Having visited Britain, this was about the only food you could buy and consume that felt at least somewhat British.
The joke is that food in Britain is terrible, but I am at a loss to find any food that is British, other than Fish and Chips, breakfast and, well, the sandwich. On the other hand I can list many foods that are French, foods that are uniquely Danish, foods that are German (although I hope never again to have to eat saur-kraut).
We have a whole bunch, I won't cover Chicken Tikka Masala or Madras because it could be argued that we've really just appropriated them due to our love of Indian food - and they really are delicious.
- Shepherd's Pie
- Ploughmans Lunch
- Roast lamb and Yorkshire Pudding
- Toad in the Hole
- Fish & Chips
- Cornish Pasty
- Pork Pies
- Meat Pie
- Beef Wellington
- Spotted Dick
- Treacle Pudding
- Sticky Toffee Pudding
- Christmas Pudding
- Trifle
- Scones
I'm sure there are stacks more, these are just the ones I can list without stopping to think.
You're forgetting all the offal based dishes (black pudding, white pudding, liver, etc.), the various ways we will repackage pork (scratchings, sausage rolls, etc.) and the regional specialities (black peas, jellied eels, etc.)
That's just for starters.
P.S. - it's Roast _Beef_ with Yorkshire Pudding. Roast Lamb is lovely with some mint sauce, and you can put a Yorkshire pudding next to it, sure, but most people would consider it more traditional to use beef.
Sure, whatever, I'll concede that :P However, we're not exactly renowned for our huge beef cow raising operations. In fact we were a laughing stock for quite a while because we couldn't eat beef on the bone because of the whole BSE thing. As a Brit in Canada, I'm still regularly reminded of this, despite it being sorted for almost 3 years - mostly as banter, but still.
The French nickname 'rosbif' for the English goes back to the Napoleonic wars thanks to our historic association with it.
According to the RSPCA, the number of beef breeding cows in the UK was around 1.6 million in 2013, which is one for every 17 households. I'd say that's pretty respectable, albeit about quarter the rate of the US.
We taught the French how to cook beef (OK sort of).
Originally, the French boiled their beef but during a siege of Paris by British troops, they noticed that our troops cooked theirs over the fire/griddle. The rest is history.
The word beef is derived from boeuf. Biftek is derived from beef steak. So you have a borrow word that has really done the rounds!
In most languages, the name of the meat is the same (or similar to) the animal it comes from.
In English, the name of the meat was derived from the French aristocrats who were running the country hundreds of years ago, and while peasants referred to animals by name, the aristocrats referred to the food by the name they knew it as - which is why in English we have two names for these things, but other languages generally only have one.
It's funny, since I turned to farming, I find myself referring to the meat I eat as the name of the animal rather than those you see on the packaging in the grocery store. It started off as humour and kind of stuck. Cowburger, pig chops... oddly I still call chicken and turkey the same thing :P
Britain’s national food is “pub grub”. City restaurants aspire to the international, but pub food is a constant: only the quality differs, from cheap factory-farmed stuff at carvery pubs besides West Midlands roundabouts, to artisan farm food at gastropubs in the Cotswolds.
The joke is that food in Britain is terrible, but I am at a loss to find any food that is British, other than Fish and Chips, breakfast and, well, the sandwich. On the other hand I can list many foods that are French, foods that are uniquely Danish, foods that are German (although I hope never again to have to eat saur-kraut).