British Cuisine

Many regularly used British foods may seem odd to North Americans. You might find this page interesting:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/tabathaleggett/food-quirks-that-british-people-dont-realise-are-weird

From Wikipedia:
Viennetta was introduced in the United States and Canada in the late 1980s under the Breyer's brand,and was discontinued in the mid-1990s, but was re-introduced in the US in 2021 under the Good Humor brand.

and Canadian foods - though I don't find a meat pie at all weird. We regularly have steak pie.

https://trendonomist.com/15-foods-canad ... s-strange/



https://www.buzzfeed.com/marietelling/2 ... uper-weird

What I find weird on river cruises is the number of Americans drinking Coca-Cola with dinner (especially as free wine is being poured)

Marmite (and its Australian cousin, Vegemite) occupy the same spot in their respective cuisines that peanut butter has in the US. Most Americans find marmite and vegemite disgusting and most Brits seem to feel the same way about peanut butter. Especially the classic US peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And don't even mention the Fluffernutter (a bread sandwich of peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff--a combination that you have to be under 12 years old to appreciate).

Canadians also put gravy on chips (French fries). The Quebecois have poutine, which is chips and cheese curds with gravy.

The Chinese regard potatoes as a vegetable, not as a carb, so they would be right at home with the curry-with-rice-and-chips.

I like Branston Pickle but it's hard to find around here.

We don't have toad in the hole in the US but we do have pigs in a blanket (sausages--especially hot dogs--individually wrapped in pastry).

The US also has brown sauce as a condiment, particularly for steak. A.1. is the most popular brand. HP Sauce is also popular here with steak (I personally prefer it ti A.1.).

-Paul W.

Some of those are more quirky than others. I don't think many folks would find cheese and crackers, even Carr's Water Biscuits, at all weird. Ditto with Red Leicester. I personally have never found baked beans at breakfast at all offputting, though they're a bit too filling for my own tastes (I adhere mostly to the French model of a croissant or hunk of baguette with some fruit preserves and butter for my breakfasts). And I actually love a good Yorkshire pudding. OTOH, though a can of mushy peas graces my office (a gift from a dear friend who's a British academic) it has DNPIM status, as does the chip butty. Scotch eggs and sausage rolls I can take or leave.

I have low-fat vanilla bean ice cream with homemade strawberry freezer Jam all the time. Delicious.

[Jenise]

I'm not an ice cream eater but jam on ice cream makes perfect sense--thin it out and its syrup, what's not normal about that?

From my perspective, the most herrendous things Brits do--and they do it en masse--is put milk in tea. Everything else I'm okay with. I'm sure so many things American do seem just as strange. Dip pizza in Ranch dressing? I'd die first, but I know it's popular.

Milk does not go in my cup of tea, either. I used to drink tea with lots of sugar but I gave that up decades ago when I was trying to cut down on caloric intake and realized I could reach 80% of my calorie reduction goal just by cutting out the sugar in tea. Nowadays I don't like sugar in my tea.

BTW, the article doesn't mention that the bread in a chip butty is buttered (that's the butty part). I always thought that the butter was an essential part of the sandwich.

-Paul W.

The US also has brown sauce as a condiment, particularly for steak. A.1. is the most popular brand. HP Sauce is also popular here with steak (I personally prefer it ti A.1.).

I found the brown sauces such as A1 in the USA unlike the originals. Sold as a 'steak sauce' they're runny, seem to be thinned with vinegar whereas here they are thick: put a dollop on your plate and it stays there.
And I've never seen them offered at a steak house. Mustard is the correct condiment, and I don't mean that flavourless Yellow mustard

From my perspective, the most herrendous things Brits do--and they do it en masse--is put milk in tea. .

Not all Brits Joan & I don't have milk or sugar in tea.

But those that do use a very strong dark tea and of course boiling water

Neither do we order tea in the USA. Warm water delivered in a cup with a tea bag in the saucer, what's that about?

You're right about mustard being the appropriate condiment for steak. Preferably freshly made with Coleman's mustard powder.

-Paul W.

Neither do we order tea in the USA. Warm water delivered in a cup with a tea bag in the saucer, what's that about?

