# How old is the stereotype that British food is not a very distinguished cuisine? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 13, 2014, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983 "2014-04-13T02:08:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![calm\_kiwi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc348/32.png) [@calm\_kiwi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/calm_kiwi)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2014, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/121 "2014-04-27T11:09:23Z")
What amuses me about the criticism of British food and traditional American food, is that “American” food comes from any ethnicity who ever landed in America . What is “American food”…surely it is just a homogenized version of “every food”? America is a multi-cultural society and has adapted many cultures foods and made them THEIRS. They would have to adopt other cultures foods because left to their devices…They either roast a turkey or add a can of soup! ---
**Author:** ![calm\_kiwi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc348/32.png) [@calm\_kiwi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/calm_kiwi)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2014, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/122 "2014-04-27T11:12:10Z")
Just for the record Haggis is bloody good! And so is steak and kidney pud! ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2014, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/123 "2014-04-27T15:10:51Z")
Now I’m hankerin’ fer some good ol’ buttered toast with Marmite, smothered in XO white cheddar and broiled until browned and bubbling … mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!! :o ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2014, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/124 "2014-04-27T17:07:23Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Well, in the US, pudding and custard are two similar, but different, things. Custard is egg-yolk thickened. Pudding is starch-thickened. For Brits, ‘pudding’ is a very broad term, either meaning simply ‘dessert’ or, more specifically, a warm, steamed, sponge-based dessert such as Sticky Toffee Pudding (aka food of gods, and I don’t even like desserts much). Steak and kidney pudding is so called because it, too, is steamed, in a suet pastry casing. It’s not found much anymore, to be honest. Bit stodgy for modern tastes. It’s funny that Americans always cite excessive offal as a reason for poor British cuisine. Brits actually eat very little, and very many are equally squeemish about it, recoiling in horror on foreign holidays in Spain, France or Italy, where lambs’ stomachs and the like make a much more frequent appearance on the menus. Kidney in steak and kidney pie is a flavour enhancer, and is very tasty, but even then many Brits don’t like it, just as they don’t like black pudding, which again we eat rarely and much less than our supposedly gastronomic neighbours across the English Channel. What Britain has traditionally been great at is the quality of its meat and cheese, things which were greatly rationed for many years after the war. Without these, our cuisine was poor, and cooking habits terrible from the 40s til the 80s, with overcooked, bland food, excessive use of convenience foods and a general collapse in knowledge and interest about great local ingredients. Thank god, there as been a complete renaissance in this in the last 20-30 years, and now, if you want to eat the best food in Britain, then hunt down a restaurant focussing on what is termed ‘modern British’, for the finest ingredients and most inventive interpretations. You can’t beat our beef, lamb, pork or seafood for quality. [The Fat Duck](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fat_Duck), one of the world’s finest restaurants year-on-year, serves British food. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/125 "2014-04-28T01:09:52Z")
> [@bathsheba](#): > > Oh yes, my Granny’s cooking and baking: > > Egg and bacon pie > Scones - sweet and cheese > Singing Hinnies > Spotted Dick (oh yes!) > Did I mention the egg and bacon pie? > Dark fruit cake (always decorated according to the celebration) > Sultana cake > Battenberg cake > Eccles cake > Treacle tart > Gingerbread cake > Jam roly poly > Rhubarb and custard > Eve’s pudding > Treacle toffee (must be kept in the airing cupboard and broken into pieces to give to your grandchildren) > Tansy and fools > Really, did I mention the egg and bacon pie? > All washed down with lashings of tea and Enid Blyton. :eek: Why doesn’t **Britain** have an obesity epidemic?! Just reading that list made my arteries harden! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/126 "2014-04-28T01:13:54Z")
> [@bump](#): > > You know, for my money, the English do breakfasts better than just about anywhere else I’ve been, save maybe a full-tilt Deep South breakfast in the US. [A full English breakfast with fried egg, sausage, white and black pudding, bacon, mushrooms, baked beans, hash browns, toast, and half a tomato.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_breakfast#Full_English_breakfast) Does anyone actually go to work in Britain, or do you just eat breakfast and sleep it off?! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/127 "2014-04-28T01:16:46Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > I think it’s the naming that gets them in trouble: Spotted dick, toad in the hole, blood and kidney pie, bangers and mash … it sounds like English foods were named by 12-year-old boys having a gross-out contest. > > And then there’s the Scots with: haggis. It actually sounds worse than it is. And it’s AWFUL. As Mike Myers said to Patrick Stewart in one of those SNL skits about the “Everything Scottish!” shop, “It’s like all Scottish cuisine is based on a dare!” ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/128 "2014-04-28T01:19:10Z")
