British cuisine
British cuisine consists of the cooking traditions and practices associated with the United Kingdom, including the regional cuisines of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. British cuisine has its roots in the cooking traditions of the indigenous Celts; however, its diverse culinary offerings have been significantly influenced and shaped by subsequent waves of settlement and conquest, notably those of the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and the Normans; waves of migration, notably immigrants from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Jamaica and the wider Caribbean, China, Italy, South Africa, and Eastern Europe, primarily Poland; and exposure to increasingly globalised trade and connections to the Anglosphere, particularly the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Highlights and staples of British cuisine include the roast dinner, the full breakfast, shepherd's pie, toad in the hole, fried chicken and fish and chips; and a variety of both savoury and sweet pies, cakes, tarts, and pastries. Foods influenced by immigrant populations and the British appreciation for spice have led to the invention of new curries. Other traditional desserts include trifle, scones, apple pie, sticky toffee pudding, and Victoria sponge cake. British cuisine also includes a large variety of cheeses, beers, and ciders.
Around the United Kingdom vibrant culinary scenes exist influenced by global cuisine. The modern phenomenon of television celebrity chefs began in the United Kingdom with Philip Harben. Since then, well-known British chefs have wielded considerable influence on modern British and global cuisine, including Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, Heston Blumenthal, Rick Stein, Nigella Lawson, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and Fanny Cradock.
History
Celtic origins and Roman conquest
British cuisine has its roots in the cooking practices of the indigenous Celts. Celtic agriculture and animal breeding practices produced a wide variety of foodstuffs, such as grain, fruit, vegetables, and cattle. Archaeological evidence of cheese production can be seen as early as 3,800 BC, while bread from cereal grains was being produced as early as 3,700 BC. Ancient Celts fermented apples to produce cider, as recorded by Julius Caesar during his attempted invasions of Britain in 55-54 BC.Strabo records that Celtic Britons cultivated millet, herbs, and root vegetables, and practised apiculture to produce honey. Trade with Celtic Gauls in what is now modern-day France and the Low Countries, as well as with the Roman Republic following its conquest of Gaul, introduced grains such as wheat, oats, and rye. Barley was grown to produce porridge and malt for beer, while flax was grown for its oil. Broad beans, wild spinach, herbs, and primitive parsnips were the primary sources of vegetables and greens in Celtic Britain.
According to Julius Caesar, Celtic Britons domesticated cattle, which were symbols of status and wealth, sheep and goats for their meat and milk; and, to a lesser extent, pigs for ham. Caesar notes that Celts also domesticated geese, chickens, and hares, but it is unclear whether they were kept for food or for religious rituals due to the association with Celtic deities. Trade with Romans also led to the import of wine.
In 43 AD, the Roman Empire invaded and began its conquest of Britain, eventually encompassing all of modern-day England, Wales, and parts of southern Scotland. The Roman conquest brought a culinary renaissance to the island, importing many foodstuffs which were hitherto unknown to Celtic Britons, including fruits such as figs, medlars, grapes, pears, cherries, plums, damsons, mulberries, dates, olives, vegetable marrows, and cucumbers; vegetables such as carrots, celery, asparagus, endives, turnips, cabbages, leeks, radishes, onions, shallots, and artichokes; nuts, seeds, and pulses such as sweet chestnuts, lentils, peas, pine nuts, almonds, walnuts, and sesame; and herbs and spices such as garlic, basil, parsley, borage, chervil, thyme, common sage, sweet marjoram, summer savory, black pepper, ginger, cinnamon, rosemary, mint, coriander, chives, dill, and fennel. Produced foods such as sausages were also imported, along with new animals, including rabbits, pheasants, peacocks, guinea fowl, and possibly fallow deer.
Roman colonists were able to grow wine in vineyards as far north as Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire, and the longevity of Roman occupation is credited as creating the wine industry in Britain. The importance of seafood to the Roman diet led to its increasing popularity in Britain, particularly shellfish such as oysters. The quality of oysters from Colchester in particular became prized in Rome as a delicacy. After the end of Roman rule in Britain and the subsequent collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the use of more exotic food items lessened. After the Roman period, British cuisine predominately consisted of vegetables, cereals, and meats such as mutton.
The Middle Ages
Shortly after the end of Roman rule in Britain, the Germanic Anglo-Saxons began conquering and colonising the island. The Anglo-Saxons introduced bacon to Britain during this period; rural families had their own recipes for curing and smoking bacon, while urban residents would purchase bacon from butchers who developed their own curing methods. Residents in London had access to a particularly diverse range of bacon products from across Britain. Anglo-Saxons helped to entrench stews, broths, and soups into British cuisine, along with an early form of the crumpet. Bread and butter became common fare, and the English in particular gained a reputation for their liberal use of melted butter as a sauce with meat and vegetables. Ale was a popular drink of choice among the nobility and peasantry alike, and mead production increased around Christian monasteries. Danish and other Scandinavian invaders during the Viking Age introduced techniques for smoking and drying fish.After the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Normans reintroduced many spices and continental influences that had been lost after the departure of the Romans. Many of the modern English words for foodstuffs, such as beef, pork, mutton, gravy, jelly, mustard, onion, herb, and spice are derived from Old French words introduced by the Normans. Though eating habits and cooking methods remained largely unchanged, pig farming intensified under the Norman dynasty. The Crusades and trade with Arab Muslim empires introduced foods such as oranges and sugarcane to Britain.
