English Kitchen
Traditional English cuisine has a reputation outside of England for being difficult to digest and boring because it is often very fatty and hearty . On the other hand, it is irritating, for example with lamb with mint sauce , due to the sometimes unfamiliar combination of different flavors.
Historical bases
English cuisine had an excellent reputation in the 19th century . In France at the time, reference was made to cuisine anglaise when reference was made to particularly fine and exquisite cuisine. The reputation was rightly based on the then high-quality food culture of the British Kingdom, because the easy access to exotic spices and food during the colonial period made it possible to achieve a new quality of food preparation among the upper classes in the British Isles . The main contribution to the professional preparation was made by the employed house staff, who developed their cooking expertise over time. This is z. E.g. in Isabella Beeton's Book of Household Management from 1861, which with 900 recipes and over 1000 further tips on the kitchen and household was not only addressed to the housewife herself, but also explicitly to the staff. With the decline of the colonial empire and, a little later, with the economic effects of the First World War , access to resources dwindled. On the one hand, the procurement of the exotic ingredients had become more difficult and therefore more expensive; on the other hand, the bourgeoisie could no longer employ service personnel on a large scale. This finally separated the experts from the ingredients. Those who could still afford the ingredients knew little about the preparation. Those who could cook did not have the means to get ingredients for exquisite dishes. So the art of cooking was temporarily lost in the English kitchen.
Influence of migrants on eating habits
In particular, migrants from India and African countries have contributed to the fact that English cuisine has reopened to the world and has returned to a comparatively high level. In fact, typical English cuisine is on the wane in favor of a broader, (post- colonial ) British identity in everyday life . Today's favorite dishes of the British are also of Italian or Asian origin. These include B. lasagna and pizza , but also the very popular chicken tikka masala .
New Cuisine
Popular chefs like Jamie Oliver and Heston Blumenthal now stand for a modern and innovative reinterpretation of traditional British cuisine.
Traditional cuisine
The combination of meat, potatoes and vegetables (meat and two veg), which is common in traditional English cuisine, finds its most established form in the Sunday roast or Sunday dinner , a meal that is eaten on Sunday lunchtime at home, in a pub or in a restaurant. The potatoes are often prepared as roast potatoes by brushing the peeled raw and halved potatoes with oil, salting them and roasting them in the oven. Popular vegetables are carrots, peas, kale, cauliflower and broccoli. Other vegetables are also used. Lamb, pork or beef are suitable meat for this dish, although the meat is often cut into thin slices before serving. Yorkshire pudding from the north is an important accompaniment to Sunday roast throughout England . Sunday roast is not eaten as often as it was a few years ago.
Potatoes play a vital role in British cuisine. They are often prepared as jacket potatoes or baked potatoes (see baked potatoes ), i.e. whole potatoes with their skin on, which are coated with a little oil and cooked in the oven until the skin is crispy. Extra-large potatoes are commercially available for this preparation, often raw weighing up to 200 grams. The British version of the french fries are chips . These differ from the former in size, shape and consistency. Mashed potatoes (mashed potatoes) is not just an accompaniment to fish and sausages (in combination with sausages as bangers and mash called) but is also used for preparation of cottage pie , pie cumberland , shepherd's pie or fisherman's pie used. These are dishes in which minced meat or fish is seasoned and cooked with vegetables before being covered with mashed potatoes in an ovenproof dish and baked in the oven. Popular across the country is the Lancashire Hot Pot , a potato dish with mutton, in which the precooked mutton, diced and topped with raw potato slices, is cooked in the oven.
The term pie also refers to pies, such as. B. pork pie - boiled, firm pork, which is surrounded by a pastry shell. Meat and potato pies or chicken and mushroom pies , which are usually consumed warm , have a filling made from minced meat and potatoes or chicken and mushrooms. Stargazy Pie , a Cornish dish , is filled with fish. Related to pies are pasties , which use puff pastry as a shell . Pasties can contain a variety of fillings (meat, cheese, vegetables) and are not infrequently eaten out of hand on the go.
