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British Food and Cuisine

Information on foods in the United Kingdom; regional dishes, feast foods and cheeses. Also an overview of the history of food and British mealtimes.

The United Kingdom has benefitted tremendously from the culinary influences and cuisines of the people who have settled in the country from all over the world, and there is much to choose from. Alternatively, for those curious to sample the many traditional foods and drinks that can be found in the different regions of the United Kingdom, this section describes what they are and where you can find them.

British Cuisine

British cuisine, mocked for so long by foreigners, now ranks among the best on Earth. The last 20 years have transformed the way Brits see their food. Restaurant-goers spend more, are more demanding and more appreciative; aware that their options extend beyond meat and two overcooked veg. The fusion of traditional British food with foreign influences, from Indian to French, Thai to Italian, has been central to its renaissance.

Great Moments in British Food

1586: Francis Drake brings the humble potato back from the Americas
1762: John Montagu invents the sandwich
1847: Joseph Fry mixes cocoa butter and cocoa powder and comes up with the chocolate bar
1861: Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management is published. Boil your cabbage for 45 minutes she urged
1890: Frenchman Auguste Escoffier arrives to cook at the Savoy Hotel and introduces the brigade de cuisine system, a structure still used in all the top restaurants today
1950: Elizabeth David writes A Book of Mediterranean Food, introducing olive oil, garlic and other treats to the British diet
1954: 14 years of food rationing comes to an end
1967: The Roux brothers open Le Gavroche; it became Britain's first Michelin three-starred restaurant in 1982
2007: Clare Smyth becomes the first (and only) female chef in Britain to run a restaurant with three Michelin stars (Gordon Ramsay at Royal Hospital Road)

British Mealtimes

Breakfast: taken between 07:00 and 09:00 during the working week
Elevenses: 11:00, a mid morning pick-me-up with coffee or tea and a biscuit
Lunch (also called dinner in the north): snatched (more often than lingered over) sometime between noon and 13:30. On Sundays the traditional roast will replace the more common weekday snack
Afternoon tea: not many people do it these days, but the 16:00 tray of tea, dainty sandwiches, scones and cake was all the rage in high society up to the later 20th century
Dinner (more likely to be called tea in the north): the main meal of the day usually happens between 18:00 and 20:00

The Food of Northern England

Food in the north of England is warming stuff, a solid mix of bakes and stews. Oatcakes, parkin (a gingery Yorkshire cake), stotty cake (a flat round loaf from the North East) and curd tarts are all baking staples. Lancashire is home to treacle toffee but more famous for its hotpot a layered casserole of lamb, potatoes and onions cooked in a glazed terracotta pot. Pickled red cabbage is the traditional hotpot accompaniment. Lancashire, and the town of Bury in particular, also claims black pudding, the fat sausage blend of ox blood, oatmeal, onions and spices, as its own. Yorkshire pudding, a muffin-shaped piece of light batter, has become a nationwide staple, to be served up with roast beef and gravy.

Elsewhere, Northumberland still cures its Craster kippers (smoked) the way it did a century ago; coiled Cumberland sausages, flavoured with black and white pepper, remain best married with a buttery mash and rich onion gravy; and the potted shrimps of Morecambe Bay (small brown characters) are about as unpretentious as gourmet grub gets, unless you're into mushy peas (soaked and then simmered with sugar and salt).

Three great Northern foods:

Cumberland rum butter: Made in the Lake District since the 19th century, the alcoholic properties also find it referred to as hard sauce
Eccles cake: A small pocket of pastry filled with currants, named after its Lancashire hometown
Pease pudding: The dried pea purée was a nationwide staple of old but is now limited predominantly to the North East; usually served with boiled bacon

The Food of Eastern and South East England

The dark soils of Lincolnshire produce one-fifth of the country's food, while East Anglia rears much of the nation's meat and poultry. The east of England is, therefore, perhaps better known for its foodstuffs than its dishes. Grimsby and Lowestoft are the main fishing ports, and if you follow the East Anglian coastline clockwise you encounter Stiffkey Blues (cockles), Cromer crabs, Yarmouth bloaters (herring), Colchester oysters and Southend whitebait; delicacies the lot. The East Anglian saltmarshes also harbour samphire (sea asparagus), picked at low tide from June to September.

Inland, vast orchards grow soft fruits, while villages like Tiptree, in Essex, still mash up the produce for fine jam. Roast Norfolk Black turkeys, introduced to England in the early 1500s, Suffolk cured ham and Newmarket sausages are three meaty specialities. Further south, at Whitstable in Kent, the Dredgerman's Breakfast is a gut-busting plate of streaky bacon, shelled oysters and thick bread. On Kent's southern fringe the grazed salty marshes at Romney produce a flavoursome lamb, while sweet southern teeth are sated by the Sussex pond pudding (a steamed buttery blob hiding an entire lemon), Isle of Wight doughnuts and Richmond Maids of Honour (small round cheesecakes).