> [@Octarine](#): > > George Orwell has a [really great (and hilarious) essay on the subject](http://orwell.ru/library/articles/cooking/english/e_dec). What his argument boils down to is that in most countries, high end restaurants are where you find that culture’s best food; for example, in a fancy French restaurant you’d find high quality French food. In England, all the expensive restaurants are either some other country’s food (like a French or Italian restaurant in London), or are awful. The best English cooking is found out in country cottages with homemade trifle and steak and kidney pies, but tourists don’t have access to that - hence the bad reputation. And he concludes by saying: > [@](#): > > It is not a law of nature that every restaurant in England should be either foreign or bad, and the first step towards an improvement will be a less long-suffering attitude in the British public itself. Well? Has what he describes changed any since 1945? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/129 "2014-04-28T01:22:50Z")
> [@don\_t\_ask](#): > > This is one of the most baffling blind spots that afflicts Americans. The savory pie should be a staple of American fast food just as it is in Australia. It is perfect for eating on the run, full of fat, carbohydrates and meat. It comes in an endless variety of forms. And it is delicious. Actually, apart from chicken pot pie, which is not eaten on the run, the savory pie with which we’re most familiar is the [Jamaican patty](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaican_patty). Unless you count Hot Pockets. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/130 "2014-04-28T01:24:20Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > I love meat pies, especially steak and kidney. I tried that **once,** at a “British” pub in America. The steak was well enough, but the kidneys were like liver to the tenth power – I was still tasting it two days later, and not in any good way. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/131 "2014-04-28T01:36:16Z")
> [@amanset](#): > > This always confuses me. Do people (admitedly it does seem to be mostly Americans saying it) not realise that most of Europe has a variant of Black Pudding? Here in Sweden it is literally called “Blood Pudding” (blodpudding). Hell, they even have “svartsoppa”, a soup made with blood. Blood-based dishes are extremely rare in American cuisine. I don’t know why. My WAG would be the early colonists, at least those who were extreme Bible-believing Protestants knowing their OT, ignored most of the Jewish dietary laws as laid down only for Jews, but eschewed blood as not being “Noahide kosher” (there’s a passage in Genesis, right after the Flood, where God forbids Noah to eat blood or meat with blood in it, and this is held to apply to all Noah’s descendants, i.e., everybody). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/132 "2014-04-28T01:37:41Z")
> [@amanset](#): > > “Blood pudding” gets pulled out as an example of why Britain’s cuisine is worse than everyone else’s. Maybe it is just our black pudding is worse than everyone else’s black pudding? [Or at least more dangerous.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fu_Kapers) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/133 "2014-04-28T01:41:04Z")
> [@amanset](#): > > Ain’t got nothing on “Surströmming” for full-on Scandimadness though. > > And did you get the bit where they called black pudding “Blood Pudding” here? At least we hide the blood bit … 😉 I guess it’s named as a complement to [“white pudding”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_pudding) (same recipe minus blood), as in the old nursery rhyme: Little King Pippin, he built a great hall Pie-crust and pastry-crust, that was the wall The windows were made of black pudding and white, And slated with pancakes, you ne’er saw the like! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/134 "2014-04-28T01:46:20Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Calvin Trillin speculates that British food got its bad rap after the tendency to boil everything for 8 hours just in case Lady Agatha forgot her dentures. > > But even discounting all the jokes and tropes, does England have anything that can remotely be called a cuisine in the grander sense? Other than “boil everything”? Or is everything thing decent to eat imported? [Orwell again:](http://orwell.ru/library/articles/cooking/english/e_dec) > [@](#): > > First of all, kippers, Yorkshire pudding, Devonshire cream, muffins and crumpets. Then a list of puddings that would be interminable if I gave it in full: I will pick out for special mention Christmas pudding, treacle tart and apple dumplings. Then an almost equally long list of cakes: for instance, dark plum cake (such as you used to get at Buzzard’s before the war), short-bread and saffron buns. Also innumerable kinds of biscuit, which exist, of course, elsewhere, but are generally admitted to be better and crisper in England. > > Then there are the various ways of cooking potatoes that are peculiar to our own country. Where else do you see potatoes roasted under the joint, which is far and away the best way of cooking them? Or