The English love their sauces just as much as the French love theirs, both savoury sauces and dessert sauces. Gravy is the most common sauce made at home, with variants such as onion gravy being popular. Other than gravy, perhaps the most common sauce made at home is a white sauce (which the French call…
British Food
Extra Thick Double Cream
Extra Thick Double Cream is Double Cream that has been homogenized to produce the extra thickness that makes it spoonable right from the container as a topping for desserts and fruit. For this reason, it’s sometimes referred to as a “spooning cream.” It won’t whip successfully, but the idea behind its being made extra thick…
Extra Thick Single Cream
Like regular Single Cream, this has a butterfat content of 18%, but this Extra Thick version has been homogenized to make it thicker, thick enough to make it spoonable. Cooking Tips Use as a topping for fruits and desserts. Won’t whip, but then the whole point of Extra Thick Single Cream is that it is…
Fadge: A British and Irish flatbread
A fadge is a small, round flat loaf of bread that is up to about 5 cm (2 ½ inches) thick when baked. Some people made it from regular bread dough, causing some confusion with stotties. Others made fadges from a dough without any leavener that was meant to provide some form of bread quickly…
Fanny Cradock
Fanny was one of the first, and most original, celebrity TV food personalities ever. Descriptions of her range from bizarre to high camp to battleaxe.
Farce
Farce was commonly used in English as the word for stuffing. Stuffing didn’t appear in print until 1538. Sometimes you will still see recipes, especially British ones, refer to a “farce” meaning a stuffing. Literature & Lore Farce came to be used as well to describe short, comical plays that would be “stuffed”, as it…
Finnan Haddock
Finnan Haddock is haddock processed in Finnan, north of Arbroath in Scotland, 5 miles (8 km) south of Aberdeen. The haddock are headed, cleaned, split open (but not de-boned) and soaked in 175 F (80 C) brine for 7 to 15 minutes, depending on the fish size. They are then cold-smoked at 75 to 80…
Flitch of Bacon
A flitch of bacon is a side of “bacon” — half of a pig that has been cut in half lengthwise. History Notes In Great Dunmow, Essex, England, Flitch Day is held every four years. Flitch Day originated in neighbouring Little Dunmow, and used to be annual. A flitch of bacon is presented to any…
Fool
A fool is made by stewing or mashing fruit into a sweet purée, then folding the fruit into either double cream or custard. It is served cold. In North America, where the cows seem genetically unable to produce double-cream, whipped cream is used as a substitute. In the UK, the fruit used is often gooseberries;…
Forfeit Cookies
Forfeit cookies are cookies that have inside them a written “forfeit” — something funny or embarrassing that the recipient must do. Think of them as “mis-fortune” cookies. Served at the end of dinner parties.
François Latry
Francois Latry was chef of the Savoy Hotel in London for 23 years. He was a favourite of the press on both sides of the Atlantic, and was pronounced to be the leading chef in Europe of his time.
Fray Bentos Pies
Fray Bentos Pies are savoury pies that come in a pie-pan shaped, sealed in. Each tin weighs 475g (17oz.) The tin is lined with uncooked puff pastry dough. Filling is put in, then a top layer of puff pastry put on, then the tin sealed with a top. To eat them, you cut the top…
Gammon
Gammon is a cut of pork from the hind leg of a pig.It indicates both a cut, and a process which that cut has undergone. Traditionally, it was cut from a whole side of pig, with the leg still attached, which was intended for processing into bacon. The whole side was cured with a mild…
Gary Rhodes
Gary Rhodes (1960 – 2019) was an English cookbook author, chef, and celebrity TV chef with a passion for re-interpreting classic British food in modern ways. He insisted on seasonal food.
Genoa Cake
Genoa Cake © Denzil Green Genoa Cake is a term that can be used to mean several different desserts. (1) In its native English formulation, Genoa Cake is a quirky term (like “Belgian buns”) for an English cake made and sold in the UK. With its classic almost equal (pound / 450 g) portions of…
Gin: Types of gin, cooking tips, and history
Gin is basically flavoured vodka. Its base, a neutral grain alcohol is made from rye, or corn, and malted barley. For Gins in the category of London Dry, a ratio of 3 corn to 1 barley is considered good. The mash is distilled to around 90% alcohol, then reduced to 60% alcohol, then distilled again,…
Gold Top Milk
Gold Top Milk © Iain Sinclair Gold Top™ is the trademarked brand name of a very thick, yellowish milk that comes from either Jersey or Guernsey Cows or is a blend of milk from both, from anywhere in England, Scotland or Wales. It’s 5% fat. When you open the bottle, you can actually see the…
Golden Jubilee Chicken
Golden Jubilee Chicken is a recipe that is meant to be reminiscent of Coronation Chicken. It was served at the Queen’s Jubilee concert held behind Buckingham Palace on 3 June 2002. The dish needed to be one that could be served cold, be eaten picnic-style, be easily prepared in very large quantities, and have wide…
Gooseberries
Gooseberries © Denzil Green Most Gooseberries are, like rhubarb and cranberries, too tart to eat raw: they need to be cooked with sugar. There are native species of Gooseberries in Asia, Europe and North America. The berries vary in size from that of a black currant to the size of a large cherry. The skin…
Gordon Ramsay
Gordon Ramsay is a celebrity chef and cookbook author in England. He is as well-known for his temper as he is for his cooking and his spats with other food personalities.
Grouse
Grouse are tiny game birds, the size of very small chickens. They are usually hunted and sold onto stores; they are not easy to farm. Grouse have pretty much the same proportion of white / dark meat as chickens do, but they don’t taste like chicken. The breast of young grouse is tender, with a…
Harriet Anne de Salis
Harriet Anne de Salis was a prolific author of popular English cookbook and household management author at the end of the Victorian age
Haslet
Haslet is a very dark-coloured British sausage made from pig’s pluck (heart, liver and lungs.) It can be made as a sausage or a meatloaf. The meat is finely minced to make a forcemeat, which is then flavoured with herbs such as sage. The meat is then bound together with wheat flour or breadcrumbs, and…
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Life and Times Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is an English food personality and writer who seems to embody many of the food trends that were popular at the turn of the 21st century. In fact, for him, food at times seems more “political” than it does seem to be about food itself. He is very anti-McDonald’s —…