I agree with Crusoe . What is it with you Americans and British food ?. I bet most of you have never tasted the stuff and just think that it is a way of getting a cheap laugh at our expense. If you want to talk about rubbish food I have just one word for you - McDonalds
I like a lot of British food, and I make a damn fine Yorkshire Pudding (considering it isn’t something I learned to cook at mom’s knee in Oklahoma). Pies ([without kidney pls), roasts on Sunday lunch, crumpets, scones, sausages … there’s a heck of a lot of good food out there.
Crusoe and Rayne definately have a point - don’t knock it til you’ve tried it. Then again, I must agree with benson, jellied eels are just gross.
Of course, I can’t stand any seafood and haven’t tried jellied eels. I think a lot of it is a name issue. Some of the food (faggots, jellied eels, spotted dick) sounds strange to Americans and is just asking to have the piss taken out of it.
And? Most of us would agree about McDonalds. Your point?
I’m sorry, but British food is fairly bland. There are some tasty dishes, but for the most part it’s fairly ‘eh.’ Not bad, not good.
And yes, I have tasted the stuff as I lived in the UK for a chunk of time. And yes, it’s still funny.
Fair enough. I disagree, but I’m not going to get in a huff over it. I think British food is comparable to American in terms of range of cuisine. Those oddly named dishes mentioned are so uncommon over here that you’d be hard pressed to find many places serving them.
I have a hard time believing that anyone could possibly require help to mock British cuisine. That being said, there are many fine traditional British dishes which are actually quite tasty: fish and chips are usually nice, as are bangers and mash if the sausages are good, and scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam are a delight.
OTOH, I ventured into a pie shop the other day and tried a traditional pie and mash with liquor (that’s “gravy”, for our US viewers). It was thoroughly revolting, made worse by the bright green gravy (which I hope was that color from having a parsley base rather than other reasons I could think of). I’m not even going to attempt eels after that experience. Even the faggots were better than that pie. When come back bring fish and chips, please.
Aside from that experience, the elements of British cooking that bother me most are less the individual dishes than the juxtaposition of certain ingredients. Much as Brits find the thought of peanut butter with jam revolting, I find eating baked beans for breakfast or putting sweetcorn on pizza to be in violation of all proper culinary laws. And don’t even get me started on Coronation Chicken. Chacun, as they say, a son goo.
Isn’t Melton Mowbray a town?
I don’t know. Can you?
Kidney Pie.
In reality, there’s no such thing, but a lot of people seem to associate the term with British food.
Do we?
Yes, having a particular variety of pork pie named after it - a lot of foods are named after places.
Back to the OP - a single word:
Marmite
If it makes you feel any better, I’ll be looking to get the laughs from Anglophiles. Folks who don’t have an appreciation for British culture won’t really be the audience I’ll be aiming at.
Actually, I’m not really making fun of the food, I just titled the thread that knowing I would get impassioned responses, so thank you for obliging. I actually need a term that I, as the speaker, will seem ignorant of thus making it funny to the folks who know what the term really means. The speaker will be throwing out terms that he thinks are sexually transmitted diseases but get the terms mixed up, thus appearing the fool.
Something like: “I just got back from Great Britain. Those British women are wonderful, but I had a one-night-stand and I think I’ve contracted a case of spotted dick!”
So you see I’m not ACTUALLY making fun of the food. (Just suggesting that the British woman I slept with is diseased- much less offensive.)
BTW thanks all for the term “spotted dick” I didn’t know that one. Better than “I’ve contracted a case of kipper”???
bubble and squeak??
Never had such good food as in England.
[I’m including the US, Singapore, Indonesia, Spain, Greece, France, Belgium and Italy here]
Marmite. Yeuch. Bleurgh. Uuuugh.
Other than that - British food rules. And no-one eats jellied eels anymore.
This thread gives me an opportunity to illustrate the stated piss-poor customer service and the quirky foodstuff.
A friend and I were driving to Lincolnshire to visit my sister, and we realised that we’d pass within 50 miles of Melton Mowbray, home of the best pork pies in the world. Big, solid chunks of spiced pork, with a little light aspic, all encased in the shortest pastry you’ve ever tasted. Divine. Both of us being somewhat eccentric, we agreed to make the 50 mile detour just to buy a pork pie. So we drove across Leicestershire and arrived in the town centre at two minutes past five. There was a butcher’s shop in the square with a big display of pork pies in the window. The butcher was in the store, but as we arrived at the door he turned the ‘open’ sign around. I opened the door anyway - “sorry, we close at five”. “Oh, I know,” I said with a smile, “I just wondered if you could possibly see your way to selling us a couple of your famous pies - we’ve made a 50 mile detour just to buy a real Melton Mowbray!” “But we’re closed.” “Can’t you just sell me a couple of pies? I’ve got the exact change.” “No.”
Arsehole.
I ended up buying one that had been made in Luton in the Co-Op .
Bangers.
Clotted cream.
Airline food.
Altoids.
They call cookies “biscuits.”
WTF 
Feel free to get started… Coronation Chicken is an abomination. For those of you who’ve never had it, imagine bits of dried up chicken doused in sweetish powdery orange curry sauce, plus sultanas. Oh, and it’s served cold, usually in sandwiches.
For me, Coronation Chicken sums up everything that has ever been wrong with British food - it sounds terribly British, too, doesn’t it?
I’m dubious about the affectionate nostalgia for ‘nursery-type’ British food (spotted dick, toad in the hole, semolina). You’lll also find it pretty hard to find now because most of us over here have finally realised it’s crap and don’t eat it. Hence Britain’s thriving restaurant culture where we eat Spanish, Turkish, Indian, Italian, Lebanese,Thai, Mexican…
Fish and chips are OK though, ditto British traditional cakes and pastries
Oh, I forgot kippers, and well-cooked bacon and eggs, and some cheeses (Stilton, Cheddar). But I’m not going to post in the other thread…
stamps foot
I love Coronation Chicken. It was invented at Le Cordon Bleu school of London in 1953 by Constance Spry in honour of her maj’s getting a shiny new titfer. I suspect that, if cooked right, it would be a bit more palatable than y’all’s experience of it.
No hold on a second there… spotted dick is deservedly a classic comfort food - it isn’t about to go away just because it happens to form part of an uncomfortable stereotype. Likewise toad-in-the-hole - it’s only crap if it is of inferior manufacture - when it is prepared properly, with decent sausages and real onion gravy (plus buttery mashed potatoes on the side) it is truly an excellent dish.
Semolina… hmmmm… Not sure which of the various unpleasant school milk puddings I’m remembering here - I know Tapioca is the one that was like frogspawn, but isn’t semolina the same thing that Americans call ‘Cream of Wheat’?