What’s counts as ‘British’ food?

[Walker1178]

DP has been away for the last two weeks visiting family abroad, it’s a very Persian style diet. Think meat, rice, buckwheat, breads. I drove to pick him up from the airport which is a 3 hour round trip so I prepped a home made lasagne beforehand ready to finish in the oven when we got back. Served it up with some shop bought garlic ciabatta and a dressed salad, it was proper tasty.

My ask comes from him saying he was so happy to be eating proper British food again. I’m not Italian but I do follow a fairly traditional recipe so found it quite amusing that he considers it British!

Given that tomatoes and potatoes and chillies (found in 'Indian' cuisine') was recently introduced to India from the new world in the 1600s, thats not Indian cuisine either is it

Given that pasta was taken to Italy by way of China, that isnt Italian is it

See also tomato based dishes used hugely by Italy, Spain, France, those traditional dishes arent traditional to those countries either are they?

See how ridiculous it sounds to claim that something that has been served in the UK/England for hundreds of years is not 'British'.

Gammon!

Toad In The Hole
Treacle Tart
Sussex Pond Pudding (suet pud with a whole lemon, butter and sugar inside, all of which turn into a lovely lemony sauce)
Sticky Toffee pudding.

Crisps sandwiches
Chip butties
Pots noodle sandwiches

Basically sandwiches.

I think this is probably it, we’re used to eating from all around the world. I try to mix things up too so we have different proteins and sides during the week whereas he’s eaten a lot of the same thing whilst away.

Sandwiches are underrated. I bought some beautiful vine tomatoes last week and then lived on cheese and tomato sandwiches for the next couple of days. Would happily do it again 😋

Having lived in a city in Spain a good while ago, it was noticeable that the food in shops and restaurants was mainly traditional Spanish with regional variations depending on where you were. There was one Indian restaurant, a handful of Chinese restaurants and some Italian restaurants, plus some hole in wall type places that served slices of pizza late at night. Otherwise it was Spanish food everywhere.

The UK has a longer history of embracing lots of other cuisines than some other countries. Being served meals course by course instead of everything being put on the table at once comes from Russia.

@ManufacturedConcerns I was just about to say sandwiches!
I don't know if poached and boiled eggs are a British thing?
We went to a greek island on holiday and the place we were staying served breakfast and asked what we would like. I asked for a poached egg and toast. It took about 45 minutes and the waitress said they had had to look up poached eggs and watch a YouTube video to find out how to do it!

I've been on holiday in the peaks and eaten British food (not lasagna and curry!)

Pork pie
Cornish (bakewell) pasty
bakewell tart and pudding
Roasted beef Yorkshire pudding and bubble and squeak
Jam and clotted cream scone (with prosecco, less British)
Seabass and crushed potato plus veg
Salmon and mash
Roast pork with stuffing and applesauce cob.
Oatcakes with bacon and cheese
Sausage sarnie
In one long weekend

This is basically my DM’s entire repertoire from when I was a kid so exactly what I would describe as British! An exotic meal was Pizza Hut with a coke float 😂

One of the very earliest recipes for something that is recognisably lasagne (without tomatoes though, as was published 100 years before the 'discovery' of the New World) is from an English cookbook (there are slightly earlier Italian recipes and mentions in text) dating from the 1390s. I think we can safely say that some form of lasagne is a traditional English/British dish.

Ironically the cookbook is called 'The Forme of Cury'...

Apologies if this was answered up thread. The Sunday roast was everything cooked together in your tin. You would take it to the baker's before church and get it back after. This was before the range oven became common.

Yep, this is what I had in mind when posting.

We're always very keen to denigrate the 'Britishness' of things that are either traditionally or colloquially 'British', whether that be food, habits, people (as long as they are elite like the aristocracy (French) or the royals (German)

We would never do this with people who arrive much more recently, we dont tolerate the mentality of 'but where are you really from'.

Its a sort of sport on threads like these to some how disprove anything as longstanding or traditional (choose your word whatever) as British as 'not really British - its Spanish or ME or Asian etc etc

Turnips. Pease pudding. Fish and Chips. Roast dinner.

Seeing your question makes me think of my parents who would eat nothing but (what they considered) British food. So no rice, pasta, currys, pizza etc.

So, fish & chips, pie & mash, gammon & egg with chips, Sunday lunch (beef, lamb or chicken with all the trimmings). Cooked breakfast or sometimes kippers, stews/casseroles. Sometimes a chippy tea which could be fish & chips or a sausage dinner.

Traditionally English, going back a good long way? Depends who you were. If you were poor it's basically going to be a variation on a type of grain and vegetable porridge - pottage. Flavoured with herbs if you're lucky, probably not salt, day in, day out. Enjoy! Flavoured with alcohol if you're richer - frumenty. (Old timers will remember funtimes on a thread that featured frumenty...)

Seriously though, so many suggestions on this thread aren't traditionally British. Rollmop herrings? Hollandaise sauce?? Kedgeree, god love it, is a product of British Empire and at least indicates contact with curry spices, but I wouldn't describe it as absolutely British.

Going back several centuries, the rich were just as keen to show off with posh imported delicacies as they are today, and a lot of the foods that weren't actually being eaten by peasants were fairly 'exotic' - spiced and sweetened, with fruit and nut pastes used in 'savoury' dishes. Basically stuff that my in-laws, who have no truck with foreign food, would think of as 'fancy foreign mess'.

Whenever I hear people talking about 'proper English food' I think fondly of my PIL's incinerated roast meats, the grey leathery lamb and beef (pink meat is a sign of weakness!), the beef cottage pie with no garlic and not even a whisper of Worcestershire Sauce, the utter lack of seasoning, flavourings or dressings, the insistence on 'good ingredients cooked simply' - and I want to throw myself under a bus. Thank feck I'm not entirely English and was brought up with a huge vat of olive oil in the kitchen, a British mother who had embraced Elizabeth David and others in the 60's, and visits to my abroad family, where we enjoyed food that tasted of something.

If I was taking a visitor from overseas around the locale and wanted to expose them to trad British food, I suppose I'd take them to the local tearooms where the cake is very good, find a cream tea for them, an excellent cheese shop, and perhaps to the coast to enjoy exorbitantly priced but locally caught seafood. Can't guarantee it wouldn't be dripping with garlic butter though!

Spot the Scot!

I'll also add

Scotch Broth
Tablet
Cullen SKink
Arbroath Smokies
Scotch pie
Bridie
Macaroni pie
Well fired rolls

I had mince n tatties with doughballs for dinner last night and it was perfection in a bowl and a rare treat rather than a weekly meal when I grew up because of how unhealthy it is!

My friend stays in a small hotel in Ibiza. She said the food is proper English food and they do a lovely curry.