English cuisine

English cuisineencompasses the cooking styles, traditions and recipes associated withEngland. It has distinctive attributes of its own, but is also very similar to widerBritish cuisine, partly historically and partly due to the import of ingredients and ideas from theAmericas, China, and India during the time of theBritish Empireand as a result ofpost-warimmigration.
Some traditional meals, such as bread and cheese, roasted and stewed meats,meatandgame pies, boiled vegetables and broths, andfreshwaterandsaltwater fishhave ancient origins. The 14th-century English cookbook, theForme of Cury,contains recipes for these, and dates from the royal court ofRichard II.
English cooking has been influenced by foreign ingredients and cooking styles since theMiddle Ages.Currywas introduced from theIndian subcontinentand adapted to English tastes from the eighteenth century withHannah Glasse's recipe for chicken "currey".French cuisineinfluenced English recipes throughout theVictorian era. After the rationing of theSecond World War,Elizabeth David's 1950A Book of Mediterranean Foodhad wide influence, bringingItalian cuisineto English homes. Her success encouraged other cookery writers to describe other styles, includingChineseandThaicuisine. England continues to absorb culinary ideas from all over the world.
English cooking has developed over many centuries since at least the time ofThe Forme of Cury, written in theMiddle Agesaround 1390 in the reign ofKing Richard II.The book offers imaginative and sophisticated recipes, with spicysweet and soursauces thickened with bread or quantities ofalmondsboiled, peeled, dried and ground, and often served inpastry. Foods such asgingerbreadare described.It was not at all, emphasisesClarissa Dickson Wrightin herA History of English Food, a matter of large lumps ofroastmeat at every meal as imagined inHollywood films.
Instead,medieval dishesoften had the texture of apurée, possibly containing small fragments of meat or fish: 48% of the recipes in the Beinecke manuscript are for dishes similar to stews or purées. Such dishes could be broadly of three types: somewhat acidic, with wine, vinegar, and spices in the sauce, thickened with bread;sweet and sour, with sugar and vinegar; and sweet, using then-expensivesugar. An example of such a sweet purée dish for meat (it could also be made with fish) from the Beinecke manuscript is the rich,saffron-yellow "Mortruys", thickened with egg:
Another manuscript,Utilis Coquinario, mentions dishes such as "pyany", poultry garnished withpeonies; "hyppee", arose-hipbroth;  and birds such ascormorantsandwoodcocks.
Theearly modernperiod saw the gradual arrival of printed cookery books, though the first, the printerRichard Pynson's 1500Boke of Cokerywas compiled from medieval texts.The next,A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye, was published sometime after 1545.The Secretes of the Reverende Maister Alexis of Piermontwas published in 1558, translated from a French translation ofAlessio Piemontese's original Italian work onconfectionery.The number of titles expanded rapidly towards the end of the century to includeThomas Dawson'sThe Good Huswifes Jewellin 1585, theBook of Cookryeby "A. W." in 1591, and John Partridge'sThe Good Hous-wives Handmaidein 1594.These books were of two kinds: collections of so-called secrets on confectionery and health remedies, aimed at aristocratic ladies; and advice on cookery and how to manage a household, aimed at women from more ordinary backgrounds, most likely wives of minor aristocrats, clergymen, and professional men.
English tastes evolved during the sixteenth century in at least three ways.First, recipes emphasise a balance of sweet and sour.Second,butterbecomes an important ingredient in sauces, a trend which continued in later centuries.Third,herbs, which could be grown locally but had been little used in the Middle Ages, started to replace spices as flavourings.In A. W.'sBook of Cookrye, 35% of the recipes for meat stews and sauces include herbs, most commonlythyme. On the other hand, 76% of those meat recipes still used the distinctly mediaeval combination of sugar and dried fruit, together or separately.New ingredients were arriving from distant countries, too:The Good Huswifes Jewellintroducedsweet potatoes(from the tropical Americas) alongside familiar medieval recipes.
Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book, compiled in 1604 (and first published in 1986) gives an intimate view ofElizabethancookery. The book provides recipes for various forms of bread, such as buttered loaves; for apple fritters; preserves and pickles; and a celebration cake for 100 people. New ingredients appear; a recipe for dressing a shoulder ofmuttoncalls for the use of the newly availablecitrus fruits:
Pieswere important both as food and for show; thenursery rhyme"Sing a Song of Sixpence", with its lines "Four and Twenty blackbirds / Baked in a pie. // When the pie was opened, The birds began to sing" refers to the conceit of placing live birds under a pie crust just before serving at a banquet.
The bestselling cookery book of the early seventeenth century wasGervase Markham'sThe English Huswife, published in 1615. It appears that his recipes were from the collection of a deceased noblewoman, and therefore dated back to Elizabethan times or earlier. Women were thus becoming both the authors of cookery books and their readers, though only about 10% of women in England were literate by 1640. Markham's recipes are distinctively different from mediaeval ones; three quarters of his sauces for meat and meat pies make use of a combination of sweet and sour, and he advises:
Robert May'sThe Accomplisht Cookwas published in 1660 when he was 72 years old.The book included a substantial number of recipes for soups and stews,38 recipes forsturgeon, and a large number of pies variously containing fish (including sturgeon), meat (includingbattalia pie), and sweet fillings.
French influence is evident inHannah Woolley'sThe Cooks Guide, 1664. Her recipes are designed to enable her non-aristocratic readers to imitate the fashionable French style of cooking with elaborate sauces. She combined the use of "Claretwine"andanchovieswith more traditional cooking ingredients such as sugar, dried fruit, and vinegar.
John Nott'sThe Cooks and Confectioners Dictionary(1723), still with rather few precedents to go by, chose an alphabetical treatment for its recipes, fromAltoZest. The book covered everything from soups and salads to meat and fish, as well as pastries of many kinds, confectionery, and the making of beer, cider, and wine. Bills of fare are given for each month of the year.
James Woodforde'sDiary of a Country Parsongives a good idea of the sort of food eaten in England in the eighteenth century by those who were reasonably prosperous.To welcome some neighbours on 8 June 1781, he gave them for dinner:
Another country clergyman,Gilbert White, inThe Natural History of Selborne(1789) recorded the increased consumption of vegetables by ordinary country people in the south of England, to which, he noted,potatoes, from theAmericas, had only been added during the reign ofKing George III:
Hannah Glasse'sThe Art of Cookery made Plain and Easywas the best-selling cookery book for a century from its publication in 1747. It ran to at least 40 editions, and was widely pirated.
English cooking was systematised and made available to the middle classes by a series of popular books, their authors becoming household names. One of the first wasMrs Rundell'sA New System of Domestic Cookery, 1806; it went through sixty-seven editions by 1844, selling hundreds of thousands of copies in Britain and America.This was followed byEliza Acton'sModern Cookery for Private Families1845, whichBee Wilsonhas called "the greatest cookery book in our language", but "modern" only in a nineteenth-century sense.
An example recipe from Acton'sModern Cookery for Private Familiesis her "Quince Blanc-Mange (Delicious)":
Acton was supplanted by the most famous English cookery book of the Victorian era,Isabella Beeton'sMrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, 1861, which sold nearly two million copies up to 1868.Where Acton's was a book to be read and enjoyed, Beeton's, substantially written in later editions by other hands, was a manual of instructions and recipes, to be looked up as needed.Mrs Beetonwas substantially plagiarised from authors includingElizabeth Raffaldand Acton.TheAnglo-ItaliancookCharles Elmé Francatellibecame a celebrity, cooking for a series of aristocrats, London clubs, and royalty includingQueen Victoria. His 1846 bookThe Modern Cookran through 29 editions by 1896, popularising an elaborate cuisine described throughout with French terminology, and offering bills of fare for up to 300 people.
Three of the major hot drinks popular in England,tea,coffee, andchocolate, originated from outside Europe and were already staple items by Victorian times.Catherine of Braganzabrought the Portuguese habit of tea to England around 1660. Initially, its expense restricted it to wealthy consumers, but the price gradually dropped, until by the 19th centuryits use was widespread.Introduced in the 16th century, coffee became popular by the 17th century, especially in thecoffee houses, the first opening in Oxford in 1650.Hot chocolatewas a popular drink by the 17th century, long before it was used as a food. Chocolate bars were developed and marketed by three EnglishQuaker-founded businesses,Joseph Fry's(1847),Rowntree's(1862),andCadbury's(1868).
