TRADITIONAL FOOD IN

GREAT BRITAIN
Made by: Olga Yakovleva
 British cuisine
• British cuisine is the heritage of cooking traditions and practices associated with the United
Kingdom and its dependent territories. Traditional British food has been greatly influenced by
other national cuisines in recent years. 
• In ancient times Celtic agriculture and animal breeding produced a wide variety of foodstuffs for
the Celts and Britons. Anglo-Saxon England developed meat and savoury herb stewing techniques
before the practice became common in Europe. The Norman conquest introduced exotic spices
into England in the Middle Ages. The British Empire facilitated a knowledge of Indian cuisine with
its «strong, penetrating spices and herbs».
• Well-known traditional British dishes include full breakfast, fish and chips, Christmas dinner,
Sunday roast, steak and kidney pie, shepherd's pie, bangers and mash. People in Britain, however,
eat a wide variety of foods based on the cuisines of Europe, India, and other parts of the world.
British cuisine has many regional varieties within the broader categories of English, Scottish and
Welsh cuisine and Northern Irish cuisine. Each has developed its own regional or local dishes.
 Meals and meal times
• British food has traditionally been based on beef, lamb, pork, chicken and fish and
generally served with potatoes and other vegetables.
• There are three main meals a day:
- Breakfast - 7:00 - 9:00 a.m.
- Lunch - 12:00 1:30 p.m.
- Dinner (sometimes called Supper). It’s the main meal. - 6:30 - 8:00 p.m. (Evening
meal)
- Tea - 5:30 - 6:30 p.m.
• On Sundays the main meal of the day is often eaten at midday instead of in the
evening. This meal usually is a Roast Dinner consisting of a roast meat, Yorkshire
pudding and two or three kinds of vegetables.
 English Breakfast
• A typical English breakfast is usually quite big and substantial. It includes pork sausages, bacon and eggs,
tomatoes, baked beans, mushrooms and a toast. Some people enjoy porridge, fruit and yogurt in the morning,
followed by a toast and jam, or orange marmalade. A traditional breakfast drink is tea, which British people
prefer having with cold milk. Another popular morning drink is orange juice. Nowadays, however, a typical
English breakfast is more likely to be a bowl of cereals, a slice of toast, orange juice and a cup of coffee. Even
though not many people will eat the full English breakfast today, it is always served in hotels and guest houses
around Britain.
 Lunch
• For many Englishmen lunch is a fast meal. In big cities there are a lot of sandwich bars
where office clerks can choose all sorts of sandwiches with meat, fish, chicken, ham,
prawns, eggs, cheese, vegetables and others. English pubs also serve good food for lunch,
hot and cold. Quite a lot of workers go to famous “fish and chips shops” and buy their
favourite deep fried cod or haddock with French fries.
•
Dinner
British people eat their evening meal at about 7 o’clock, when all members of the family
are at home together. As a rule, a typical dinner is meat and vegetables. One of the
vegetables is almost always potatoes. It can be roast chicken or lamb with potatoes, or
steamed vegetables with meat gravy. For dessert, Englishmen, usually wives, cook
various puddings and serve them with ice-cream or jam.
 Sunday dinner
• On Sundays British families like to sit together at the table enjoying Sunday roast: roast
beef, lamb or chicken, served with Yorkshire pudding and dressed with English mustard,
apple sauce, cranberry sauce or mint sauce.
 Tea
• A lot of Englishmen drink their 5 o’clock tea. It’s a traditional light meal after work. People
enjoy their favourite teas with cookies, cakes, freshly baked sweet buns, scones and other
pastries.
 Fish and chips
• Fish and chips is a hot dish consisting of the fish (cod, haddock, etc.) which is deep fried in
flour batter and it is eaten with chips. Traditionally, the fish and chips are covered with salt
and malt vinegar .
• Fish and chips is the classic English take-away food and is the traditional national food of
England. It became popular in the 1860's when railways began to bring fresh fish straight from
the east coast to the our cities over night.
Christmas dinner
• Christmas dinner is a meal traditionally eaten at Christmas. The meals are often particularly rich and
substantial. It can consists of turkey with potatoes and other vegetables, for example, carrots and sprouts. The
traditional dish is Christmas pudding. People usually cook harvest. It’s special bread, which looks like sheaves of
wheat. And, of course, Christmas cookies are one of the most traditional food on the Christmas table.
 Steak and kidney pie
• Steak and kidney pie is a savoury pie that is filled principally with a mixture of diced beef,
diced kidney (often of beef, lamb, or pork), fried onion, and brown gravy. Steak and kidney
pie is a representative dish of British cuisine.
 Shepherd's pie
• Shepherd's pie or cottage pie is a ground meat pie with a crust or topping of mashed potato.
• The dish has many variants, but the defining ingredients are ground red meat cooked in a
gravy or sauce with onions, and a topping of mashed potato. Sometimes other vegetables are
added to the filling, such as peas, sweetcorn or carrots. It is sometimes also gratineed with
grated cheese.
 Bangers and mash
• Bangers and mash, also known as sausages and mash, is a traditional dish of Great Britain
and Ireland, consisting of sausages served with mashed potatoes. It may consist of one of a
variety of flavoured sausages made of pork, lamb or beef. The dish is usually served with
onion gravy, but may also include fried onions and peas.