English Food
From Breakfast to Preserves
English food has a bit of a reputation. But since the horrors of the post-war era we have gone a long way to resurrect old, traditional recipes like filling soups, splendid roasts and luscious puddings. And now English cooks and restaurants rank amongst the best in the world!
Heston Blumenthal's restaurant "The Fat Duck", in the sleepy Berkshire village of Bray, was voted the world's best in 2005! (He was runner-up in 2006 and 2007). So follow me into a tour of discovery: English food, from breakfast to supper, from pudding to cake to preserve, from cider to cheese as you've never seen it before!
Nothing sets you up for the day, or helps you recover from the night before, like a proper English breakfast. And here you can find out how it became a byword, what you should serve and even a small selection of wonderful recipes to try when you have the time, such as:
This is a grand tradition you should try at least once while visiting England. And in this section you can find out all about it. I'll review my favourite teas, and offer you a few ideas of what to serve with it. For example:
Invented by the Earl of Sandwich's man, because the Earl could not bear to leave the gaming table despite his rumbling stomach, sandwiches have become the traditional workday lunch for many English. Try out traditional combinations like roast beef and horseradish, cheese and pickle or egg and watercress, or go for the more unusual tastes of egg and anchovie or devilled chicken and mango.
In England, lunch is very much what you choose to make it: a sandwich on the run, picnic on the lawn or a cosy hour spent in the pub watching the world go by. Ploughman's, a Cornish pasty or a pork pie all fit the bill, as does a rich steak and ale pie, a plate of smoked salmon or slices carved from a traditionally cured ham.Dinner, by turn, can be warming and comforting, or quick and easy. Casseroles, pies and savory puddings fit here along with sausages, steak and chops. Check it out.
 Any collection of traditional English food will contain a large selection of puddings and sweets. We simply love our puddings. And I think only the English could invent something as delicious as The Pudding Club! Worried that traditional sweets were falling out of favour, the members got together to celebrate and promote them instead!And here you can find some of these recipes to make yourself or read reviews of some famous ready-made ones....
Cakes, Scones and BunsThe English love their tea. And nothing goes better with a nice cuppa than some freshly baked scone or biscuit.
Baking has therefore a long tradition in English food and cookery, and the many tea shops that you can find in English towns and villages are a superb advertisement for this noble art. It's highly unlikely that you'll only be offered one or two cakes to choose from. Often, there will be scones, bath buns, fruit bread and short bread laid out alongside a number of cakes and pastries. The only problem you'll have is deciding what to have!
In this section of the site you can find out about the things we like to drink, how they are made and why we like them.Check out notes and recipes about:- English Tea
- English Beer
- English Wine
- Mead
- Cider and Perry
- Rum
- Gin and Sloe Gin
- Cider Brandy
- Pimms
Preserving food has always been high on people's agenda - whether they faced a long, cold winter or not. And the English are no different. From salted or smoked fish to cured pork, from jams to chutneys, from ketchups to pickles... we have a lot of traditional recipes to choose from.Find out here how to make jam and chutney, how to pickle vegetables or make fruit vinegars. Or find traditional recipes for things like:
The Best of English FoodAs a nation, we're becoming positively obsessed with what we eat. More and more we want to know where our food comes from and how it was produced.As farmers struggle to survive, they often turn to small-scale food production to supplement their income, using traditional animal breeds and production methods. You can now find superb local cheeses, yoghurts and ice creams all over the country. Cheese especially has turned into an amazing success story, as artisan cheese makers rediscover old recipes or invent new ones. There have always been butchers who made their own sausages, cured their own hams, and raised their own pork pies, but they too are seeing an increased demand for their wares.
Between breakfast and supper, English food can be by turns delicate and hearty, but in no way boring. And then, of course, there are the many regional specialities that have become classics all over England and beyond: Devonshire cream tea, Lancashire Hotpot, Yorkshire Pudding, Cornish Pasty, Cumberland Sauce, Sussex Pond Pudding. So check out our English food pages, eat your way around England and have fun doing so! | To make it even easier for you to discover English food, Essentially England now offers a selection of the best English food and cookery books along with reviews of the best in English cookery writing in its English Food bookshop! |
Want to try some English food?
Find ideas for tastry traditional dishes in the recipe section.
|