It was during the late 14th century that the first cookery books began to emerge, notably the English book the Forme of Cury, containing recipes from the court of Richard II. The recipes it describes are diverse and sophisticated, with a wide variety of ingredients such as capon, pheasant, almonds, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, dates, pine nuts, saffron, mace, nutmeg and sugar. It also describes foods such as gingerbread, and sweet and sour sauces. Elaborate stews such as dillegrout became commonly served at the coronations of English monarchs. It was during the Middle Ages that many staples of British cuisine began to develop, such as the apple pie, an early cheesecake, custard, mince pies, pasties, and various forms of meat pies.
Tudor and Stuart era
The dawn of the Tudor dynasty following the Wars of the Roses coincided with the European discovery of the New World, the initiation of the Columbian exchange, and globalisation of trade, which opened up Britain to a range of new foodstuffs not seen since the Roman conquest. Foods from the New World included grains such as maize; fruits such as avocados, chili peppers chocolate, cranberries, guavas, papayas, pineapples, squashes, and tomatoes; vegetables such as potatoes, cassavas, and sweet potatoes; legumes such as peanuts and haricot beans, spices such as vanilla; and animals, most notably turkeys. The growth of the global spice trade, now dominated by rapidly expanding European empires, led to the re-proliferation of black pepper, nutmeg, cloves, mace, and cinnamon in British cookery.The late 15th century saw the development of well-known alcoholic beverage Scotch whisky. It was during the early 16th century that cookery books printed using the printing press became more widely available, notably The Boke of Cokery printed at the turn of the century in 1500 by Richard Pynson, and The Good Huswifes Jewell towards the end of the century in 1585 by Thomas Dawson. Under the Tudor dynasty in England and Wales, and the Stuart dynasty in Scotland, British cuisine became more refined and grew more sophisticated. Recipes began to emphasise a balance of sweet and sour flavours, butter became a key ingredient in sauces, reflecting a trend seen in France that continued in subsequent centuries, and herbs such as thyme, used only sparingly in the medieval period, began to replace spices as flavourings.
Throughout the Tudor period, fruits such as apples, gooseberries, grapes, oranges, and plums were commonly eaten. The main source of carbohydrates in British diets remained bread, and its composition reflected one's socio-economic class: the peasantry ate bread made from rye or coarse wheat, the emerging middle class of prosperous tenants ate a yeoman's bread made of wholemeal, while the most expensive bread was made of white wheat flour. Meat consumption grew rapidly throughout the 16th century as the price of meat fell, and poorer families who would have rarely enjoyed meat a century before now had wider access to it. Commoners living by rivers or along the coast ate seafood that was plentiful to the waters surrounding Britain, such as haddock, sole, cod, oysters, whitebait, and cockles, while the wealthier classes ate sturgeon, seals, crab, lobster, salmon, trout, and shrimp. Commoners ate whatever meat they could hunt, such as rabbit, blackbirds, chicken, ducks, and pigeons.
The nobility consumed fresh meat in such vast quantities that it constituted approximately 75% of their diet. For example, the quantities of meat procured for the court of Elizabeth I in just one year included 8,200 sheep, 2,330 deer, 1,870 pigs, 1,240 oxen, 760 calves, and 53 wild boar. Pies became an important staple as both food and for court theatrics; the nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence", with its lyrics "Four and Twenty blackbirds / Baked in a pie. // When the pie is opened, the birds began to sing", refers to the conceit of placing live birds under a pie crust just before serving at a banquet. Nobles ate costlier or more unusual varieties of meat, such as swans, lamb and mutton, veal, beef, heron, pheasant, partridge, quail, peafowl, geese, boar, and venison. Royal banquets during the court of Henry VIII included unusual meats such as conger eel and porpoise.
Desserts and sweet foods grew rapidly as European demand for sugar ballooned during the 16th century. Sweets in British cuisine at this time included pastry-based foods such as tarts, sweet flans, and custards. The 16th century saw the emergence of sweet foods such as the fruit fool, most commonly made with gooseberries, sugar, and clotted cream; syllabubs, a dessert made with milk or cream, sugar, and wine, and trifle, at the time a thick cream flavoured with sugar, ginger, and rosewater. Trifle has remained a staple of British cuisine and is a popular sweet dish today. Scones and shortbread developed in Scotland at this time; though shortbread had been known since the 12th century, it was refined into its modern form during the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots. As trade with Southeast Asia increased, widespread eating of rice became more common, though it was usually in the form of a dessert, giving rise to rice pudding in Britain.
During the Stuart dynasty into the 17th century, trade with Africa, India, and China increased, largely through private interests, namely the East India Company. Fruits such as bananas became more commonplace, however it was the introduction of tea that would have a much more profound effect on British culinary habits. Tea remained quite expensive until the 18th century, and it was only consumed by wealthier middle class individuals and those in the nobility before that time. Coffee, a drink derived from the beans of a plant native to Yemen, was introduced to Europe through Italy, and became highly successful in the mid-to-late 17th century. Coffee houses sprang up across Britain; one, Oxford's Queen's Lane Coffee House, established in 1654, is still open today as the oldest continually-serving coffee house in Europe. Owing to the growing appreciation of sweet foods in Britain, the sponge cake, which would later become a defining food of the Victorian era and afternoon tea, had its start in the early 17th century, which mixed flour, sugar, and eggs, seasoned with anise and coriander seeds. The alcoholic beverage rum, produced from molasses throughout the Caribbean and North America, came to be associated with the British Royal Navy at this time, when they captured the valuable sugar-producing island of Jamaica in 1655.