
ĭeep-fried chips (slices or pieces of potato) as a dish may have first appeared in England in about the same period: the Oxford English Dictionary notes as its earliest usage of "chips" in this sense the mention in Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities (1859): "husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil". Fish and chips became a stock meal among the working classes in England as a consequence of the rapid development of trawl fishing in the North Sea, and the development of railways which connected the ports to major industrial cities during the second half of the 19th century, so that fresh fish could be rapidly transported to the heavily populated areas. However, fried fish and chips had existed separately for at least 50 years prior to this, so the possibility that they had been combined at an earlier time cannot be ruled out. The earliest known shops were opened in London during the 1860s by Eastern European Jewish immigrant Joseph Malin, and by John Lees in Mossley, Lancashire. The location of the first fish and chip shop is unclear. Charles Dickens mentions "fried fish warehouses" in Oliver Twist (1838), and in 1845 Alexis Soyer in his first edition of A Shilling Cookery for the People, gives a recipe for "fried fish, Jewish fashion", which is dipped in a batter mix of flour and water before frying. Fish fried for Shabbat for dinner on Friday evenings could be eaten cold the following afternoon for shalosh seudot, palatable this way as liquid vegetable oil was used rather than a hard fat, such as butter. They prepared fried fish in a manner similar to pescado frito, which is coated in flour then fried in oil. The UK tradition of eating fish battered and fried in oil was introduced to the country by Spanish and Portuguese Jewish immigrants, who spent time in the Netherlands before settling in the UK as early as the 16th century.

Fish and chips, served in a paper wrapper ( greaseproof paper inner and ordinary paper outer), as a "takeaway"