the delicious potato cakes that you get in the north of England? And it is far better to cook new potatoes in the English way — that is, boiled with mint and then served with a little melted butter or margarine — than to fry them as is done in most countries. > > Then there are the various sauces peculiar to England. For instance, bread sauce, horse-radish sauce, mint sauce and apple sauce; not to mention redcurrant jelly, which is excellent with mutton as well as with hare, and various kinds of sweet pickle, which we seem to have in greater profusion than most countries. > > What else? Outside these islands I have never seen a haggis, except one that came out of a tin, nor Dublin prawns, nor Oxford marmalade, nor several other kinds of jam (marrow jam\* and bramble jelly\*\*, for instance), nor sausages of quite the same kind as ours. > > Then there are the English cheeses. There are not many of them but I fancy Stilton is the best cheese of its type in the world, with Wensleydale not far behind. English apples are also outstandingly good, particularly the Cox’s Orange Pippin. > > And finally, I would like to put in a word for English bread. All the bread is good, from the enormous Jewish loaves flavoured with caraway seeds to the Russian rye bread which is the colour of black treacle. Still, if there is anything quite as good as the soft part of the crust from an English cottage loaf (how soon shall we be seeing cottage loaves again?) I do not know of it. - “Marrow” = zucchini, not bone marrow. \*\* “Bramble” = blackberry, not thorns. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/135 "2014-04-28T01:48:41Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [A full English breakfast with fried egg, sausage, white and black pudding, bacon, mushrooms, baked beans, hash browns, toast, and half a tomato.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_breakfast#Full_English_breakfast) > > Does anyone actually go to work in Britain, or do you just eat breakfast and sleep it off?! I could eat a full English breakfast every day. LOVE it. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/136 "2014-04-28T01:49:40Z")
> [@Algher](#): > > No link, etc. - but I vaguely recall from something I either read or watched that England and France were equally pedestrian in their food until the Victorian era. At that point the French started developing high cuisine . . . I don’t think so; [_haute cuisine_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haute_cuisine) dates from the 17th Century – and nationalistic English jokes about how complex and needlessly highfalutin’ French cuisine is compared to honest roast beef go back at least to Hogarth’s time. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/137 "2014-04-28T01:54:35Z")
> [@Miss\_Mapp](#): > > I’ve sometimes said that I go so often to the UK for the food, and I’m not entirely joking. Aside from whatever else I plan to be doing there on a given trip, I also look forward to at least one fancy high tea with little sandwiches and scones with clotted cream, fish and chips preferably eaten while walking up a beach or waterfront, and the full English breakfasts–yes, with beans and even blood pudding if available. And [your little stick of Blackpool Rock](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvNh40ZIRa0)? (Come to think of it, [George Formby](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Formby) does provide a no-longer-living instance of another British stereotype: Bad teeth.) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/138 "2014-04-28T01:58:33Z")
> [@Ximenean](#): > > I think the thought of eating kidney freaks some people out so much that when you say “steak and kidney pie”, what they hear is “steak and :eek: kidney :eek: pie”. I recall a scene from Neal Stephenson’s [Baroque Cycle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_cycle): Jack Shaftoe and company are sojourning in India. At one point they run short of money, and one of them raises some by performing an amazing public novelty act: Eating a raw kidney. (Attention is called to the bit of urine that dribbles out when he pokes it with a fork.) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/139 "2014-04-28T01:59:44Z")
> [@zoid](#): > > I could eat a full English breakfast every day. LOVE it. Well, maybe it’s best to get your day’s eating all out of the way first thing . . . ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983/140 "2014-04-28T02:05:33Z")
From [_Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook,_](http://www.amazon.com/Nanny-Oggs-Cookbook-Information-Astonishing/dp/0552146730) by Terry Pratchett – preface to the recipe for Nobby’s Mum’s Distressed Pudding: > [@](#): > > I takes my hat off to Mrs Maisie Nobbs of Old Cobblers, Ankh-Morpork, who is the mother of the famous or at any rate notorious Cpl Nobby Nobbs of the City Watch. It’s a lot harder to be a good cook in a big industrial city, because in the country there’s usually more stuff available – as we say, you can bake it, fry it, or boil it, but for choice you poach it. In the city, what you eat is mainly sugar, starch or stale. Mrs Nobbs is a mistress of all those dishes that make you think of fog and coal smoke – like Wet Nellies, Tupenny Uprights, Treacle Billy, Jammy Devils and Distressed Pudding. They fill you up and keep the cold out. That’s what they’re made for. You’ve got to be posh to worry about healthy eatin’. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-the-stereotype-that-british-food-is-not-a-very-distinguished-cuisine/685983.md?page=8)