Traditional British dishes

main course dishes	drinks	desserts	pastries

Apple dumplings — cored and peeled apples baked in a pastry shell. When George III first served them, he was extremely puzzled as to how the apples got inside.

Apple pie — a traditional English pie, made with apples, sugar and cinna­mon, usually eaten with custard.

Banbury cake — a spiced flat cake made with dried fruits and currants, usually oval in shape. It derives its name from Banbury, an English town in Oxfordshire. For centuries Banbury was noted for its ale, cheese and cakes. Part of the original 16th-century cake ' house remains.

Bangers and mash — fried pork or beef sausages served with mashed pota­toes, often accompanied by lots of thick gravy and fried onions. A very simple and common dish. "Banger" is a slang word for sausage.

Boiled beef and carrots — a beef soup with sliced carrots and dump­lings. The Cockney's favourite dish.

Bubble and squeak — a dish of slices of underdone beef, fried and sea­soned, laid on cabbage, boiled, strained, and fried in dripping. The name refers to the sounds made in cooking this dish. Some cooks will add boiled potatoes or replace cabbage with broccoli, sprouts or other cooked greens. This left-over dish is cooked in millions of homes, every Monday, to finish the remains of Sunday dinner.

Christmas pie — a small pie eaten at Christmas, usually a mince pie. The filling of a mince pie is called "mince­meat". It is a mixture of currants, raisins, sugar, suet, apples, almonds, candied peel, spices (and sometimes even meat chopped small), all soaked in lemon juice and brandy.

Christmas pudding — a special rich pudding eaten at Christmas. It is made with lots of dried fruit (raisins, currants, sultanas), eggs, suet and very little flour. The pudding is made before Christmas and is boiled in a basin for hours and then again for hours on Christmas Day. It will keep for a long time.

Cider — a beverage made from the juice of apples expressed and fermented. The strong, rough cider made from small or unselected apples is called "scrumpy". Pear cider, perry, is also popular. The Southwest counties of England have been famous for their first-rate homemade cider, different kinds of which are now produced and successfully sold, winning over a share of the beer market.

Cocka1eekie soup (Scottish for "chicken and leek soup'") — according to the traditional Scotch recipe, the bird cooked must be an old tough cock.

Cornish pasty — meat, vegetables and seasoning cooked in a case of pastry. It used to be the main food of Cornish miners and fishermen about 150 years ago, because it was a convenient meal to take to work. The word "pasty" applies to any pie of meat, jam, etc. enclosed in paste and baked without a dish.

Devonshire cream tea — a pot of tea and scones served with strawberry jam and thick, yellow clotted cream. It is a traditional afternoon tea in the Devonshire farmhouses.

Fish and chips — a snack composed of fish and chipped potatoes, fried in boiling cooking oil. Generally, they use fillets of cod, haddock, skate, rock eel or plaice.

Gingerbread — a variety of an oatcake made with treacle and ginger. It is a favourite treat of adults and children on the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes' Night. It is especially popular in the North of England, where the main cereal is oat.

Haggis — a Scottish dish consisting of the heart, lungs and liver of a sheep, etc. (or sometimes of the tripe and chitterlings) minced with suet and oatmeal, seasoned with salt, pepper, onions, and boiled like a large sausage in the maw of the animal. It is eaten at Hogmanay (New Year's Eve), and on the 25th of January (Robert Burns' Night). This festive meal includes haggis, turnips and potatoes, swede and lots of whisky. Haggis is carried into the dining-room behind a piper wearing traditional dress. He then reads a poem written especially for the haggis.

Hot-cross bun — a small bun with a pattern of the cross, toasted and eaten with butter on Good Friday, the last Friday before Easter.

Irish coffee (or Gaelic cof­fee) — black coffee with sugar, Irish whisky and cream. The cream should be flowing on top. This is best achieved by pouring it carefully over the back of a spoon. The coffee is then drunk through the cream.

Irish stew — a dish composed of pieces of mutton, potatoes and onions stewed together. It is cooked very slowly for about 3 hours in a pot with a tightly fitting lid. Irish stew should be thick and creamy, not thin and watery.

Kipper — a freshly caught herring (or sometimes haddock or sprat), split, gutted, lightly salted and then slowly smoked over smouldering oak chips. The best kippers come from Yarmouth and other seaside fishing towns. That is why they are some­times humorously called Yarmouth capon, Gourock ham, Taunton turkey, etc. (after the names of fishing towns and villages). The traditional accompaniment to kippers is a cup of strong, sweet tea.

Lancashire hot pot — mutton, potatoes, onions and sometimes kidney and mushrooms cooked in an earthenware pot with a tight fitting cover. Unlike Irish stew, this dish is cooked in an oven.

Oatcake — a thin cake made of oatmeal. English miners in winter preferred oatcakes to wheaten bread, because oat­meal is more nutritious than wheaten flour.

Roast beef— a traditional dish of Old England. It is usually served with Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, gravy and horseradish sauce. A good piece of roast beef should be red inside and nicely browned outside.

Scone — a large round cake made of barley meal or oatmeal or wheat flour baked on a griddle. There are many varie­ties of scones: soda, butter, treacle scones, brown scones made of whole meal, etc. The Scots make "sweetie .scones" with raisins, currants and spices. In Devon, scones (or "chudleighs") are a very popular item of food, served with cream tea. The name must be an adoption of Middle Low Ger­man "schonbrot" (fine bread).

Singing Hinny — a currant cake with ground rice and lard baked on a griddle. It is made in Scotland and North of England. "Hinny" is a dialect word for honey.

Spotted Dick (also Spotted Dog) — a suet pudding made with cur­rants or raisins.

Trif1e — a sweet dish made of cream, white of eggs, sponge cake, jam, etc.