48 Fun Facts About British Food

Which TV cook's BBC career ended in 1976 after she scorned an amateur's banquet menu on air?

Fanny Cradock rolled her eyes at Devon farmer's wife Gwen Troake's menu on The Big Time; viewers were incensed, and the BBC ended her contract two weeks later.

Which British chef became the youngest then to win three Michelin stars, aged 33 in 1995?

Marco Pierre White was also the first Briton to win three, yet in 1999 he handed the stars back and retired from cooking, saying they had not made him happy.

Which TV chef's Chelsea restaurant won its third Michelin star in 2001?

Gordon Ramsay had earned two stars at Aubergine, also in Chelsea, but fell out with its owners in 1998; the whole staff walked out, and he set up on his own.

Scrumpy is a rough, traditional West Country form of which drink?

Cider called scrumpy probably takes its name from 'scrump', a dialect word for something withered or undersized, such as a small apple. West Country farm labourers once received a daily allowance of it with their wages.

Which Essex city, the first capital of Roman Britain, is famed for its native oysters?

Colchester, then called Camulodunum, was destroyed in Boudica's revolt around AD 60, and London later took over as the province's capital.

Which ingredient gives black pudding its dark colour?

Pig's blood spoils quickly, so it was cooked with fat and oatmeal as soon as an animal was slaughtered, which makes black pudding one of the oldest kinds of sausage.

English words like beef, pork and gravy come from the language of which conquerors?

The Normans brought the words to the tables of the wealthy, it is thought, while the English-speaking peasants who raised the animals kept the old names for them.

Which English king is said to have died after eating 'a surfeit of lampreys'?

Henry I ate them against his physician's orders on a hunting trip, the chronicler Henry of Huntingdon wrote; historians doubt the lampreys really killed him.

Which nursery rhyme recalls a banquet trick of hiding live birds inside a pie?

Sing a Song of Sixpence echoes a real party piece: a 1549 Italian cookbook explained how to make pies so that live birds flew out when they were cut.

Which 16th-century monarch is popularly credited with refining shortbread into its modern form?

Mary, Queen of Scots is linked by tradition to 'petticoat tails', the thin wedges cut from a round, though historians find little evidence she shaped the recipe.

Which spirit did the Royal Navy stop issuing on 'Black Tot Day' in 1970?

Rum was withdrawn because the Admiralty judged a lunchtime tot unsafe for sailors operating increasingly complex weapons and machinery.

Which writer's 1747 bestseller, a century before Mrs Beeton, included the first known English curry recipe?

Hannah Glasse wrote The Art of Cookery in plain language so that servants could follow it, and it stayed a bestseller for a hundred years.

Which pudding, first cooked under roasting meat to catch the dripping, got its present name in a 1747 cookbook?

Yorkshire pudding was plain 'dripping pudding' until then; it was served first, with gravy, to blunt appetites so that the costlier meat went further.

The Earl of Sandwich reputedly ordered meat between bread so he could keep doing what?

Gambling is the popular story, spread by a 1770s travel book; the earl's own biographer thinks he more likely ate the snack at his desk while working.

Cornish pasties became the classic portable lunch of workers in which local industry?

Tin mining left hands filthy, so one popular story has miners holding the pasty by its thick crimped edge and throwing that away; others say they ate it from a bag.

The classic Welsh rarebit tops toast with a sauce of cheese, mustard and which drink?

Ale goes into the classic sauce, but rabbit never did: the name was first recorded as 'Welsh rabbit', probably as a joke, and 'rarebit' came later.

Which neighbours nicknamed the English after their love of roast beef?

The French say 'les rosbifs'; the dish was such a patriotic emblem that theatre audiences once sang 'The Roast Beef of Old England' before plays.

Bubble and squeak is traditionally a fry-up of leftover potato and which vegetable?

Cabbage was there from the start, but potato was not: early versions fried it with cooked beef, and the name copies the noises in the pan.

The stew scouse gave its name to the people of which city?

Liverpool took the word from lobscouse, a stew of meat and ship's biscuit eaten by sailors across northern Europe, which is how a port city came by the name.

Which ingredient was the usual base of British ketchup before tomato versions took over?

Mushrooms were packed in salt until their juice ran, then cooked with spices into a thin dark sauce; the tomato kind was a later American twist.

The word marmalade comes from the Portuguese name for a paste of which fruit?

Quince paste, 'marmelada', was the original marmalade, a firm sweet closer to fruit cheese; the bitter-orange spread for toast came later.

Eccles cakes are small round pastries filled with what?

Currants fill them, but the name is anyone's to use: Eccles cakes were refused protected status as too generic, so they can be baked anywhere.

Which monarch wrote in a journal of the 'excellent curry' made by newly arrived Indian servants?

Victoria soon promoted one of them, Abdul Karim, from waiter to 'Munshi', her teacher of Urdu, to the dismay of her family and courtiers.

Which mealtime custom is Anna, Duchess of Bedford, credited with starting around 1840?

Afternoon tea began, the story goes, when the duchess grew hungry around four o'clock, with dinner not served until eight, and asked for a tray.