Sounds old-fashioned.

You can find lots of high-level tea culture in the US these days, from various cultural reference points. Japanese being big for retail status reasons and Chinese being big for immigrant population reasons.

[Jenise]

I love tea in a mug where you can hold it two-handed under your nose to enjoy the aromatics. No fancy little cups and saucers for me, please!

I'm not an ice cream eater but jam on ice cream makes perfect sense--thin it out and its syrup, what's not normal about that?

From my perspective, the most herrendous things Brits do--and they do it en masse--is put milk in tea. Everything else I'm okay with. I'm sure so many things American do seem just as strange. Dip pizza in Ranch dressing? I'd die first, but I know it's popular.

Interestingly enough, this was broadcast the other day. It's contains part history and part ceremony.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NtqzH6LL9Vk

I love tea in a mug where you can hold it two-handed under your nose to enjoy the aromatics. No fancy little cups and saucers for me, please!

My mother lived in S Korea and Japan during the Korean War as part of the American Red Cross. She said that she survived the winters in houses with (literal) paper-thin walls by cradling cups of hot tea in her hands at all times.

[Jenise]

Mark, thanks for sharing that. I can only imagine--the horrors of war most of us will never know. I have fond memories of cold mornings sharing tea with my grandmother when I was little, drunk out of cereal bowls held in both hands for both the warmth and wider pool of aroma. She then ate a very precise breakfast: one slice of toast and four pieces of bacon, two eaten plain followed by two she'd top with some sweet store-bought chile sauce. She made a long ritual out of the application of that chile sauce. Makes me smile--I don't just look like her, I am her re-incarnate.

Mark, thanks for sharing that. I can only imagine--the horrors of war most of us will never know. I have fond memories of cold mornings sharing tea with my grandmother when I was little, drunk out of cereal bowls held in both hands for both the warmth and wider pool of aroma. She then ate a very precise breakfast: one slice of toast and four pieces of bacon, two eaten plain followed by two she'd top with some sweet store-bought chile sauce. She made a long ritual out of the application of that chile sauce. Makes me smile--I don't just look like her, I am her re-incarnate.

As I'm pretty sure Bourdain noted, this is what food can do for us: providing the cultural glue that connects us together. The rituals as much as the flavor is what memories are made from. One of my most indelible memories is of being in the kitchen with my mother at probably age 5-6 helping her make Springerle cookies using a special rolling pin. She loved licorice and anise flavors, which I've since come to realize is something of a rarity among the general populace. I can't eat an anise-flavored cookie without being transported back to that time.

One British food item that wasn't mentioned in the article, but which seems to pop up all over the place in British culture, is Brown Windsor Soup. This started out as Windsor Soup in the 1800s and was both highly regarded and very popular in Victorian and Eduardian times. It declined in both quality and popularity in the 1920s and eventually became a staple of mediocre restaurants and railway food service. It was at this point that the prefix "Brown" became added to the dish's title. During WW II and post-War rationing Brown Windsor Soup became an icon for the general decline of British food quality. It also became the butt of many British comedy jokes (this is where I first heard of it). It show up as the paragon of bad food all over the place in British radio comedy. But it also shows up in that role outside the realm of comedy--it is served to Hercule Poirot in the TV dramatization of Hercule Poirot's Christmas. Poirot remarks that it "doesn't look very... delicieux".

I encountered it yesterday while reading Charles Stross's Spy/Horror novel Season of Skulls. The protagonist has traveled back in time to 1816 but is captured and confined at Portmeirion in a 19th century version of The Village from the BBC TV series The Prisoner. 1816 is the Year Without a Summer following the eruption of Mount Tambora and featured widespread crop failures, food shortages, and famine. Out 21st century protagonist is appalled by the poor quality of the meals in The Village. Her first encounter with the bad cooking is, of course, Brown Windsor Soup.

-Paul W.

I have heard of, but never encountered Brown Windsor Soup.*

OTOH I have stayed in Portmerion Village many times.

*Seems BWS may never existed, and the bit about Poirot being offered it and disdaining it in a TV dramatisation - 'no such scene appears in Christie's original 1938 novel.'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20 ... ndsor-soup