False Traditions of Food

Two of the great British dishes, still served in many a quaint English pub, were named by twentieth-century marketing men.

“Bacon and Eggs” was a phrase coined in the 1920s by Edward Bernays, one of the forefathers of public relations. He was working on a campaign to promote sales of bacon, and hit on the phrase as shorthand for a hearty cooked breakfast. Whilst people certainly ate this combination beforehand, the phrase was not in common usage.

More distressingly, a ‘Ploughman’s Lunch’ was not some charming old nomenclature from 14th-century Dorset. The name was cooked up by marketing executives for the English Country Cheese council in 1960. The minutes of the meeting wherein it was devised have been traced.