BRITAIN has always been a culinary melting pot. From the fish and chips brought by Jewish immigrants to the East End of London to the tikka masala that is now widely held to be the country’s favourite meal, our island’s cuisine has been shaped and vastly enriched by centuries of newcomers. The Romans brought cabbages, peas and, of course, wine, the Vikings arrived with fish-smoking techniques and the Normans bequeathed us a dictionary’s worth of food names (anyone for mouton?). Kedgeree, now thought of as the most quintessentially British of breakfasts, came home with members of the East India Company in the 18th century. But of course, that isn’t always the direction of travel.
As a former Empire with colonies all over the globe, Britain has exported its favourite foods worldwide. Think of the 4th Earl of Sandwich’s proprietary late-night snack, now consumed, ‘in some form in almost every country in the world,’ according to food historian Andrew F. Smith. For all that people like to scoff at indigestible Anglo stodge (W. Somerset Maugham, who spent much of his life in France, supposedly quipped that ‘to eat well in England, you should have breakfast three times a day’), it’s been embraced and reinterpreted in thousands of entirely different—and entirely delicious—ways. Even haggis exports have risen by 136% over the past 10 years; Hong Kong and Ghana are especially keen.
Tracing dishes back to their point of origin is a knotty, and some might say impossible, business, but here are four from around the world with roots—or, at the very least, strong associations—in the UK.
Bistecca
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Denne historien er fra March 24, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.