The Ploughman’s Lunch is a traditional British meal consisting of bread, cheese, pickled vegetables, and other additions like salad and fruit. It was popularized in the 1960s during a cheese marketing campaign, but its ingredients are rooted in English rural food. The lunch is easily customizable and can be made with locally produced ingredients.
A farmer’s lunch is a plate of food that contains at least bread, cheese, and pickled vegetables, usually onions. Other additions such as a green salad are usually included, along with apples, pickled eggs and beets, or even things like pate. The concept is closely associated with British cuisine, particularly English rural food. Many British pubs offer Ploughman’s Lunch on their menus, although it can easily be made at home.
The name and ingredients of the servant’s lunch are meant to evoke a bygone era, when a plowman would carry his lunch across the field so it was ready to deliver when he wanted to take a break. Clearly, a cold lunch would have been the most suitable lunch for a lumberjack, as it will continue as he works, and many of the classic lunch ingredients are also relatively stable at room temperature for several hours. Bread is a simple and filling component to meals, a traditional addition to dinners around the world. Cheese would also have been readily available, as small local dairies would have produced it, and vegetables could easily have been obtained from the farmer’s garden.
Unfortunately for those who think of the farmer’s lunch as a traditional British food, it appears to have arisen during a cheese marketing campaign in the 1960s. While workers and fellow workers certainly had cold lunches with very similar ingredients, they probably didn’t refer to the meal as a “servants’ lunch.” Bread, cheese and beer are a common pairing for a simple but hearty lunch, of course, but curiously no record of a “slave lunch” can be found before the mid-1960s.
The ingredients in a peacock’s lunch tend to balance out pretty well, especially when paired with beer. A more complex dish could combine different types of cheese, which are cut with bread and a green salad so they don’t taste so heavy. Ingredients like pickles and onions are also common fare in pubs, as they tend to go well with alcohol. An apple or similar fruit provides a palate cleanse, a clean finish.
The composition of a peacock’s lunch is so simple that the food can easily be adjusted to suit different tastes. Many promoters of locally produced food like to use fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables in a farmer’s lucnh, alongside locally produced cheeses and breads. Pickled vegetables, widely believed to be a very important staple, can also be made with local ingredients.
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