British cuisine is the specific set of cooking traditions and practices associated with the United Kingdom. Historically, British cuisine meant "unfussy dishes made with quality local ingredients, matched with simple sauces to accentuate flavour, rather than disguise it". International recognition of British cuisine was historically limited to the full breakfast and the Christmas dinner. However, Celtic agriculture and animal breeding produced a wide variety of foodstuffs for indigenous Celts. Anglo-Saxon England developed meat and savoury herb stewing techniques before the practice became common in Europe. The Norman conquest introduced exotic spices into Great Britain in the Middle Ages.
The pub is an important aspect of British culture and cuisine, and is often the focal point of local communities. Referred to as their "local" by regulars, pubs are typically chosen for their proximity to home or work, the availability of a particular beer or ale or a good selection, good food, a social atmosphere, the presence of friends and acquaintances, and the availability of pub games such as darts or snooker. Pubs will often screen sports events, such as English Premier League and Scottish Premier League games (or for international tournaments, the FIFA World Cup).
New foodstuffs have arrived over the millennia, from sausages in Roman times, and rice, sugar, oranges, and spices from Asia in the Middle Ages, to New World beans and potatoes in the Columbian exchange after 1492, and spicy curry sauces from India in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Bread from mixed cereal grains was first made around 3700 BC in Britain.[1]
Cider is an ancient British beverage. The first recorded reference to cider dates back to Julius Caesar’s first attempt to invade Britain in 55 BCE where he found the native Celts fermenting crabapples. He would take the discovery back through continental Europe with his retreating troops.[2]
With the Western exploration of the New World in 1492, the Columbian exchange led to the arrival in Europe of many new foods, including refined sugar, the potato, the banana[14] and chocolate. The growth in worldwide trade brought foods and beverages from the Old World too, including tea[15] and coffee.[16] Developments in plant breeding greatly increased the number of fruit and vegetable varieties.
The turkey was introduced to Britain in the 16th century,[17] but its use for Christmas dinner, with Christmas pudding for dessert, was a 19th-century innovation.[18][19] Other traditional British dishes, like fish and chips and the full breakfast, rose to prominence in the Victorian era;[20][21] while they have a status in British culture, they are not necessarily a large part of many people's diets.[22]
During the World Wars of the 20th century difficulties of food supply were countered by measures such as rationing. Rationing continued for nearly ten years after the Second World War, and in some aspects was stricter than during wartime, so that a whole generation was raised without access to many previously common ingredients, possibly contributing to a decline of British cuisine.[23] A hunger for cooking from abroad was satisfied by writers such as Elizabeth David, who from 1950 produced evocative books, starting with A Book of Mediterranean Food, whose ingredients were then often impossible to find in Britain.[24] By the 1960s foreign holidays, and foreign-style restaurants in Britain, widened the popularity of foreign cuisine. This movement was assisted by celebrity chefs – on television and in their books – such as Fanny Cradock, Clement Freud, Robert Carrier, Keith Floyd, Gary Rhodes, Delia Smith, Gordon Ramsay, Ainsley Harriott, Nigella Lawson, Simon Hopkinson, Nigel Slater and Jamie Oliver.[24][25] From the 1970s, the availability and range of good quality fresh products increased, and the British population became more willing to vary its diet. Modern British cooking draws on influences from Mediterranean, and more recently, Middle Eastern and Asian cuisines.
Curry became popular in Britain by the 1970s, when some restaurants that originally catered mainly to Indians found their clientele diversifying.[29]Chicken tikka masala, a mildly spiced dish in a creamy sauce, invented around 1971 in Britain, has been called "a true British national dish."[30][31]
English cuisine has distinctive attributes of its own, but also shares much with wider British cuisine, partly through the importation of ingredients and ideas from North America, China, and India during the time of the British Empire and as a result of post-warimmigration. Some traditional meals, such as sausages, bread and cheese, roasted and stewed meats, meat and game pies, boiled vegetables and broths, and freshwater and saltwater fish have ancient origins. The 14th-century English cookbook, the Forme of Cury, contains recipes for these, and dates from the royal court of Richard II.[33]
Northern Ireland's culinary heritage has its roots in the staple diet of generations of farming families—bread and potatoes.[34] Historically, limited availability of ingredients and low levels of immigration resulted in restricted variety and relative isolation from wider international culinary influences. The 21st century has seen significant improvements in local cuisine, characterised by an increase in the variety, quantity and quality of gastropubs and restaurants. There are currently two Michelin star restaurants in Northern Ireland, both of which specialise in traditional dishes made using local ingredients.[35]
Welsh cuisine in the Middle Ages was limited in range; Gerald of Wales, chaplain to Henry II, wrote after an 1188 tour that "The whole population lives almost entirely on oats and the produce of their herds, milk, cheese and butter. You must not expect a variety of dishes from a Welsh kitchen, and there are no highly-seasoned titbits to whet your appetite."[38]
The cuisine includes recipes for Welsh lamb, and dishes such as cawl, Welsh rarebit, laverbread, Welsh cakes, bara brith and Glamorgan sausage.[38]
^Roy, Modhumita (7 August 2010). "Some Like It Hot: Class, Gender and Empire in the Making of Mulligatawny Soup". Economic and Political Weekly. 45 (32): 66–75. JSTOR20764390.
^Davidson comments that the best starting point is the classic book: McNeill, F. Marian (1929). The Scots Kitchen. Blackie & Son. OCLC892036202..Davidson 2014, pp. 724–725
