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Food & drink
In this page you can find useful info about Britain's most traditional food and drink.
* Afternoon tea (The traditional 4 o'clock tea)
This is a small meal, not a drink. Traditionally it consists of tea (or coffee) served with either of the following:
Freshly baked scones served with cream and jam
Afternoon tea sandwiches - thinly sliced cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off
Assorted pastries
Freshly baked scones served with cream and jam
Afternoon tea sandwiches - thinly sliced cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off
Assorted pastries
* High tea (The traditional 6 o'clock tea)
Traditionally eaten early evening, High tea was a substantial meal that combined delicious sweet foods, such as scones, cakes, buns or tea breads, with tempting savouries, such as cheese on toast, toasted crumpets, cold meats and pickles or poached eggs on toast. This meal is now often replaced with a supper due to people eating their main meal in the evenings rather than at midday.
* English crumpets
Crumpets are generally circular roughly 7 cm in diameter and roughly 2 cm thick. Their shape comes from being restrained in the pan/griddle by a shallow ring. They have a characteristic flat top with many small pores and a chewy and spongy texture. They may be cooked until ready to eat warm from the pan, but are frequently left slightly undercooked so that they may be cooled and stored before being eaten freshly toasted. They go great with tea, and spread with butter and preserves.
* Traditional English breakfast
The traditional English breakfast consists of eggs, bacon, sausages, fried bread, baked beans and mushrooms. Even though not many people will eat this for breakfast today, it is always served in hotels and guest houses around Britain. The traditional English breakfast is called the 'Full English' and sometimes referred to as 'The Full English Fry-up'.
* Fish and chips
Fish and chips is a popular take-away food in the United Kingdom. It consists of battered fish which is deep-fried and served with chips. In Britain and Ireland, cod and haddock appear most commonly as the fish used for fish and chips. Fish and chips are not normally home cooked but bought at a fish and chip shop ("chippie") . In chip shops in the United Kingdom, salt and vinegar is traditionally sprinkled over fish and chips at the time it is served.
* Yorkshire pudding
Yorkshire Pudding is a dish that originated in Yorkshire, England. This dish is not usually eaten as a dessert like other puddings but instead as part of the main course or at a starter. It is made from batter and usually served with roast meat and gravy.
* Roast beef
In the UK, roast beef is the signature national dish which holds cultural meaning for the English. It is a dish of beef which is roasted in an oven. Essentially prepared as a main meal, the leftovers can be and are often served within sandwiches and sometimes is used to make hash. In the United Kingdom roast beef is one of the meats traditionally served at Sunday dinner. A traditional side dish to roast beef is Yorkshire pudding.
* Shepherd's pie
Shepherd's pie is a traditional dish with a meat base and a mashed potato topping. The term "shepherd's pie" should be used when the meat is mutton or lamb, with the origin being that shepherds are concerned with sheep.
* Steak and kidney pie
A traditional English dish consisting of a cooked mixture of chopped beef, kidneys, onions, mushrooms and beef stock. This mixture is placed in a pie or casserole dish, covered with a pastry crust and baked until crisp and brown. Steak and kidney pie is a representative dish of British cuisine.
* British curry
Historically, the word "curry" was first used in British cuisine, to denote dishes of meat (often leftover lamb) in a Western-style sauce flavored with curry powder. Curry has become an integral part of British cuisine, so much so that, since the late 1990s, Chicken Tikka Masala has been referred to as "a true British national dish". Other British curry derivatives include "Coronation chicken", a cold dish invented to commemorate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 - and curry sauce (or curry gravy), usually served warm with traditional British fast food dishes such as chips.
* Cheddar cheese
Cheddar originates from a village in Somerset in western England, also famous for its gorge. There are six varieties of cheddar - mild, medium, mature, vintage, Farmhouse and West Country. It is the most popular cheese in the United Kingdom, accounting for 51 percent of the country's £1.9 billion annual cheese market.
*Haggis - Scotland's national dish
Haggis is a kind of savoury pudding containing sheep's 'pluck' (heart, liver and lungs); minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally encased in the animal's stomach and simmered for approximately three hours. Most modern commercial haggis is prepared in a casing rather than an actual stomach. The haggis is a traditional Scottish dish, considered the national dish of Scotland as a result of Robert Burns' poem Address to a Haggis of 1787. Haggis is traditionally served with "neeps and tatties" (Scots: Swedish turnip and potato, boiled and mashed separately) and a "dram" (i.e. a glass of Scotch whisky), especially as the main course of a Burns supper.
* Scottish shortbread
Shortbread is a classic Scottish dessert that consists of three basic ingredients: flour, sugar, and butter. This dessert resulted from medieval biscuit bread, which was a twice-baked, enriched bread roll dusted with sugar and spices and hardened into a hard, dry, sweetened biscuit called a rusk. It is traditionally formed into one of three shapes: one large circle divided into segments ("Petticoat Tails"); individual round biscuits ("Shortbread Rounds"); or a thick rectangular slab cut into "fingers."
* Scotch "Uisge Beatha" ("the water of life") = whisky
The ingredients of whisky are unique to Scotland itself: Fields of golden barley, an abundance of clear pure water and rich and thick earthy peat cut from the moors. There are two types of whisky: single malt and grain, the latter being faster and cheaper to produce. Scotch whiskies are generally distilled twice, although some are distilled a third time and others even up to twenty times. For centuries it has been claimed that whisky has mystical medicinal powers sufficient to cure colic, smallpox and many other common diseases and ailments.
* The Cornish pasty
The traditional Cornish pasty is filled with beef, sliced or diced potato, swede (also known as a yellow turnip or rutabaga) and onion, seasoned with salt and pepper, and is baked. Today, the pasty is the food most associated with Cornwall regarded as its national dish, and accounts for 6% of the Cornish food economy. Pasties with many different fillings are made; some shops specialise in selling all sorts of pasties.
* The Leek - The national emblem of the Welsh
The leek is a national emblem of Wales. According to legend, Saint David ordered his Welsh soldiers to identify themselves by wearing the vegetable on their helmets in an ancient battle against the Saxons that took place in a leek field. It is still worn on St David's Day each 1 March.
* Welsh cakes or "bakestones"
Welsh cakes are also known as bakestones within Wales because they are traditionally cooked on a bakestone (Welsh: maen), a cast iron griddle about 1.5 cm or more thick which is placed on the fire or cooker. They are made from flour, sultanas, raisins, and/or currants, and may also include such spices as cinnamon and nutmeg. They are served hot or cold dusted with caster sugar. Unlike scones, they are not usually eaten with an accompaniment, though they are sometimes sold ready split and spread with jam, and they are sometimes buttered. They are often eaten accompanied by a pot of tea.
* Pancakes (Shrove Tuesday)
Pancakes are associated with the day preceding Lent because they were a way to use up rich foodstuffs such as eggs, milk, and sugar, before the fasting season of the 40 days of Lent. The liturgical fasting emphasized eating plainer food and refraining from food that would give pleasure. On Pancake Day, pancake races are held in villages and towns across the United Kingdom.
* Bitter
A British term for pale ale. Pale ale is a beer which uses a warm fermentation and predominantly pale malt. Bitter is served in Pubs.
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