British Fare Can Be Better Than Fair

The one cuisine we all get to bad-mouth is British. Everybody knows it’s heavy, starchy and bland. Everybody knows British cooks are always cutting corners and doing things on the cheap, and the way they cook vegetables is something cruel.

London happens to enjoy a vigorous fine dining scene these days, but traditional British food is certainly vulnerable to bad-mouthing. In fact, Britons often disparage it themselves, in keeping with a national strain of jovial self-deprecation. But they keep on eating it, largely for the same reasons that always make people eat things that puzzle everybody else: tradition, nostalgia and sociability.

The shorthand for what people like in a British meal is the idea of a proper tuck-in. At a pub, you might easily order vermicelli alla primavera (particularly in California; no pub around here dares offer British food exclusively), but you wouldn’t be able to tuck into it. “Tucking in” is what you do to something substantial and comforting, such as steak and kidney pie, or roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, or even (proper British-style) curry.

Pub menus may list American, Indian and Italian dishes, but they will always feature Scotch egg (a hard-boiled egg in a coating of sausage meat) as an appetizer, and usually miniature pork pie. Traditional British meat pies also loom large among the entrees, steak and kidney pie being the single dish you’re most likely to find, followed by the Cornish pasty (filled with ground meat and diced potatoes, and usually peas and carrots as well), the Scottish bridie (which often includes a splash of Scotch whiskey) and shepherd’s pie (ground meat topped with mashed potatoes).

Usually there are some urban vernacular dishes too, particularly fish and chips, mushy peas and bangers and mash (“banger” sausages--sometimes so ludicrously extended with bread crumbs there seems to be no meat in them at all--served with mashed potatoes). Justifying the stereotype of British food, pub kitchens usually overcook vegetables to a savage degree, above all the blameless carrot, and typically serve a Kitchen Bouquet-type gravy.

Non-Britons rarely have a big problem with these things (well, aside from the vegetables). Dessert is another matter. The universal dessert is trifle, which you may imagine to be something like zuppa inglese, which is an Italian rendition of the classic 19th century English trifle: to wit, cake soaked in liqueur and topped with cream. The modern pub version, however, usually lacks cake and consists of canned fruit topped with custard sauce and whipped cream.

Coming to Terms

With Ubiquitous Custard

For that matter, most pub desserts--fruit pie, fruit crumble, even bread or rice pudding--come drowned in steaming hot Bird’s custard sauce, made from a packaged mix. For nostalgia purposes, real creme anglaise would be as out of place on a British dessert as extra-virgin olive oil mayonnaise on a ham sandwich.

If you haven’t grown up on this stuff, though, you’re likely to start adding the words “No custard, please,” whenever you order dessert--which will usually be the pie or crumble.