After the First World War, many new food products became available to the typical household, with branded foods advertised for their convenience. Kitchen servants with time to make custards and puddings were replaced with instant foods in jars, or powders that the housewife could quickly mix.American-style dry cerealsbegan to challenge the porridge and bacon and eggs of the middle classes, and the bread and margarine of the poor. While wartime shipping shortages had sharply narrowed choice, the 1920s saw many new kinds of fruit imported from around the world, along with better quality, packaging, and hygiene, aided by refrigeratorsandrefrigerated ships. Authors in the 1930s such asLady Sysonbydrew on recipes from a wide range of countries.
Rationing was introduced in 1940to cope with the shortages caused by the wartime blockade. Foods such as bananas and chocolate became hard to find, while unfamiliar items such asdried egg,dried potato,whale meat,snook(a South African fish),and the tinned pork productSpamappeared in the national diet. Since butter, sugar, eggs and flour were all rationed, English dishes such as pies and cakes became hard to make from traditional recipes. Instead, foods such as carrots were used in many different dishes, their natural sugars providing sweetness in novel dishes like carrotfudge. The diet was less than enjoyable, but paradoxically, rationing meant that overall the population was healthier than ever before, and perhaps ever since.TheMinistry of Foodemployed home economists such asMarguerite Pattento demonstrate how to cook economically. After the war, Patten became one of the first television cooks, and sold 17 million copies of her 170 books.
Elizabeth Davidprofoundly changed English cooking with her 1950A Book of Mediterranean Food.Written at a time of scarcity, her book began with "perhaps the most evocative and inspirational passage in the history of British cookery writing":
All five of David's early books remained in print half a century later, and her reputation among cookery writers such asNigel SlaterandClarissa Dickson Wrightwas of enormous influence. The historian of foodPanikos Panayisuggests that this is because David consciously brought foreign cooking styles into the English kitchen; she did this with fine writing, and with practical experience of living and cooking in the countries which she wrote about. She deliberately destroyed the myths of restaurant cuisine, instead describing the home cooking of Mediterranean countries. Her books paved the way for other cookery writers to use foreign recipes. Post-Davidcelebrity chefs, often ephemeral, includedPhilip Harben,Fanny Cradock,Graham Kerr("the galloping gourmet"), andRobert Carrier.
In 1953, Britain's first celebrity chef, Philip Harben, publishedTraditional Dishes of Britain. Its chapter titles simply listed "thestereotypicalstalwarts of the British diet",fromCornish pastyandYorkshire puddingtoshortbread,Lancashire hotpot,steak and kidney pudding,jellied eels,clotted creamandfish and chips. Panayi noted that Harben began with contradictions and unsupported claims, naming Britain's supposed reputation for the worst food in the world, but claiming that the country's cooks were technically unmatched and that the repertoire of national dishes was the largest of any country's.
The sociologist Bob Ashley observed in 2004 that while people in Britain might agree that the core national diet consisted of items such as the full English breakfast, roast beef with all the trimmings, tea with scones, and fish and chips, few had ever eaten the canonical English breakfast, lunch and dinner in any single day, and many probably never ate any item from the list at all regularly. In any case, Ashley noted, the national diet changes with time, and cookery books routinely include dishes of foreign origin. He remarked that aNational Trustcafé, whose manager claimed "We're not allowed to do foreign food ... I can't do lasagne or anything like that",in fact servedcurry, because "seemingly curry is English".Anglo-Indian cuisine has indeed been part of the national diet since the eighteenth century.
Some English dishes are relatively new and can be dated to the century, and sometimes to the year, of their introduction. Thuspiccalilliwas introduced from India in the 18th century, as recorded byHannah Glassewho gave a recipe for it in 1758.Conversely, dishes and sauces still considered foreign, such as fish in sweet and sour sauce, have been in English recipe books since the Middle Ages.Other dishes took their present form only gradually, as with the so-called "full English breakfast". Breakfasts of this kind are indeed described in later editions of "Mrs Beeton", but as one of many variations. Thus her list of "Family Breakfasts for a Week in Winter" has for Wednesday something that looks fairly modern: "bread, muffins, butter, brawn, grilled bacon, boiled eggs";but on other days less modern-looking breakfasts include mince, mutton cutlets, grilled kidneys, baked fresh herrings, and hash of cold game or poultry, while suggestions for "Family Breakfasts for a Week in Summer" included sardine toast, cold tongue, kedgeree and rissoles, and "Guests' Breakfast (Autumn)" included cold pheasant, game pie, and pressed beef.
