BS: A different kind of rape

Subject: BS: A different kind of rape
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 19 Nov 14 - 05:19 PM

The film Enigma is currently being shown on BBC channel 7, and showed a car being driven between yellow fields of flowering oilseed rape, supposedly in the 1940s. I don't remember seeing any rape fields in England as a child. The first I knew of it was in the 1960s when I saw a large sign in a field in Somerset advertising a 'Rape Demonstration' - the new wonder crop was just being introduced. Are the film-makers mistaken, or am I?

Subject: RE: BS: A different kind of rape
From: Musket
Date: 19 Nov 14 - 05:32 PM

My understanding is that as a cultivated crop, it started in the '60s mainstream. Whether it was grown in smaller quantities before then, I don't know.

I did once see a Robert the Bruce type film with electricity pylons in the distance as a few of them charged down a mountainside...

When they were shooting The Full Monty, a street in the village I lived in at the time had all the Sky satellite dishes removed for a day (the going rate was, I believe, £100 and the work carried out and restored by the film crew)

Subject: RE: BS: A different kind of rape
From: Ed T
Date: 19 Nov 14 - 06:18 PM

My understanding is, while used for cooking, the oil was used as a lubricant for the increasing number of marine engines in naval and merchant ships during WW2. Blockades and other naval actions resulted in a shortage of the oil from Asian sources in the early 1940's. It is likely that this shortage stimulated increased UK rapeseed production , and possibly experimental crops.

UK production of this crop increased sharply when the EU joined the EU, likely due to iincreased market access and farm subsidies.

Between the mid 50s and 79s health concerns about rapeseed oil were raised, especially the high eicosenoic and erucic fatter acid content. Pllant breeders (especially Canadian, which evolved as a major supplier) responded by isolating rapeseed plants with very low eicosenoic and erucic acid content and "rebranded" food oils from these plants as Canola oil. There is still an industrial market for plant varieties that focus on producing oils with high levels of erucic acid.

Subject: RE: BS: A different kind of rape
From: Ed T
Date: 19 Nov 14 - 06:20 PM

It should read the UK joined the EU (above).

Subject: RE: BS: A different kind of rape
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 19 Nov 14 - 06:26 PM

In that case it is possible that there were fields of rape near Bletchley in the 1940s - though I suspect it may have been chosen purely for the visual effect, maybe by someone who wasn't even born in the 1960s.

Subject: RE: BS: A different kind of rape
From: Musket
Date: 20 Nov 14 - 04:33 AM

I never looked back once started cooking with cold pressed rapeseed oil. It cooks at a higher temperature than olive oil, has a nice nutty taste that isn't apparent in groundnut oil and...

Oh. Film sets.

I assume there must be websites dedicated to continuity errors. Topsie found an error without such aids. Haddon Hall in Derbyshire is used for many costume dramas. I can't help looking for the far distance landscape shots. They usually involve a factory chimney that was built in the 1920s... Local knowledge can be so sad....

Subject: RE: BS: A different kind of rape
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Nov 14 - 06:55 AM

The nomenclature is interesting. I've rarely come across the term "canola oil" in the UK, always "rapeseed oil". As I understand it, "canola" was coined in order to avoid the other kind of rape allusion. Yet rapeseed oil is the default name in the UK and never seems to prompt the mind into the wrong kind of thinking. Incidentally, for really hot frying I don't think you can beat groundnut oil (which we never call peanut oil for some strange reason...). It gets my oven wedges right nice and crispy, it does. Having 'em tonight!

Subject: RE: BS: A different kind of rape
From: Ed T
Date: 20 Nov 14 - 07:14 AM

A bit of history of Canola, Canada and ola (oil).


Canola is not Rapeseed 

Subject: RE: BS: A different kind of rape
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 20 Nov 14 - 07:19 AM

One cooking oil I never buy is "vegetable oil" - I mean, which vegetable(s)? Why don't they tell you?
Or does it vary according to whatever plant-based oil happens to be cheapest on any particular day?

Subject: RE: BS: A different kind of rape
From: Ed T
Date: 20 Nov 14 - 07:32 AM

When "vegetable oil" is signified on the containers front, chances are low cost, lower quality, oils, such as soy, make up most of the content (versus, olive, canola, peanut, safflower, sunflower oils).

Subject: RE: BS: A different kind of rape
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Nov 14 - 07:38 AM

The Canola Council would say that, Ed....

Subject: RE: BS: A different kind of rape
From: Ed T
Date: 20 Nov 14 - 08:09 AM

Do I detect a case of canola oil adversion?

Or, could it merely be an "garden" variety situation where "my seed is better than your seed" ,(kinda 'cause we founded you a few hundred years ago) that is being pressed upon us?

Subject: RE: BS: A different kind of rape
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 20 Nov 14 - 09:02 AM

Was it mustard? I remember yellow fields back in the '50s in Lincolnshire, and being told it was mustard.