Which dark savoury spread was first made in Burton upon Trent in 1902?

Marmite was sited in a brewing town for its raw material: brewer's yeast, which a German scientist had found could be concentrated, bottled and eaten.

Which high-street bakery chain, founded in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1939, is famous for its sausage rolls?

Greggs began as John Gregg's pushbike round delivering eggs and yeast; in 2012 it warned a 'pasty tax' on hot bakes would shut shops, and the Chancellor backed down.

Besides vinegar, molasses and tamarind, which seafood gives Worcestershire sauce its savoury kick?

Anchovies go into the mix; company lore says the chemists' first batch was shelved as inedible, then found to have mellowed when tasted 18 months later.

HP Sauce is named after what?

The Houses of Parliament inspired the name in 1895, when Nottingham grocer Frederick Garton claimed a restaurant there had begun serving his sauce.

Which Cadbury chocolate bar is pushed into soft ice cream to make a '99'?

Flake was born in 1920 when a Cadbury worker saw that chocolate spilling over the moulds set in thin, crumbly folds; a half-size bar for ice-cream sellers followed.

Which cake is said to have been created to mark an 1884 royal wedding?

Battenberg cake carries the name of the groom's family, who turned it into English as Mountbatten in 1917, when anti-German feeling ran high.

Fry's, Rowntree's and Cadbury's were all founded by members of which religious group?

Quakers were shut out of universities and many professions, so they went into business, and sold cocoa as a wholesome alternative to alcohol.

Which brand's 1967 advertising slogan deliberately misspelled both 'beans' and 'means'?

Heinz adman Maurice Drake hit on 'Beanz Meanz Heinz' in a London pub, ending 'beans' with a z to match the brand, and in 2004 the company put his misspelling on the label.

Which popular dish was never rationed during the Second World War?

Fish and chips stayed off the ration because ministers saw the cheap, filling meal as vital to morale, as it had been in the First World War.

Under which Prime Minister did Britain's food rationing end?

Winston Churchill's government lifted the last controls, on meat and bacon, in July 1954; one minister burned a large replica ration book to celebrate.

Coronation chicken was created for whose coronation?

Elizabeth II's coronation lunch for foreign guests was catered by cookery students of chef Rosemary Hume and florist Constance Spry, who devised the dish for it.

Which city's Shish Mahal restaurant claims to have invented chicken tikka masala?

Glasgow's claim is that owner Ali Ahmed Aslam made a sauce with a can of condensed tomato soup after a customer complained his chicken tikka was too dry.

Which English city, home to the 'Balti Triangle', is credited with developing the balti curry in the 1970s?

Birmingham's balti restaurants applied for EU protected status for the 'Birmingham Balti', cooked fast and served sizzling in the same thin steel bowl.

A 2016 YouGov poll found which curry had beaten tikka masala to be Britain's favourite?

Korma was the favourite of 18%, six points clear of tikka masala, lifted by women and by 18-to-24s; almost no one in that age group picked a hot curry.

Which chef put snail porridge and bacon-and-egg ice cream on the menu at The Fat Duck in Bray?

Heston Blumenthal left an apprenticeship after a week and taught himself to cook; his restaurant, a former pub, was named the world's best in 2005.

Which cheese did George Orwell call "the best cheese of its type in the world"?

Stilton won the praise in a 1945 newspaper essay defending English cooking against the common charge that it was the worst in the world.

Which cheese's sales were revived in the 1990s after it became Wallace's favourite in Wallace & Gromit?

Wensleydale was picked by animator Nick Park purely because the word was fun to lip-sync; he had no idea its makers were in financial trouble.

In a Cornish cream tea, what goes on the scone first?

Jam goes on first in Cornwall, with the cream spooned on top; Devon does the reverse, and in 2010 campaigned for EU protection of the 'Devon cream tea'.

What is distinctive about stargazy pie?

Fish heads poke through the crust of the pie eaten each 23 December in Mousehole, recalling the legend of Tom Bawcock, who fished through a storm to end a famine.

Cornish Yarg cheese is wrapped in what to form its rind?

Nettle leaves wrap a cheese whose Cornish-sounding name is simply 'Gray' backwards, after Alan and Jenny Gray, who first made it in the early 1980s.

Which hard, savoury biscuit gave its name to an English village's throwing contest?

Dorset knob throwing began in the village of Cattistock as a fundraiser for its sports clubs and hall, and grew to draw thousands, who must lob the biscuits underarm.

Which cheese is the prize at the Cooper's Hill cheese-rolling race?

Double Gloucester still gets chased downhill even though the official race was cancelled in 2010 over safety fears; locals simply carried on without organisers.

Stinking Bishop cheese is washed in what?

Perry made from the Stinking Bishop pear gives the cheese its name; the pear is said to be named after a farmer called Bishop with a notoriously foul temper.

In a 2021 survey, 18% of Britons thought which pudding was imaginary?

Spotted dick is real: a steamed suet pudding named for the dried fruit that speckles it. About one in five in the same poll also thought toad in the hole was invented.