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A History of British Cooking: 4,500 Years in One Timeline
From a pig roast by Stonehenge to the air fryer: 4,500 years of British food history in one illustrated timeline. Spoiler: most of it came from somewhere else.
Traditional British food is the Sunday roast, the full English, pies, puddings, afternoon tea and a proper takeaway - and most of it started life somewhere else.
Ask Aaron what British food is and he'll say roast beef, fish and chips and a proper cup of tea.
Ask Isaac and he'll say: "Which bit came from Britain?"
He's got a point. He usually has.
So we've gone back 4,500 years, from a pig roast by Stonehenge to the air fryer, plus one brave guess at 2050, to see where British food actually came from.
Spoiler: mostly somewhere else.
A new era is revealed every Monday at 7am, each with its own post and a recipe, all the way to April 2027. The Stonehenge one is out already.
We've borrowed a time machine for the trip.
Well. A milk float with a pressure cooker bolted on the back. Same thing, if you squint.
First stop: Stonehenge, 2500 BC. Ovens? Where we're going, we don't need ovens.
The whole lot, in one timeline
A new era revealed every Monday
A History of
British Cooking
From a Stonehenge pig roast to 2050
Spot the pattern: most of it came from somewhere else.
Now go and cook something.
The full story and sources: oliverskitchen.co.uk/blogs/cheeky-bites/history-of-british-cooking
From the Oliver's Kitchen family
Aaron wanted it laminated. He's still looking for a laminator that long. Download the timeline as an image
Era by era
The short version of each one. The long version comes with dinner.
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c. 2500 BC
Stonehenge
Britain's first big midwinter party was a pig roast by Stonehenge. Some guests walked their pigs down from Scotland. (Source: English Heritage)
The original bring-a-dish.
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800-1066
Revealed Mon 16 Nov
Raiders, traders and a surprisingly sharp line in kitchen kit.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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1300s
Revealed Mon 23 Nov
The medieval pie crust had a very grim name. Have a guess.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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Middle Ages
Revealed Mon 30 Nov
A spice worth more than the rent, and a Christmas classic that used to be very different.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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1675
Revealed Mon 7 Dec
A king picks a fight with a hot drink. Guess who wins.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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1809
Revealed Mon 14 Dec
One pip in one back garden changes pudding forever.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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1810
Revealed Mon 21 Dec
London gets its first taste of something. The owner gets his first taste of bankruptcy.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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c. 1860
Revealed Mon 28 Dec
Two foods meet in London. Lancashire disputes the paperwork.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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1888
Revealed Mon 4 Jan 2027
A Victorian cook invents something you hold in one hand. The cold bit came from abroad.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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1926
Revealed Mon 11 Jan 2027
A Regent Street opening that's still taking bookings a century later.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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1954
Revealed Mon 18 Jan 2027
Britain tries an American classic. With a knife and fork.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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1960s
Revealed Mon 25 Jan 2027
A few hundred on the high street becomes thousands. Every town gets one. Then two.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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Early 1970s
Revealed Mon 1 Feb 2027
A customer in Glasgow asks for sauce. History happens.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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1965-85
Revealed Mon 8 Feb 2027
Something American lands in Preston. Then Woolwich. Then everywhere.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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1980
Revealed Mon 15 Feb 2027
Lunch gets a new shape. Triangular, since you ask.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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1991
Revealed Mon 22 Feb 2027
A London pub decides the food should be good. Revolutionary.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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2001
Revealed Mon 1 Mar 2027
A government minister crowns a new national dish. Glasgow is delighted.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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2013
Revealed Mon 8 Mar 2027
Dinner learns to ride a bike.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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2016
Revealed Mon 15 Mar 2027
A spread vanishes from the internet. Half of Britain panics.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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2020
Revealed Mon 22 Mar 2027
Pubs shut. Flour sells out. Everyone becomes a chef.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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2025
Revealed Mon 29 Mar 2027
The oven gets demoted.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
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2050
Revealed Mon 5 Apr 2027
Our best guess at what Britain eats next. Bring a time machine.
Coordinates locked. Clue: check the wallpaper on the timeline.
What is the traditional food of the UK?
The classics are the Sunday roast with Yorkshire puddings, the full English, fish and chips, pies, pasties and steamed puddings - plus afternoon tea.
Here are 20 dishes most of Britain would put on the list. Aaron put 23. He was told 20. He's still upset.
- Sunday roast - roast meat, roast potatoes, veg and gravy. The one meal every family argues about the timing of.
