English cuisine encompasses the cooking styles, traditions and recipes associated with England. It has distinctive attributes of its own, but also shares much with wider British cuisine, partly through the importation of ingredients and ideas from the Americas, China, and India during the time of the British Empire and as a result of post-war immigration.
A recipe is a set of instructions that describes how to prepare or make something, especially a dish of prepared food. A sub-recipe or subrecipe is a recipe for an ingredient that will be called for in the instructions for the main recipe.
Lancashire hotpot is a stew originating from Lancashire in the North West of England. It consists of lamb or mutton and onion, topped with sliced potatoes and baked in a heavy pot on a low heat.
Macaroni and cheese is a dish of cooked macaroni pasta and a cheese sauce, most commonly Cheddar sauce.
A soufflé is a baked egg-based dish originating in France in the early eighteenth century. Combined with various other ingredients, it can be served as a savory main dish or sweetened as a dessert. The word soufflé is the past participle of the French verb souffler which means "to blow," "to breathe," "to inflate," or "to puff."
Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, also published as Mrs. Beeton's Cookery Book, is an extensive guide to running a household in Victorian Britain, edited by Isabella Beeton and first published as a book in 1861. Previously published in parts, it initially and briefly bore the title Beeton's Book of Household Management, as one of the series of guidebooks published by her husband, Samuel Beeton. The recipes were highly structured, in contrast to those in earlier cookbooks. It was illustrated with many monochrome and colour plates.
Jugging is the process of stewing whole animals, mainly game or fish, for an extended period in a tightly covered container such as a casserole or an earthenware jug. In France a similar stew of a game animal is known as a civet.
Sarah Tyson Rorer was an American food writer and pioneer in the field of domestic science. Rorer has been described as the first American dietitian.
A collop is a slice of meat, according to one definition in the Oxford English Dictionary. In Elizabethan times, "collops" came to refer specifically to slices of bacon. Shrove Monday, also known as Collop Monday, was traditionally the last day to cook and eat meat before Ash Wednesday, which was a non-meat day in the pre-Lenten season also known as Shrovetide. A traditional breakfast dish was collops of bacon topped with a fried egg.
Sonofabitch stew was a cowboy dish of the American West.
Fricassee or fricassée is a stew made with pieces of meat that have been browned in butter then served in a sauce flavored with the cooking stock. Fricassee is usually made with chicken, veal or rabbit, with variations limited only by what ingredients the cook has at hand.
Scaloppine is a type of Italian dish that comes in many forms. It consists of thinly sliced meat, most often beef, veal, or chicken, that is dredged in wheat flour and sautéed in one of a variety of reduction sauces.
Liver and onions is a dish consisting of slices of liver and bulb onions. The liver and the onions are usually sautéed or otherwise cooked together, but sometimes they may be sautéed separately and mixed together afterwards. The liver is often cut in fine slices, but it also may be diced.
Hodge-podge or hotch potch is a soup or stew, usually based on diced mutton or other meat, with green and root vegetables. It is familiar in different versions in Britain and North America and is particularly associated with Scotland.
Game pie is a form of meat pie featuring game. The dish dates from Roman times when the main ingredients were wild birds and animals such as partridge, pheasant, deer, and hare. The pies reached their most elaborate form in Victorian England, with complex recipes and specialized moulds and serving dishes. Modern versions are simpler but savoury combinations of rabbit, venison, pigeon, pheasant, and other commercially available game.
Creamed eggs on toast is an American breakfast dish. It consists of toast or biscuits covered in a gravy made from béchamel sauce and chopped hard-boiled eggs. The gravy is often flavored with various seasonings, such as black pepper, garlic powder, celery salt, Worcestershire sauce, sherry, chopped parsley and/or chopped chives. The Joy of Cooking recommends making the bechamel with 1⁄2 cream and 1⁄2 chicken stock and adding capers or chopped pickle. As with many other dishes covered in light-colored sauce, a sprinkle of paprika or cayenne is often added as decoration.
Devizes Pie is a dish closely associated with the town of Devizes, Wiltshire, England. It is a pie which consists of offal within a huff paste casing. It was thought to originate from the 15th century, but fell out of fashion several times. It was first rediscovered in the 1950s and 60s, and again in 2006. Some modern recipes have replaced the majority of the offal with other proteins.
Modern Cookery for Private Families is an English cookery book by Eliza Acton. It was first published by Longmans in 1845, and was a best-seller, running through 13 editions by 1853, though its sales were later overtaken by Mrs Beeton. On the strength of the book, Delia Smith called Acton "the best writer of recipes in the English language", while Elizabeth David wondered why "this peerless writer" had been eclipsed by such inferior and inexperienced imitators.
