Mac 'n' Cheese
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 977 Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2017
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sheila Dillon charts the rise of the humble mac'n'cheese: a dish that crosses culture and classes and has established itself as a popular comfort food across the world.
We discover the history of the dish. Food historian Polly Russell tells us how a macaroni recipe first appeared in the UK in the 1700s and slowly it became more and more prevalent over the subsequent centuries.
We'll hear how macaroni cheese became a staple in the UK: cheap and easy to make its popularity spread. It was also embraced by Caribbean cuisine, regularly eaten as a side dish, especially with Sunday lunch, and now there's even an annual celebration of the meal. Each May Glasgow hosts 'Pastaval' - a festival of Mac n Cheese. The event sells-out each year and is popular with everyone.
And whilst you can still buy basic packet versions, tinned macaroni cheese and simple home-made macaroni cheese is easy to make, there are many 'going-to-town' on the dish: Lobster mac n cheese anyone?
This is the story of a dish that crosses cultures and classes to be the world's favourite comfort food.
Presenter: Sheila Dillon Producer: Martin Poyntz-Roberts.
Transcript
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| 0:45.0 | It just makes me feel like warm and fuzzy inside. It brings back feelings of nostalgia of being young of my |
| 0:57.2 | mom's cooking. It's just a kind of rich luxurious creamy cheesy nature of it. |
| 1:06.0 | It's like being given a warm hug from the inside. |
| 1:09.0 | When you get down to it, it's just life, isn't it? It's the beginning of life. |
| 1:15.0 | That's quite a claim and that's some serious nostalgia, |
| 1:21.0 | all about a starchy, cheesy dish that somehow worked itself into the food |
| 1:26.7 | culture. We don't do food fashions on this program, they come and go, but the |
| 1:31.6 | mystery of how mac and cheese, that's Beshamel sauce, cheese and |
| 1:36.1 | pasta, a dish of the poor, cheap, tasty and filling, became the object of so much feeling, |
| 1:42.8 | came to be cooked in high-end restaurants all over the country, |
| 1:46.6 | and have whole street food carts and restaurants dedicated to it, |
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