- Yorkshire pudding - batter puffed up in hot fat. Once served first, to fill you up before the meat.
- Full English breakfast - bacon, sausage, eggs, beans, black pudding, mushrooms, tomato, toast. Breakfast, lunch and a nap.
- Fish and chips - battered fish, thick chips, salt and vinegar, mushy peas optional. The full story's on the timeline.
- Shepherd's pie - minced lamb under mashed potato. Beef makes it a cottage pie. Aaron will correct you.
- Toad in the hole - sausages baked in Yorkshire pudding batter. No toads were involved.
- Bangers and mash - sausages, mashed potato, onion gravy.
- Cornish pasty - beef, potato, swede and onion in a crimped pastry case. Protected status since 2011.
- Pork pie - cold, hand-raised, jellied. The Melton Mowbray one has protected status, like Parma ham.
- Lancashire hotpot - lamb and onion under a lid of sliced potato, cooked low and slow.
- Welsh rarebit - cheese sauce on toast, grilled until it bubbles. Cheese on toast in its Sunday best.
- Ploughman's lunch - cheese, pickle, bread, apple, pickled onion. The original grazing board.
- Scotch egg - a boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat and breadcrumbs, then fried.
- Sausage roll - sausage meat in puff pastry. The bakery's bestseller.
- Scones with jam and clotted cream - the order they go on is a matter of regional honour.
- Victoria sponge - two sponges, jam and cream, named after Queen Victoria.
- Sticky toffee pudding - date sponge drowned in toffee sauce. Calories don't count in the Lake District.
- Trifle - sponge, fruit, jelly, custard and cream, in layers, in a glass bowl so everyone can see them.
- Spotted dick - a steamed suet pudding with currants. Best with custard. Everything is best with custard.
- Christmas pudding - dark, dense, set alight once a year. Here's ours.
Plenty of Britain's favourites aren't on there yet, because they're on the timeline above and we're not spoiling anything. Some of the biggest ones. All coming, one Monday at a time.
What is the national dish of England?
England has no official national dish. Roast beef has the oldest claim, fish and chips is most people's pick - and a government minister once crowned a third. That one's on the timeline, unlocking Mon 1 Mar 2027.
The other nations are a lot more decisive.
- England: no official national dish. Roast beef has the oldest claim - the Roast Beef of Old England was a patriotic song in the 1730s.
- Scotland: haggis - sheep's heart, liver and lungs with oats, onion and spices. Served with neeps and tatties on Burns Night.
- Wales: cawl - a slow lamb and leek broth with root veg. Welsh cakes and bara brith for afters.
- Northern Ireland: the Ulster fry - a fried breakfast with soda farls and potato bread doing the heavy lifting.
Erin issued a royal decree making crumpets the national dish of our house. Nobody argued. Nobody ever does.
What is British cuisine known for?
British cuisine is known for roasts, pies, puddings, baking, cheese and tea - simple food built around good meat, root veg and a hot oven.
It's a cold, wet island. Most of the cooking is designed to warm you up and keep you going until the rain stops.
The rain doesn't stop. Hence the puddings.
Three things Britain does better than almost anyone:
- Pies and pastry. Meat pies, pasties, pork pies, sausage rolls. If it fits in pastry, someone in Britain has baked it.
- Puddings. Steamed, baked, sticky, crumbled, trifled. In Britain, "pudding" is a whole course and a way of life.
- Tea. Not just the drink. A meal, a ritual and the answer to every crisis since the 1700s.
The fourth thing Britain is famous for is borrowing. Keep scrolling. It gets worse. Or better, depending on how hungry you are.
Where did Christmas dinner come from?
The Christmas turkey arrived in 1526, when a Yorkshire sailor called William Strickland brought six birds from the Americas and sold them at a market in Bristol for tuppence each.
That's according to BBC Countryfile, which also has Henry VIII tucking into turkey alongside porpoise and peacock. Henry VIII did not do Veganuary.
For centuries goose was the proper Christmas bird. Turkey only took over later, helped along by Edward VII, and stayed a luxury for a long time - as late as 1930 one could cost about a week's wages.
The rest of the plate came together slowly: the pudding, the sprouts, the pigs in blankets, the argument about the pigs in blankets.
Feeding the lot of them on the day? Here's our Christmas dinner timer, so the turkey isn't the only thing on time.
Mince pies have their own episode on the timeline. That's all we're saying.
Who invented afternoon tea?
Afternoon tea is usually credited to Anna Maria Russell, Duchess of Bedford, at Woburn Abbey in the 1840s. She got peckish between lunch and a late dinner and had tea and snacks brought to her rooms.
