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15 Signs You Learned to Eat in England

England Travel
by Susannah Rigg Sep 9, 2015

1. Curry abroad (even in India) just doesn’t cut the mustard.

There is a certain taste of English curry that you just can’t find overseas. In the way that Mexican food in the US has a special taste of its own, English Curry is specific to our shores. To find a really ‘authentic’ curry, you head to Birmingham, Bradford, or East London, not Mumbai or New Delhi.

2. You know if you are a ketchup or brown sauce lover.

Early on you developed your preference and it will NEVER change. It’s believed that our taste buds have a north-south divide. If you’re from the north, then you like brown sauce. From the south? You opt for red, obviously. Either way, you know which you like and there is no changing your mind.

3. Marmite, you either love it or hate it.

Like the adverts say, you either love or hate this yeasty spread. If you love it, it gets packed in your suitcase every time you leave the country. If you hate it, you literally cannot wrap your head around what people like about it.

4. You are used to having sooo many flavours of crisps to choose from.

We are a crisp-loving nation, and we have the best flavours. You probably grew up thinking that you knew exactly what roast chicken and prawn cocktail tasted like, but then you tried the actual food and realised you had been duped. Salt and vinegar, cheese and onion, roast beef and pickled onion are just some of the many flavours that you can’t live without.

5. Talking of crisps, you can cook a potato an infinite number of ways.

We love potatoes with everything. Pop some mash on some meat, bake it, and you have a pie. Pop some sliced potatoes on meat and you have a hot pot. Chips, roast potatoes, jacket potatoes with beans and cheese, the potato is king!

6. You know that Friday is fish ‘n’ chip night.

Cod and chips, and mushy peas eaten out of newspaper wrapping…this is what Friday nights were made for. Don’t forget the salt and malt vinegar.

7. And Sundays are made for roast dinners.

It doesn’t feel like Sunday unless you eat a roast dinner. Whether home cooked or enjoyed at the pub with the Sunday papers, that roast meat and potatoes served with a whole pile of veggies and a Yorkshire pud or two will make your day complete. And don’t forget, lashings of gravy — no roast is complete without a pool of rich gravy goodness.

8. And you know which sauce goes with which meat.

You learn from an early age that mint jelly goes with lamb, cranberry sauce with turkey, horseradish with beef, bread sauce accompanies chicken and apple sauce compliments pork, right?

9. You think that the best cure for any hangover is a fry up.

Two sausages, two bacon, fried eggs, baked beans, and fried mushrooms plus toast with lashings of butter, and a cup of builder’s tea. Yep that greasy concoction can cure even the heftiest hangover.

10. And talking of beans, you know they are good for the heart.

There is nothing quite like sweet, tomatoey beans to accompany a good sausage and mash, or egg and chips. It is the taste that makes you feel most at home when abroad.

11. You love a sarnie for lunch.

You will likely have grown up with the idea that lunch basically means a sandwich. English sandwiches come in all shapes and sizes and always involve butter on the bread — it just isn’t a sandwich without the butter, right?

12. And speaking of butter, you always have butter in the fridge.

No butter in the fridge is a disaster. Your toast and jam depends on it, as does your mash, your fish, and your bread-and-butter pudding. Being without butter can be a devastating loss to your day.

13. You just love a good pudding served with custard.

Be it apple crumple, sticky toffee pudding, spotted dick, or treacle tart, it isn’t complete if you don’t add a big dollop or two of thick, hot custard. It doesn’t matter how old you get, this will always be the truth.

14. You think English chocolate is the best in the world.

Forget Belgium, forget Switzerland — there is nothing quite like a bit of Cadbury’s. Dairy milk, Fruit n Nut, Double Deckers and Curly Wurlies, you’d take any of these over Lindt. Maybe it’s that glass-and-a-half of milk that does it?

15. And you think English baked treat are also the best.

There is nothing quite like a cuppa accompanied by some English baked goods, Bakewell Tarts, Custard Tarts, Lemon Drizzle Cake. French and Italian master bakers move over, we got Mr Kipling and he makes “exceedingly good cakes.” 

 

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