English cookery has demonstrably been open to influences from abroad from as early as the thirteenth century,and in the case of a few foods like sausages from Roman times.The Countess of Leicester, daughter ofKing Johnpurchased large amounts ofcinnamon,whileKing Edward Iordered large quantities of spices such as pepper andginger, as well as of what was then an expensive imported luxury, sugar.Dickson Wright refutes the popular idea that spices were used to disguise bad meat, pointing out that this would have been asfatal then as it would be today. She suggests instead that spices were used to hide the taste of salt, which was used to preserve food in the absence of refrigeration.
Cradock asserted: "The English have never had a cuisine. EvenYorkshire puddingcomes fromBurgundy."However, a recipe for "a dripping pudding" was published in the 1737 bookThe Whole Duty of a Woman.Nicola Humble observed that inMrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, there are about the same number of recipes from India as from Wales, Scotland and Ireland together.Panayi created controversy by asserting, with evidence, thatfish and chipshad foreign origins: the fried fish from Jewish cooking and the potato chips from France; the dish only came to signify national identity from about 1930.French cuisine powerfully influenced English cooking throughout the nineteenth century, and French celebrity chefs such as the Roux brothers and Raymond Blanc continued to do so in twenty-first-century England.
Curry was created by the arrival of the British in India in the seventeenth century, beginning as bowls of spicy sauce used,Lizzie Collinghamwrites, to add "bite to the rather bland flavours of boiled and roasted meats."The 1748 edition of Hannah Glasse'sThe Art of Cookerycontains what Dickson Wright calls a "famous recipe"which describes how "To make a currey the Indian way"; it flavours chicken with onions fried in butter, the chicken being fried withturmeric, ginger and ground pepper, and stewed in its own stock with cream and lemon juice. Dickson Wright comments that she was "a bit sceptical"of this recipe, as it had few of the expectedspices, but was "pleasantly surprised by the result"which had "a very good and interesting flavour".
The process of adapting Indian cooking continued for centuries. Anglo-Indian recipes could completely ignore Indian rules of diet, for example by using pork or beef. Some dishes, such as "liver curry, with bacon" were simply ordinary recipes spiced up with ingredients such as curry powder. In other cases likekedgeree, Indian dishes were adapted to British tastes;khichariwas originally a simple dish of lentils and rice. Curry was accepted in almost allVictorian eracookery books, such asEliza Acton'sModern Cookery for Private Families(1845): she offered recipes for curriedsweetbreadsand curriedmacaroni, merging Indian and European foods into standard English cooking. By 1895, curry was included inDainty Dishes for Slender Incomes, aimed at the poorer classes.
Foreign influence was by no means limited to specific dishes. James Walvin, in his bookFruits of Empire, argues that potatoes, sugar (entirely imported until around 1900 and the growing ofsugar beet),tea, andcoffeeas well as increasing quantities of spices were "Fruits ofEmpire"that became established in Britain between 1660 and 1800, so that by the nineteenth century "their exotic origins had been lost in the mists of time"and had become "part of the unquestioned fabric of local life".
During theBritish Raj, Britain first started borrowing Indian dishes, creating Anglo-Indian cuisine, with dishes such askedgeree(1790)andMulligatawny soup(1791).Indian food was served in coffee houses from 1809,and cooked at home from a similar date as cookbooks of the time attest. TheVeeraswamyrestaurant inRegent Street, London, was opened in 1926, at first serving Anglo-Indian food, and is the oldest surviving Indian restaurant in Britain.There was a sharp increase in the number of curry houses in the 1940s, and again in the 1970s.