She started inviting friends. Then the friends started copying her in London. The original influencer. With a teapot.
As the Irish Times points out, people had been having a little something in the afternoon long before her. She just made it official, and gave it a guest list.
Today it's sandwiches with the crusts off, scones, jam, clotted cream and a cake stand three storeys high. Tyson has never once been invited. Tyson has attended every one.
Where did Yorkshire pudding come from?
Yorkshire pudding got its name in print in 1747, in Hannah Glasse's bestselling cookbook The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy.
Cooks in the north had been making a "dripping pudding" under the roasting meat for years. Glasse wrote it down and gave it a county.
Her book was written in plain English for ordinary cooks, at a time when posh cookbooks were full of French. According to the London Archives, it was the bestselling cookbook of the century.
Erin read the title and asked why nobody's written The Art of Cookery Made Complicated and Hard. Isaac said most cookbooks since.
Glasse didn't get rich from it. She went bankrupt, sold the copyright and ended up in debtors' prison. Aaron says this is why you always read the contract. Aaron has never read a contract.
Who invented custard powder?
Custard powder was invented in 1837 by Alfred Bird, a Birmingham chemist, because his wife Elizabeth was allergic to eggs.
Proper custard needs eggs. Elizabeth couldn't have them. So Alfred made an egg-free version with cornflour, and the rest of Britain decided it liked it better.
Six years later he invented baking powder too, because she couldn't have yeast either. Somewhere there's a husband who just bought flowers.
His son's factory in Digbeth is still known as the Custard Factory, says Birmingham Civic Society, which gave Alfred a blue plaque.
Eesha has a strong position on lumpy custard. It's the same position she has on lumpy anything.
How do you make a proper Sunday roast?
Roast the meat first, then rest it while the oven goes up to about 220C (200C fan) for crisp roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings, and make the gravy from the tin.
The secret of a Sunday roast isn't the meat. It's the timing. Everything has to land on the table hot, at once, while someone asks if there's more gravy.
- The meat goes in first and comes out first. A rested joint stays hot under loose foil for up to an hour, which frees the oven for everything else.
- Roast potatoes - parboil, shake in the colander to rough up the edges, then into hot fat. The rough edges are where the crunch lives.
- Yorkshire puddings - the fat has to be smoking hot before the batter goes in, and the oven door stays shut. Aaron opened it once. In 2017. The puddings never forgave him.
- Veg - roast the roots with the potatoes, steam the greens in the last ten minutes.
- Gravy - the fat and sticky bits from the meat tin, a spoon of flour, hot stock, simmer, season. Next to the crackling. Never on it.
The meat itself is in the series: slow roast pork shoulder from the Stonehenge episode, with more roasts to come. And if you're juggling a big one, our roast dinner timer works it all back from the time you want to eat.
What are Britain's food traditions through the year?
Haggis on Burns Night, pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, hot cross buns at Easter, strawberries for Wimbledon, toffee apples on Bonfire Night and a roast with all the trimmings at Christmas.
Britain doesn't really do food festivals. It does food dates, and it keeps them like dentist appointments.
- 25 January - Burns Night. Haggis, neeps and tatties, and a poem read out loud to a pudding. Ayden does the reading. Every year. Unasked.
- Shrove Tuesday - Pancake Day. Thin pancakes, lemon and sugar, eaten to use up the eggs and fat before Lent. Aaron measures the toss height.
- Easter - hot cross buns. Spiced fruit buns with a cross on top, eaten on Good Friday. Now in the shops from about Boxing Day.
- July - strawberries and cream. The official food of Wimbledon, eaten in the rain since the 1870s.
- 5 November - Bonfire Night. Jacket potatoes, toffee apples, parkin and a flask. Our Bonfire Night menu has the lot.
- 25 December - Christmas dinner. Turkey, pigs in blankets, sprouts, pudding. Then a sandwich at 9pm out of the leftovers.
Erin has proposed adding her birthday to the list. Royal decree pending.
What are England's regional foods?
Nearly every corner of England has a dish it claims: Yorkshire pudding, Cornish pasties, Lancashire hotpot, Melton Mowbray pork pies, Bakewell pudding, Eccles cakes, Stilton, Kendal mint cake and the Newcastle stottie.
Draw a line across England and the food changes every county or so. So does the word for a bread roll. Barm, bap, cob, batch - nobody agrees and nobody ever will.
- Yorkshire - Yorkshire puddings, parkin and curd tart.
- Cornwall - the pasty, saffron buns and clotted cream.
