English food has spent decades being a joke, which is out of date. The pub and farmhouse traditions are strong, the cheese and produce are excellent, and the restaurant scene in London is one of the best in the world. What it does best is simple food cooked properly.
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Roast beef, lamb or chicken with potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, gravy and vegetables. Served on Sunday and better in a pub.
The Yorkshire pudding is a batter baked in hot fat and served before the meat, historically to fill people up so less meat was needed. The gravy is made from the roasting juices, and a good roast is judged on the potatoes — crisp outside, fluffy inside.
Battered fish with thick-cut chips, salt and vinegar. Eaten from paper, ideally near the sea.
The batter is flour and water or beer, and it should be crisp and slightly hollow rather than thick and doughy. The chips are chunky and cooked twice. Vinegar goes on the chips, not the fish, and mushy peas are the northern accompaniment.
Bacon, sausage, egg, beans, tomato, mushrooms, black pudding and toast. A weekend meal, not a daily one.
The components are regional — black pudding in the north, white pudding in some places, potato cakes in Ireland. The beans are a genuine point of contention and the egg should be fried rather than scrambled. It is designed to be eaten late and to last.
A minced beef pie with mashed potato and parsley liquor, eaten in a pie shop. East London's dish.
Liquor is a parsley sauce made with the eel cooking water in the original recipe, which is why it is green. The shops are tiled and sit-down, and they are one of the last genuinely working-class restaurant traditions in the city.
Named farmhouse cheddar, crumbly and sharp, not the supermarket block. With chutney and crackers.
Cheddar is a place in Somerset and a method — cheddaring, where the curd is stacked and turned. Supermarket cheddar is a different product. A matured farmhouse cheddar is one of the great English foods and is rarely exported.
Scones with clotted cream and jam, sandwiches and cake, with tea. A meal, not a snack.
The Devon and Cornwall argument over whether cream or jam goes first is unresolved and people care. Clotted cream is baked rather than simply separated, which gives it a crust, and it cannot be substituted with whipped cream.
The British-Indian restaurant tradition: balti, tikka masala and the regional cooking behind it.
Chicken tikka masala is a British invention, likely from Glasgow, and it is genuinely part of the national cuisine now. The best of it is regional Indian cooking rather than the generic menu, and the curry house is a distinct British institution.
A date sponge with toffee sauce and custard. The best English dessert, and not close.
The dates are what keep the sponge moist, and they are usually chopped fine enough that you taste the sweetness rather than the fruit. The sauce is made with cream and muscovado sugar, and it should be poured over hot so it soaks in.
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