So why was the dish so popular? Although today it is eaten even by A-list celebrities (Kate Winslet famously served it at her wedding), originally fish and chips primarily appealed to the less affluent. It was cheap, it was quick (invaluable in families where the women need to work, not cook) and – in the context of the period – it was not without nutritional value. The rich and powerful often looked down on fish and chips as unhealthy and a waste of working class families’ limited resources – in the early 20th century, several doctors tried to link it to typhoid, while the Daily News ran an investigation into reports that babies had died from being fed pieces of fish and chips instead of a proper diet. But the historian John K Walton argues that this attitude was pure snobbery: “The chip, with the frequent addition of peas and beans, provided a vegetable component in diets that would otherwise have been dominated by bread, pies and the ubiquitous fry up of bacon and chops,” he says. Today, a portion of fish and chips contains significantly less calories and fat than many other takeways.