What ‘fast food’ was there in Victorian England?

But by the 19th century, customers were being treated to an array of new flavours. Thanks to changing tastes, taxes, and competition from larger shops, by the 1850s vendors of hot pies, eels and roast apples were being gradually replaced by coffee stalls and ice-cream barrows.

Hot baked potatoes and pineapple slices also became more popular, although traditional foods didn’t disappear altogether.

In 1870, an American reporter described the wares on sale at a London market: “ham sandwiches, at a penny apiece, and boiled potatoes, with sheeps’ trotters, oysters, fried fish, oranges, apples, plums, and, in fact, every kind of fruit and vegetable were for sale” – as well as “a very suspicious veal”.