Around The World In British Plates

It’s often the butt of jokes, but British food’s reach is more global than you might think, reveals Emma Hughes

- Emma Hughes

BRITAIN has always been a culinary melting pot. From the fish and chips brought by Jewish immigrants to the East End of London to the tikka masala that is now widely held to be the country’s favourite meal, our island’s cuisine has been shaped and vastly enriched by centuries of newcomers. The Romans brought cabbages, peas and, of course, wine, the Vikings arrived with fish-smoking techniques and the Normans bequeathed us a dictionary’s worth of food names (anyone for mouton?). Kedgeree, now thought of as the most quintessentially British of breakfasts, came home with members of the East India Company in the 18th century. But of course, that isn’t always the direction of travel.

As a former Empire with colonies all over the globe, Britain has exported its favourite foods worldwide. Think of the 4th Earl of Sandwich’s proprietary late-night snack, now consumed, ‘in some form in almost every country in the world,’ according to food historian Andrew F. Smith. For all that people like to scoff at indigestible Anglo stodge (W. Somerset Maugham, who spent much of his life in France, supposedly quipped that ‘to eat well in England, you should have breakfast three times a day’), it’s been embraced and reinterpreted in thousands of entirely different—and entirely delicious—ways. Even haggis exports have risen by 136% over the past 10 years; Hong Kong and Ghana are especially keen.