Bonfire Night Used to Be Food Riot Night

Remember, remember the 5th of November as the day Britain put to death Guy Fawkes by hanging, sliced his body into four pieces, and then scattered them around London as a pretty horrific example to other would-be terrorists. Which is all a bit strange, considering that whilst Fawkes was arrested in November he actually died on January 31st 1606, but tradition is tradition.

The closest comparison to Bonfire Night is to Thanksgiving, though intriguingly—or unsurprisingly, depending on your opinion of British cuisine—there is relatively scant culinary history to mine. In typical British fashion, we're mostly talking about how not to get too pissed, rather than how to make a fucking brilliant mulled cider. On the other hand, the government is well up for it, releasing a statement a few weeks back that is basically a call to arms against the "health and safety zealots and municipal killjoys". Right on. (But seriously, please make sure there are no hedgehogs in your bonfire before you set it alight, because cute.)

Nobody eats British food on Bonfire Night anymore—unless you consider the hamburger or the sausage "British food", in which case you should probably consult a historian. Regionally, Yorkshire has the Parkin, an oatmeal cake, whilst some areas cook roast potatoes on the open flames.

Historically, around the time Guy's neck was snapping outside the Houses of Parliament, the average Brit lived off a diet of porridge, bread, and hard cheese. There were no candy apples, barbecues or—most shockingly—the now ubiquitous Nando's. Britain hadn't even begun its cultural transformation into a tea nation so obsessed with tea that the Sons of Liberty thought destroying a shipment of it delivered to Boston was the ultimate political slap in the face. Britain in the 17th century was a coffee country, with London filled with them.

Now, when the temperature plummets and days begin to feel more like footnotes to an overwhelming darkness, people like to dunk apples in candy. This act of coating a quite perfect entity in sticky gunk can be traced back to America, which is perhaps quite predictable.

According to the now defunct Newark Evening News, the tradition began in 1908 in New Jersey, when candy king William W. Kolb was mucking about with a new red cinnamon candy for Christmas and dunked an apple into it by accident. Amazed at its vibrancy, he skewered his Pink Lady with a rod and put it up in his shop window.

This all sounds a bit too patriotic, especially when you consider the Chinese Tanghulu is exactly the same and is about a billion years old. But the legend persists. Then there's the slightly problematic notion that onions and apples look identical under the candy shell, which may or may not be a suggestion for a seasonal prank. Though with the candy's boiling point being a ridiculously high 140 degrees Celsius, it's best to leave these things to the professionals.

Strangely, very few Bonfire Night foods are historical or traditional to Britain. Most of this can be ascribed to the political climate at the time, which was about as stable as Jack Torrance after a couple of drinks. The country was straddled between two plump thighs of social disruption: monasteries gutted like fish 70 years prior, and Oliver Cromwell getting ready to plummet the country into war, deposing the monarchy in the process.

It wasn't until after these upheavals that Britain began to create a new culinary identity, with Samuel Pepys famously burying his Parmesan cheese to prevent it burning in the Fire of London.

Until recently, where the event has been mild and controlled, Bonfire Night was the night of choice to celebrate anarchy. Throughout the country during the Napoleonic Wars, the 5th November was home to many food riots.

The small Sussex town of Lewes, for example, was home to a group of rival bonfire societies, which often got a little bit more than just friendly in their rivalry. Now it's probably the bonfire capital of the world. We're talking flaming tar barrels pushed down steep streets, 80,000 spectators, and thousands of burning crosses. Foodwise, Lewes champions the all-day English breakfast of JD and coke in a hipflask and a fry-up.

This year, National Sausage Week and Bonfire Night collide in what is surely going to be an absolute banger of an evening. Supermarket chain Tesco looks set to be the biggest wiener here, with estimates that sausage sales are going to shoot up by about 500,000 packets, which is not the wurst estimate.

Over in Scotland, the tradition is to create a small effigy of Guy Fawkes and take him out guising, which is the act of asking for "a Penny for the Guy", money which will later be spent of filling their faces with stuff like potato scones and candy floss. The effigies, meanwhile, are cast onto the bonfires and burnt.

Other food alternatives are equally predictable (if no less delicious). There's the hot-dog (with proper sausages, obviously, not the canned crap), hamburgers, pumpkin soup, chips, and roasted chestnuts. On a cold, crisp evening with the summer over, all we really want is a nice pint of lager and a sausage. We don't fuck about.