How come it is so to find English food in England? In Greece you eat Greek food, in France French food, in Italy Italian food, but in England, in any High Street in the land, it is easier to find Indian and Chinese than English ones. In London you can eat Thai, Portuguese, Turkish, Lebanese, Russian, Polish, Swiss, Swedish, Spanish, and Italian—but where are the English restaurants?

It is not only in restaurants that foreign are replacing British food. In every supermarket, sales of pasta, pizza and poppadoms are booming. Why has this happened? What is wrong with the of Britain that they prefer cooking pasta to potatoes? Why do the British choose to eat lasagne instead of shepherd’s ? Why do they now like cooking in wine and oil? But perhaps it is a good thing. After all, this is the end of the 20th century and we can get from all over the world in just a few hours. Anyway, wasn’t English food always disgusting and ? Wasn’t it always to death and swimming in fat? The answer to these questions is a resounding ‘No’, but to understand this, we have to go back to before World War II.

 

The British have in fact always imported food from . From the time of the Roman invasion foreign trade was a major on British cooking. English kitchens, like the English language, absorbed ingredients from all over the world—chickens, rabbits, apples, and . All of these and more were successfully into British dishes. Another important influence on British cooking was of course the . The good old British rain gives us rich and green grass, and means that we are able to some of the finest of meat, fruit and vegetables, which don’t need sauces or complicated recipes to disguise their .