Three great eastern foods:

Cromer crab: A north Norfolk legend renowned for its high proportion of white meat. Enjoyed in various recipes but at its best simply boiled and dressed in the shell
Haslet: A long loaf of seasoned, chopped and cured pork that probably has its origins in Lincolnshire. Usually sliced and served cold
Melton Mowbray pork pie: More Midlands than eastern perhaps; either way, the combo of chopped pork filling, jelly layer and coat of brown pastry has become a national treasure

The Food of South West England

Sitting in a pub overlooking the spectacular Cornish coast eating the local catch, with its lobster, crabs and mackerel, is one of life's great culinary experiences. Inland, Cornwall and Devon's green pastures are grazed by the Friesians that produce some of Britain's finest dairy products, clotted cream included. And it would be remiss not to mention the Cornish pasty: the reputation of the semicircular folded pie has suffered by many a poor imitation, but when executed well the pasty is a wonderful combination of crisp pastry and moist meaty interior. The West Country can also lay claim to the Cornish saffron cake, Oldbury tart (gooseberry pie) and West Country cream tea.

In recent years the region has become a key player in Britain's renewed relationship with organic farming, offering up a vast range of foodstuffs, from apples to Gloucester Old Spot pork.

Three great south-western foods:

Clotted cream: Milk is slowly heated, cooled and plundered of its cream, which is then heated again until a golden crust forms. In Cornwall they dump it on bread, cover with syrup or black treacle and call it Thunder and Lightning
Bath chaps: Take a pig's cheek or lower jaw, brine and boil it before coating with breadcrumbs. Eat cold like ham
Colston bun: A ring-shaped Bristol bun flavoured with dried fruit; named after the local merchant who made a packet trading in the West Indies (slaves included) in the early 18th century

The Food of London

London is the foodie capital of Britain. If you can eat it - and this is food from anywhere in the world - you'll probably find it on sale here somewhere. For native produce, markets like Billingsgate (fish) and Smithfield (meat) have been the largest such trading centres in Britain for centuries. The East End was once known for its jellied eels and meat pies; some of the Eel Pie and Mash houses, dating to the 18th century, have survived, and could be deemed to serve up the most 'authentic' London food. If pie and mash are representative of traditional working-class Londoner grub, then Fortnum & Mason in Piccadilly and Harrods Food Hall in Knightsbridge have ritually catered for the social antipode. Both retain an impeccable pedigree, drawing in the best food from around Britain. But the capital's modern cuisine is defined by its eclecticism; Chinese, Lebanese, Italian, Indian, Polish, Sudanese - the variety of food reflects the diversity of the population.

Three great London dishes of yore:

Bubble and squeak: Thrifty dish using leftover cabbage and potato that was once a winter favourite with Londoners. The name derives from the sound it makes during cooking
Boodle's orange fool: Akin to a trifle (a cold desert layered with sponge cake, fruit, custard, jelly and cream), the fool was a speciality of Boodle's, a gentleman's club founded in 1762
London Particular: A thick soup made with peas and bacon stock, named after the capital's famous 'pea-souper' fogs.

The Food of Wales

There's a reason why Wales is famed for its leeks and cabbages - they're among the few veg able to flourish in the harsh Welsh landscape. Both can crop up in cawl, a rich broth of vegetables, lamb and bacon that has its regional variations. Pork continues to be a mainstay of the diet and lamb, once considered a luxury, is among the country's most famous exports. Shoals of herring and mackerel swim off the west coast, while across the Gower cockles are gathered, by hand, as they have been since Roman times. Laverbread, or bara lawr, a purple seaweed that turns dark green when cooked, is a distinctly Welsh staple, traditionally served alongside Welsh cured bacon, cockles and oatmeal for a man-sized breakfast. Afternoon tea serves up a number of Welsh choices: bara brith (a rich fruit loaf), Welsh cakes (a flat scone cooked on a griddle), teisen carawe (caraway seed cake) and teisen mel (honey cake).

Three great Welsh foods:

Braised faggot: Found in various parts of Britain but thought to have Welsh roots, a faggot is pig offal wrapped in caul fat, the stomach lining
Glamorgan sausage: Not a tube of meat but a vegetarian effort made with Caerphilly cheese, leeks and breadcrumbs
Crempog geirch: One of many pancake variants found in Wales, the geirch is made with oatmeal, milk, salt, eggs and butter

The Food of Scotland

The Scottish diet has always been robust. Warming broths were made with porridge, lentils and barley, and the national dish, haggis, immortalised by poet Robert Burns, was guaranteed to fill empty stomachs. Consisting of sheep or calf offal mixed with suet and oatmeal, squeezed into an animal stomach and then boiled, haggis inevitably tastes better than it sounds. The larder north of the border continues to harbour some fine produce. Salmon and trout are found in the clean, cold waters and the Highlands and forests are rich with a variety of game including partridge, grouse, and deer. Aberdeen Angus, a hornless breed of black cow that can be traced back to the 12th century, is world-famous for its beef, while the long-haired Highland cattle also produce good meat. The ostriches that have begun appearing on the moors, farmed for their meat, have a shorter Highland pedigree.

