What are traditional English soup dishes?

Answer 1

Some soups consistently popular in Britain over many decades are:

· Clear soups (consommés)

· Meat and vegetable soups (Irish stew, and very similar dishes with different names, with extra stock or water, cooked with meat on the bone for a good body to the soup. Found all over the British Isles)

· Mulligatawny (meat, vegetables and apple, with Indian-style curry spices and lentils, thought to have been adapted from the spiced Indian lentil dishes, or possibly from the Indian rasan)

· Windsor soup (meat and vegetables again, this time put through a blender)

· Leek and potato soup (frequently with ham off the bone, or bacon)

· Potato soup

· Pea and ham soup (spilt peas and ham off the bone)

· Tomato soup

· Watercress soup

Note: It needs to be remembered whenever searching for foods native or traditional to a particular country or culture that almost without exception food use and cooking methods worldwide have developed over centuries, with new contacts, from travellers to invaders, influencing not only local culture in general but its kitchens in particular.

Mulligatawny, like many British recipes invented to make use of the warm and wonderful Indian culinary traditions to which many Britons became accustomed during the days of the British Raj, is probably not based on any particular Indian recipe, though people keep trying to find 'authentic' Indian bases for so-called Anglo-Indian Food.

Rather than being any particular Indian dish modified for British tastes and available ingredients, it's far more likely the history of these foods is the other way about: the British modified what they'd learned in India to enhance what they'd been used to eating in Britain.

The result is quite often heavenly: kedgeree is a great example, a mix of cooked rice, smoked or steamed fish, hardboiled eggs, butter and, of course, Indian-style spices, is wonderful as a British traditional breakfast dish, and great at any other time of day.

But few from the sub-continent would recognize in these Anglo-Indian recipes anything at all familiar. Even the spices are different: until very recently, the only 'curry' dishes most Anglos cooked were spiced with pre-ground mixed spices, a yellowish substance called 'curry powder', frequently in a packet or tin that had sat on a shelf for years, and not at all like the wonderful, aromatic, freshly-ground spices which are part of all Asian and strongly Asian-influenced cooking throughout the world.

There is no way to describe the 'curries' of the mid-1900s, concocted in Anglo kitchens from Britain to Australia and beyond. I'm certainly not going to describe them, I'm still trying to forget them.

The link below has many soup recipes, unfortunately not yet sorted by country. However, an email to the site editor, with any inquiries, could prove fruitful.

Answer 2

The British are known for not having a large variety of foods original to their cuisine. Fish and chips is likely the most well-known English dish. An English breakfast includes eggs, spinach, mushrooms, and tomatoes.