Ploughman's lunch 29 April 1958 refer to a ploughman's lunch consisting of bread, cheese and pickle. The meal's rise in popularity during the 1970s has been argued to be at least partially based on a British cultural "revulsion from technology and modernity and a renewed love-affair with an idealised national past". The meal was, however, primarily favoured by caterers because it was simple to prepare, required no cooking, was not labour-intensive and involved no meat, meaning there was the potential of high profit margins. The 1983 film "The Ploughman's Lunch", from a screenplay by Ian McEwan, has a subtext that is "the
Aerated Bread Company in it", at a time when gin was thought to have medicinal properties as it was made from juniper berries. Richardson's great support of aerated bread at the expense of traditionally baked bread has been suggested to have been motivated by his dislike of alcohol. A.B.C.'s first bakery was in Islington, London. In the late Victorian-era, the Dauglish method was considered the superior system by which to mass produce bread. In his memoir of the method, Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, a later director of the company, wrote: I am convinced, from careful and prolonged observation, that the Dauglish method of