a threatened species and having a lot of unskilled butchers trying to butcher live creatures would be horrible on every level - but I was amused to realize how strong the impulse was - ah yes, eel pie history surely leads to eel pie baking! 

(and yes, I utterly agree that the history segments were amazing. If anybody wants more cool stuff along those lines, I heartily recommend looking up the great series that Ruth Goodman, Peter gunn and Alexander... Blast, I'm forgetting his last name. Anyway they've done a great "experimental archeology" series on life in various periods of British history.) 

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