- Lancashire - hotpot, Eccles cakes and black pudding from Bury.
- Leicestershire - Melton Mowbray pork pies and Stilton.
- Derbyshire - Bakewell pudding. Not tart. Locals will tell you. Twice.
- Cumbria - Cumberland sausage, Kendal mint cake and sticky toffee pudding.
- Tyneside - stottie cake and pease pudding.
- Devon - cream teas, and strong opinions on which goes first.
Aaron is from Belfast and has asked us to point out that Northern Ireland also has food. It does. It's further up.
What cheese is British?
Cheddar, Stilton, Wensleydale, Red Leicester, Double Gloucester, Lancashire and Caerphilly are all British, and Cheddar is still the one most of Britain eats.
Cheddar is named after a village in Somerset, where the cheese was once matured in the caves of Cheddar Gorge. Stilton is named after a village where it was sold, not made. Marketing, 18th-century style.
Building a board for Christmas? Here's how to make a cheese board people actually fight over.
Lara found the cheese. Lara always finds the cheese.
Why does British food have a bad reputation?
Mostly because of rationing. It started on 8 January 1940 with bacon, butter and sugar, and didn't fully end until July 1954 - fourteen years of cooking with not much of anything.
At the start, the weekly ration was 4 ounces of bacon and 12 ounces of sugar, according to the Science Museum.
Meat was the last thing to come off ration. It finally ended at midnight on 3 July 1954, and the minister in charge burned his own ration book, according to the Bodleian Library. Health and safety had different priorities in 1954.
A whole generation learned to cook without butter, eggs or sugar. Some of that cooking was genius. Some of it was mock banana made from boiled parsnips.
Then the rest of the world turned up with better ideas, and Britain - as it always had - said yes please. The second half of the timeline is basically that.
Is British food actually British?
Mostly not. The potato came from South America, tea from China, the turkey from the Americas and plenty more from all over - Britain's real talent is taking them in and making them its own.
That's the whole point of the timeline. Every Monday adds another clue.
Isaac's working theory is that the only truly British ingredient is gravy. Nobody has been able to prove him wrong.
British food questions people actually ask
The short answers: a full English for breakfast, a roast on Sunday, and protected status for the Cornish pasty.
What is a traditional British breakfast?
The full English: bacon, sausages, eggs, baked beans, black pudding, mushrooms, grilled tomato and toast, with a mug of tea.
Scotland adds tattie scones and square sausage. Wales adds laverbread. Northern Ireland adds soda bread and potato bread and calls it an Ulster fry. Each nation insists theirs is the correct one. Each nation is right.
What do British people eat on a Sunday?
A Sunday roast: roast beef, lamb, pork or chicken with roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, veg and gravy.
It's called Sunday lunch. It usually finishes around teatime.
What food is genuinely English?
Dishes invented here include Yorkshire pudding, the Cornish pasty, Eccles cakes, Bakewell pudding, the pork pie and Stilton cheese - even if half their ingredients came from abroad.
The Cornish pasty has had protected status since 2011. It has to be made in Cornwall, crimped on the side, with beef, potato, swede and onion. Aaron crimps his on top. We don't talk about it.
What is a traditional British pudding?
Sticky toffee pudding, spotted dick, jam roly-poly, bread and butter pudding, trifle and Eton mess - usually with custard.
For a lighter finish, our meringues go straight into an Eton mess. The mess is the point.
What is bubble and squeak?
Bubble and squeak is leftover potato and cabbage (or sprouts) mashed together and fried until crisp - traditionally the Monday after a Sunday roast, or Boxing Day.
It's named after the noise it makes in the pan. Tyson thinks the noise is for him. Tyson thinks most noises are for him.
What is a cream tea?
A cream tea is a pot of tea with scones, jam and clotted cream. In Devon the cream goes on first, then the jam. In Cornwall it's jam first, then cream.
We've been asked to stay neutral on this. We're a kitchenware brand, not a peacekeeping force.
What is a traditional British winter food?
Stews, hotpots, pies, roasts and steamed puddings - anything that comes out of a hot oven after a long time.
And on Bonfire Night, jacket spuds and toffee apples, eaten outside in the cold, because that's tradition.
Spot the pattern
Line the eras up and something jumps out. Here's what we've got so far.
- The pigs: walked down from Scotland.
More clues arrive every Monday.
No skipping ahead. And don't tell your past self what's in next week's post. Paradoxes.
British food has always been a bring-a-dish.
Some guests just walked further.
Now go and cook something. From anywhere you like.