The post-colonial Anglo-Indian dishchicken tikka masalawas apparently invented inGlasgowin the early 1970s,whilebalti cuisinewas introduced to Britain in 1977 inBirmingham.In 2003, there were roughly 9,000 restaurants serving Indian cuisine in Britain. The majority of Indian restaurants in Britain are run by entrepreneurs of Bangladeshi (oftenSylhetis) and Pakistani origin.According toBritain'sFood Standards Agency, the Indian food industry in the United Kingdom was worth £3.2 billion in 2003, accounting for two-thirds of all eating out, and serving about 2.5 million British customers every week.
Indian restaurants typically allow the diner to combine base ingredients — chicken, prawns or "meat" (lamb or mutton) — with curry sauces — from the mildkormato the scorchingphall— without regard to the authenticity of the combination. The reference point for flavour and spice heat is theMadras currysauce (the name represents the area of India where restaurateurs obtained their spices, rather than an actual dish). Other sauces are sometimes variations on a basic curry sauce:for instance,vindaloois often rendered as a fiery dish of lamb or chickenin a Madras sauce with extrachilli, rather than theLuso-Indiandish ofporkmarinated inwine vinegarandgarlic, based on a GoanPortuguesedishcarne de vinha d'alhos.
Indian restaurants and their cuisine in Britain gradually improved from the stereotypical flock wallpaper and standardised menus. One of the pioneers was theBombay Brasserie, which opened in Gloucester Road, London, in 1982, serving the kind of food actually eaten in India. Vegetarian Indian restaurants opened in the 1980s in the Drummond Street area of Euston, London. In 1990Chutney Maryfollowed in Chelsea. In 2001, two Indian restaurants in London,Tamarind(opened 1995) andZaika(opened 1999) gainedMichelin starsfor the quality of their cooking.
Indian cuisineis the most popular alternative to traditional cooking in Britain, followed byChineseandItalianfood.By 2015, chicken tikka masala was one of Britain's most popular dishes.
Southeast and East Asian cuisines have become widely available across England.Chinese cuisinebecame established in England by the 1970s, with large cities often having a Chinatown district; the one in London'sSohodeveloped between the two world wars, following an informal area inLimehouse.Deriving fromCantonese cuisine,the food served by Chinese restaurants has been adapted to suit English taste.From around 1980 onwards,Southeast Asian cuisines, especiallyThaiandVietnamese, began to gain popularity in England.
Italian cuisineis the most popularMediterranean cuisinein England. In its current form, inspired byElizabeth David, its rise began after 1945. There were some Italian restaurants before World War II, but they mostly served a generalised haute cuisine. Soon after the war, Italian coffee bars appeared, the first places to trade on their Italian identity; they soon started to sell simple and cheap Italian food such asminestronesoup,spaghettiandpizza. From the early 1960s, the slightly more eleganttrattoriarestaurants offered "Italian specialities" such aslasagneverdi al forno (baked lasagne, coloured with spinach).Other Mediterranean influences includeGreekmoussaka,fetaandtaramasalata,Turkishdonerandshishkebabs, andMiddle Easternhummus.
French cuisinein England is largely restricted to expensive restaurants, although there are some inexpensive Frenchbistros.For many years, English writers includingHannah Glassein the 18th century and Andrew Kirwan in the 19th century were ambivalent about French cooking.However, restaurants serving Frenchhaute cuisinedeveloped for the upper and middle classes in England from the 1830sandEscoffierwas recruited by theSavoy Hotelin 1890.Marcel Boulestin's 1923Simple French Cooking for English Homesdid much to popularise French dishes.
The English cafe is a small, inexpensive eating place. A working men's cafe serves mainly fried or grilled food, such asfried eggs,bacon,bangers and mash‚black pudding,bubble and squeak,burgers,sausages,mushroomsandchips. These may be accompanied bybaked beans, cookedtomatoes, andfried bread. These are referred to as "breakfast" even if they are available all day.Traditional cafes have declined with the rise offast-foodchains, but remain numerous all over the UK.
Atea shopis a small restaurant that serves soft drinks and light meals, often in a sedate atmosphere. Customers may eat acream teain Cornish or Devonshire style,served from achinaset, and asconewithjamandclotted cream.
Fish and chipsis a hot dish consisting ofbatteredfish, commonlyAtlantic codorhaddock, andchips. It is a commontake-away food.