English breakfast
The typical English breakfast is not consumed regularly at home by most Britons because it is relatively laborious to prepare. In contrast, the full English breakfast can be found in many hotels and guest houses as well as in numerous small cafes and snack bars. An integral part of this meal is toast with salted butter (margarine is considered “barbaric” in traditional preparation), while the other components are variable:
- orange / grapefruit juice - orange or grapefruit juice
- grapefruit segments / soaked or stewed prunes - grapefruit fillets / soaked plums
- cereal - muesli or corn flakes with milk
- porridge - oatmeal
- bacon - sliced grilled or fried bacon
- eggs - either as scrambled egg (scrambled egg) or fried egg (fried egg)
- sausage - grilled or fried sausages
- tomato - grilled or fried tomato
- mushrooms - grilled or fried mushrooms
- baked beans - white beans (haricot beans) in tomato sauce
- black pudding - fried black pudding slices
- smoked haddock - smoked haddock
- fried bread - white toast bread fried in fat, cut diagonally
- jam and / or marmalade - jam and / or orange jam
- pot of tea - strong black breakfast tea
Some cafes offer the full English breakfast called all day breakfast at any time of the day.
Desserts
Cake (cake) is often served as a dessert. Popular is z. B. the combination of warm chocolate cake (chocolate cake) with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. Profiteroles , roughly the size of a plum cake, are served with warm chocolate sauce and cream. A specialty of British pâtisserie is the double cream, a rich, thick cream that is served with desserts such as pudding or fruit cocktails. Also popular is custard , a vanilla sauce that is served warm or cold. At Christmas, Christmas puddings and Christmas cakes are eaten like mince pies . The spices (including cinnamon ) and the dark color ( the color of the filling in mince pies ) are characteristic of these dishes . For their birthday, the birthday child traditionally receives a multi- tiered birthday cake , which is usually a lush cream or buttercream cake colored pink or yellow with food coloring and decorated with colorful sugar roses, love pearls, etc.
Other popular desserts are crumbles and apple pie . The Eton Mess dessert is closely associated with Eton College .
Cold kitchen
The most common types of bread are white bread ( wheat bread, white ), wholemeal bread ( wheat wholemeal bread ) and brown bread (a mixture of two types). In recent years, however, the bread range in most supermarket chains has expanded considerably. French stick (baguette) can be found almost everywhere these days. In addition to the usual soft rolls ( rolls , buns or muffins ), crispy rolls (crusty rolls) based on the continental model are becoming increasingly popular. Occasionally you can also find German black bread .
A continental European influence is also noticeable in the bread topping. In addition to ham (cooked ham), roast beef ( cold meats ) and chicken roll (poultry cuts), many supermarkets now also sell mortadella , salami , meat sausage and pastrami . Traditional British cheeses are Cheddar (yellow, firm, differently spicy depending on the ripeness), Cheshire (light, mild, often still crumbly) and the blue cheese Blue Stilton .
Among the cold dishes, the typical diagonally divided sandwiches play a prominent role.
Fast food
The most famous dishes are the fish and chips , which are prepared and sold in traditional chip shops , pubs or take-aways . Take-away is a generic term for snack bars where you buy food to take home and consume there. Take-aways often offer a wide range of Indian , Chinese, or otherwise exotic foods, with fish'n'chips sometimes listed as the only British meal. Similar to Germany, fast food chains are widespread. Ready meals for the microwave or for the oven also play a relatively large role in the diet of many Britons. There are numerous stores that sell only frozen foods, with the ready- to- eat share encompassing all of the categories of dishes that can now be counted as part of British cuisine. The range of ready meals is also extremely large in the refrigerated shelves of supermarkets. Some products largely contain raw ingredients such as chicken breast, raw vegetables, fish etc., while other dishes are fully cooked and only need to be warmed up.
More specialties
See also
literature
- Victor Gordon : The English Cookbook. New Ways with Traditional British Foods. Jonathan Cape, London 1987, ISBN 0-224-02300-4 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Helen Saberi: Eton Mess . In: Darra Goldstein (Ed.): The Oxford companion to sugar and sweets . Oxford University Press , Oxford 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-931339-6 , pp. 243 .