English Cuisine

ingredients

Haddock

Haddock is a member of the cod family generally fished in the North Atlantic. Smoked haddock is the most common fish used to make kedgeree, a breakfast dish that was popular among British colonials in India, and later found favour in England. Haddock is also frequently the fish of choice for fish and chips.

Mint sauce

A condiment served with joints of lamb for the Sunday roast. The clean, fresh flavour of the mint is used to cut through the richness of the lamb.

Malt vinegar

Made by malting barley and is traditionally light brown in colour. It is served with fish and chips at the traditional “chippie". “Non-brewed condiment” a cheaper synthetic alternative is popular in Northern England.

Hot white horseradish sauce

Derived from the root of the horseradish plant. The sharp relish is served as a condiment alongside traditional roast beef.

Sweet Apple Sauce

Stewed apple sauce is often served as an accompaniment to roast pork.

Parsley Liquor

This famous sauce, known as a liquor (although it is non-alcoholic), is made with butter, flour and parsley. It is a bright shade of green and is served with a meat pie and mashed potato.

Yorkshire Pudding

Made from flour, eggs and milk and then baked in the oven. Yorkshire pudding was traditionally served as a filler, with gravy, before the Sunday roast, but now it is more likely found as an accompaniment to the main course.

Meat

British beef is a traditional favourite however English cooking has used many cheaper cuts of meat. The slow cooking of tougher cuts like ears, tongues and cheeks. Kidneys and ‘lamb’s fry’ – or liver, are breakfast staples. Kidneys are celebrated in steak and kidney pie. Smallgoods making is an art form with sausages that differ from region to region, cured cuts of pork, gammon, and the famous black pudding or blood sausage.

Suet

Suet is the hard and granular fat around the kidney of an animal. In England beef suet has been most commonly used in cooking, where now often butter is substituted. Adored for puddings and still used in many Christmas puds.

Cucumber

Cucumber sandwiches are popular on a tea platter. The trick is to peel the skin and cut the cucumber very finely. Then place it between two thin slices of crustless, lightly buttered white bread.

Potatoes

An English staple used in mashed potato, bangers and mash, shepherd’s pie, cottage pie, chips – who could live without the “chip butty” – chips in a bread roll with lashings of the household favourite HP sauce.

Fruit

Summer berries - strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, redcurrants are beautifully perfumed and intensely flavoured in Britain and used widely. Wimbledon tennis is synonymous with strawberries and cream. Apples including heritage varieties are prized.

Pickles

Pickling fish or vegetables is a tasty way of preserving fresh produce and eating it throughout the year. Rollmops are pickled fish filets often wrapped around a pickled onion or cucumber. Pickled onions are common in a Ploughman’s Lunch and served with strong Cheddar. Branston Pickle is a popular relish of pickled cooked vegetables that create a dark, tangy chutney.

Cheese

While there are many cheap, commercial copies of traditional English cheeses like Cheddar and Cheshire, there are a number of farmhouse dairies that make delicious varieties of these old favourites, which are at the core of a Ploughman’s Lunch. Stilton is the classic English blue-vein cheese.

Fish

The types of fish vary with the regions of England and whether they’re found in fresh or salt water. Rainbow trout, river salmon and eels are some of the fresh water varieties. Rock cod, haddock, flounder, monkfish and herring are from salt water.

Vegetables

Winter vegetables like root vegetables: swedes, parsnips and carrots, are popular in English cooking along with cabbage, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts and many more.