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Fish is doubt part of the most demanding international menus. Its fried version can enthrall millions of people, both in the UK and in the Caribbean.

For Britons, a plate of fish and chips is more than just fast food. Word has it that those who arrive in the UK cannot pass this specialty of fried fish and potatoes. Different recipes –from the cheapest and the most traditional to the most sophisticated, even dished out in haute-cuisine places– have spun off out of the original variant.

Even though fish and potato chips have been present in different dishes through the years, potatoes were first traced in Europe back in the 17th century. They were brought by the Spaniards, together with a version of fried fish that made its way to the Netherlands and England by the hand of both Spaniards and the Portuguese during the 17th and 18th centuries.

This dish caught on in London and southern England throughout the 19th century. Author Charles Dickens mentioned a fried fish warehouse in his novel Oliver Twist, published in 1838.

There’s evidence in northern England of a tradition to fry potato fingers. It’s not clear, though, where the tradition of combining both ingredients to serve the dish as we know it today first came into being.

However, it’s known that Joseph Malin opened the first fish and chip shop in London in 1860. For decades, the fish-and-chips have dominated the fast-food business in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, and have even become popular in Canada, Ireland, South Africa, the United States and some coastal regions of the Netherlands and Norway.

The dish consists of different kinds of fish. The most common recipe includes filets of codfish, sole or hake. In some other cases, dorado meat is coated in egg and flour, and then fried with the potato chips.

For its part, in the Caribbean fish is a very typical dish. The sea provides such species as red snapper, grouper, sawfish, sea bream and shellfish –especially lobsters, shrimps, crabs, conches and squids. The dishes prepared with any of the abovementioned species are always varied and tasty.

In countries like Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela, fried fish is seasoned with a number of spices and aromatic herbs that give it the one-and-only taste of this world region.