Western Sephardic Jewssettling in England from the 16th century would have prepared fried fish likepescado frito, coated inflourand fried in oil.Chips appeared in the Victorian era;Dickens's 1859A Tale of Two Citiesmentions "husky chips of potatoes, fried with some reluctant drops of oil".Panayi states that fish and chip shops in the 1920s were often run by Jews or Italians.Despite this, the new dish was popularly attributed to France;The Timesrecorded that "potatoes chipped and fried in the French manner were introduced in Lancashire with great success about 1871."TheFish Trades Gazetteof 29 July 1922 stated that "Later there was introduced into this country the frying and purveying of chip potatoes from France ... which had made the fried fish trade what it is today."
The public house, orpub, is a famous English institution. In the mid-20th century, pubs were drinking establishments with little emphasis on the serving of food, other than "bar snacks", such aspork scratchings,pickled eggs, saltedcrisps, andpeanuts, which helped to increase beer sales. If a pub served meals these were usually basic cold dishes such as aploughman's lunch, invented in the 1950s.
In the 1950s some British pubs started to offer "a pie and a pint", with hot individualsteak and ale piesmade on the premises by the landlord or his wife. In the 1960s this was developed into the then-fashionable "chicken in a basket", a portion of roast chicken with chips, served on a napkin, in a wicker basket, by the Mill pub atWithington.Quality dropped but variety increased with the introduction ofmicrowave ovensandfreezerfood. "Pub grub" expanded to include British food items such assteak and kidney pudding,shepherd's pie,fish and chips,bangers and mash,Sunday roast, andpasties.Thegastropubmovement of the 21st century, on the other hand, has sought to serve restaurant-quality food, cooked to order from fresh ingredients, in a pub setting;one pub,The Hand & FlowersinMarlowhas been awarded twoMichelin stars, and several have one star.In 1964, pubs were serving 9.1% of meals eaten outside the home; this rose rapidly to 37.5% by 1997.
Modern Westernvegetarianismwas founded in the United Kingdom in 1847 with the world's firstVegetarian Society.It has increased markedly since the end ofWorld War II, when there were around 100,000 vegetarians in the country. By 2003 there were between 3 and 4 million vegetarians in the UK,one of the highest percentages in the Western world, while around 7 million people claim to eat nored meat.By 2015, 11 of 22 restaurant chains studied by theVegan Societyhad at least one vegan main course on their menu, though only 6 of these explicitly labelled them as vegan dishes.Top-end vegetarian restaurants remain relatively few, though they are increasing rapidly: there were some 20 in Britain in 2007, rising to 30 in 2010.
English cuisine in the twentieth century suffered from a poor international reputation. Keith Arscott of Chawton House Library comments that "at one time people didn't think the English knew how to cook and yet these [eighteenth and nineteenth century] female writers were at the forefront of modern-day cooking."English food was popularly supposed to be bland, but English cuisine has made extensive use of spices since the Middle Ages; introduced curry to Europe; and makes use of strong flavourings such as English mustard. It was similarly reputed to be dull, like roast beef: but that dish was highly prized both in Britain and abroad, and few people could afford it; the "Roast Beef of Old England" lauded byWilliam Hogarthin his 1748 painting celebrated the high quality of English cattle, which the French at the "Gate ofCalais" (the other name of his painting) could only look at with envy. The years of wartime shortages and rationing certainly did impair the variety and flavour of English food during the twentieth century, but the nation's cooking recovered from this with increasing prosperity and the availability of new ingredients from soon after the Second World War.
In 2005, 600 food critics writing for the BritishRestaurantmagazine named 14 British restaurants among the 50 best restaurants in the world, the number one beingThe Fat DuckinBray, Berkshire, led by its chefHeston Blumenthal. The quality ofLondon's best restaurants has made the city a leading centre of international cuisine.
Meanwhile, thelist of United Kingdom food and drink products with protected status(PDO) underEuropean Union lawhas increased rapidly, with 59 items includingCornish sardines, YorkshireWensleydale cheeseand Yorkshire forcedrhubarb, Fenland celery, West Country lamb and beef and traditionalCumberland sausagelisted as registered in 2015, and a further 13 including BirminghamBaltilisted as applied for.By 2016 there were 12cheeses from Englandwith PDO status.