English food as we know it owes a big debt to the Victorians. Like other northern european cuisines, it majors heavily on meats, dairy products, wheat and root vegetables and a diet conducive to manual labour and red-faced citizens. The nineteenth century idea of a varied diet was one with different sorts of meat in it. Milk and vegetables were regarded as not only inedible raw, but highly dangerous until boiled thoroughly. To a certain extent this is understandable. In an era without refrigeration, when typhoid and cholera could strike even the wealthy, over-cooking everything was probably a sensible course to take.

The Victorian propensity to send splendidly choleric officials to war on and rule over farflung corners of the empire, and then later to retire them to the home counties, added a number of colourful foreign words to the vocabulary and foreign dishes to the table, which were gradually adopted and anglicised. For instance India provided the English language with curry, chutney and kedgeree while ketchup came from the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). The aristocratic european tour also gave us the omelette, blancmange, marmalade, mayonnaise and macaroni to name but a few.

In England we tend to underrate our own food, slighting our cookery because it is homely and familiar. We no longer recognise the traditional food we still eat as a cuisine or celebrate it and our food manufacturers bastardise the great traditional dishes with microwave-ready synthetic imitations. Our enthusiastic adoption of foreign food which has so enriched our cuisine, has almost made spaghetti bolognaise the national dish. Yet a moment's thought can bring to mind traditional English dishes in everyday use which at their best can still impress foreigners. The sandwich, fish and chips, pies like the cornish pasty, trifle, the sunday roasts and their accompaniments- mint sauce, apple sauce, cranberry sauce, horseradish, English mustard, Yorkshire Pudding, Sage & Onion Stuffing. Sometimes they have strange names- Fool, Bubble & Squeak, Toad-in-the-Hole. Scrote hopes you will find some old friends here.