Scottish delicacies include Cullen skink (a soup of smoked haddock and potatoes), Arbroath smokies (salted and smoked haddock), grouse stuffed with rowanberries and Aberdeen Angus steak with a whisky sauce. Cranachan, a mixture of toasted oatmeal, whisky, cream and raspberries, is a traditional dessert.

Three great Scottish foods:

Mealie pudding: More like a sausage actually: a cream-coloured affair filled with oatmeal, onions and suet
Clootie dumpling: A bit like the haggis' sweeter cousin: a ball of beef suet, flour, breadcrumbs and dried fruit wrapped in a cloth (or cloot) and simmered for hours on end
Scotch broth: The tradtional versions tended to feature mutton and pearl barley, simmered at length with various herbs, vegetables and whatever else was to hand

The Food of Northern Ireland

The Northern Ireland kitchen doesn't do delicate. Potatoes and bread have been staples for centuries, mingled with the meat, dairy and seafood that come naturally to the region's fecund landscape. It says much about the cuisine that the province's signature dish remains the Ulster Fry, a heart-stopping plate of bacon, eggs, sausages, black pudding and mushrooms. The Fry is distinguished from its Full English cousin by the addition of soda bread farls (a fried, flattened version of the famous Irish bread that mixes flour, baking soda and buttermilk) and potato farls (a similar bread stocked with spuds). Like the rest of Ireland the northern region has a stew of meat, potatoes, carrots and onions, although the choice of meat - steak - distinguishes it from the stew to the south that prefers lamb. One other local speciality, beef sausages, has been drawing southerners across the border for years.

Three great foods from Northern Ireland:

Champ: Mashed potato featuring chopped scallions (spring onions) and a generous dollop of butter
Dulse: A red seaweed, air-dried and eaten as a snack or sometimes included in the mix for soda bread
Yellowman: A dense, chewy honeycomb toffee. Like dulse, it's long associated with the annual Auld Lammas Fair in Country Antrim

Special Foods

Feast Foods

Shrove Tuesday (40 days before Easter): Get out your frying pan and tuck into pancakes sprinkled with caster sugar and lemon
Mothering Sunday (4th Sunday in Lent): A day to indulge in simnel cake, a rich fruitcake with a layer of marzipan in the middle. In medieval times they ate a light biscuit-like bread that was boiled and then baked
Easter (March/April): Warm, delicately spiced hot cross buns at the breakfast table on Good Friday, and then lamb as the featured meat on Easter Sunday. Chocolate eggs and bunnies are given to children
Christmas Day (25 December): Serves up roast goose or turkey accompanied by bread sauce, cranberry sauce, roast potatoes, gravy and vegetables (at least one should be Brussels sprouts, although they were recently voted the most hated vegetable in Britain). Finish with Christmas pudding, a steamed rich and fruity mix, decorated with holly, doused in brandy and then set alight at the table to ward off evil spirits and keep your drunk uncle amused. A silver charm or coin is hidden inside the pudding

Five Great British Cheeses

Caerphilly: Wales' best-known cheese is a mild, white and crumbly affair first made in 1831 in the town of the same name
Stilton: Blue veined with a soft white texture, believed to have been made first in 1710 at Quenby Hall in Leicestershire
Stinking Bishop: A soft Gloucestershire cheese, its rind washed in a bitter perry (pear juice), made in the modern age since 1972 but with aged monastic origins. The smell can clear a room
West Country Farmhouse Cheddar: The only one of the Cheddar range (it comes in many variations) to earn PDO status is made in Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall
Crowdie: A soft, fresh Scottish cheese made since the days of the Viking occupation. Crafted from the whey that separates naturally from souring milk

Market Forces: Four London Legends

Billingsgate: A medieval market that began concentrating solely on fish in 1699. It left a grand arcaded riverside Victorian home (now an exhibition space) on Lower Thames Street for the current residence on the Isle of Dogs in 1982
Borough: Foodies have been visiting the market south of the River Thames for 250 years. Has a reputation built on fruit and veg, but sells much more
Smithfield: The best-known meat market in Britain has been trading in one form or another just north of the City of London for at least 800 years. Its current accommodation, dating to the Victorian era, has undergone recent restoration. A good place to rub shoulders with restaurateurs, caterers, and butchers
Covent Garden: For 350 years Covent Garden supported a fruit, veg and flower market (where the Eliza Doolittle character scratched a living in Pygmalion); in 1974 the neo-Classical piazza was turned over to shops, eateries and entertainers, and Britain's largest fresh produce market, New Covent Garden, opened just south of the river in Nine Elms