By Ruth H. Thurstan

Creator: Thomas Rowlandson (1788). Source: Web Gallery of Art. Copyright: Public Domain.

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For decades, British cooks have turned to published recipes for inspiration about what to put on the dinner table. I wondered whether these everyday sources could tell us how our relationship with fish has changed over time, and why, today, so many of us cook and eat only a narrow handful of species.

To find out, I examined issues of British Good Housekeeping magazine (now Good Housekeeping UK), first published in 1922. I extracted fish and shellfish recipes from selected issues, eventually collating 1,192 recipes published over the course of a century.

The results reveal a striking story of change. In the early decades, recipes featured a diverse range of fish and shellfish, including oysters, soles, halibut, turbot and herring. From the 1970s onwards, the composition shifted. The ‘Big Five’ species we know today – cod, haddock, tuna, prawns and salmon – increasingly dominated published recipes, eventually accounting for more than six in ten of all the fish mentioned: a narrowing in what fish species the magazine was showing and encouraging readers to cook.

This shift didn’t happen by accident, or because British tastes are naturally conservative. Instead, it reflects decades of interacting changes in fish supply chains and markets, which shaped what domestic cooks – and recipe writers – came to see as familiar and desirable to eat. Recipes are not a direct measure of consumption or preference, but they show what tastemakers such as magazine editors expected people to recognise, access, and want to cook at a given time. This makes recipes a valuable window into how food cultures change, even where sales figures fall short.

Understanding how our fish preferences narrowed over time matters because it shows today’s limited diets aren’t fixed or inevitable; they are malleable and shaped by our history. If we want people to eat a wider, more sustainable range of seafood, recognising this history and the cultural memory it holds, could be a useful tool alongside the diversifying of supply chains and public information campaigns.