Editing English cuisine (section)

=== Twentieth century ===

[[File:English Coronation Chicken.jpg|thumb|[[Coronation chicken]] (1953) made with [[mayonnaise]], [[Raisin|sultanas]], and [[curry powder]] ]]

After the First World War, many new food products became available to the typical household, with branded foods advertised for their convenience. Kitchen servants with time to make custards and puddings were replaced with instant foods in jars, or powders that the housewife could quickly mix. [[Breakfast cereal#20th century|American-style dry cereals]] began to challenge the porridge and bacon and eggs of the middle classes, and the bread and margarine of the poor. While wartime shipping shortages had sharply narrowed choice, the 1920s saw many new kinds of fruit imported from around the world, along with better quality, packaging, and hygiene, aided by refrigerators<ref>{{cite book |author1=Graves, Robert |author2=Hodge, Alan |title=The Long Week-End: A social history of Great Britain 1918–1939 |date=1940 |pages=175–176}}</ref> and [[Reefer ship|refrigerated ships]]. Authors in the 1930s such as [[Victoria Ponsonby, Baroness Sysonby|Lady Sysonby]]<ref>See {{cite book |last=Sysonby |first=Ria |title=Lady Sysonby's cookbook |publisher=Putnam |year=1948 |orig-date=1935 |oclc=18086747}}</ref> drew on recipes from a wide range of countries.<ref>{{cite news |last=Slater |first=Nigel |author-link=Nigel Slater |title=Let's Eat Together |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |date=24 May 2015 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/global/2015/may/24/lets-eat-together-cooking-immigration-britain-food}}</ref>

[[File:WWII Food Rationing.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Issuing a family's weekly [[Rationing in the United Kingdom|rations]] of bacon, [[margarine]], butter, sugar, tea, and [[lard]] in 1943]]

[[Rationing in the United Kingdom|Rationing was introduced in 1940]] to cope with the shortages caused by the wartime blockade. Foods such as bananas and chocolate became hard to find, while unfamiliar items such as [[dried egg]], [[Instant mashed potatoes|dried potato]], [[whale meat]],{{sfn|Dickson Wright|2011|pp=417–424}} [[Centropomus|snook]] (a South African fish),<ref>{{cite web |last1=Ann |first1=Antonia |title=Snoek (Snook) |url=http://www.recipespastandpresent.org.uk/wartime/snoek-snook/ |website=Wartime Recipes |access-date=8 August 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180410003403/http://www.recipespastandpresent.org.uk/wartime/snoek-snook/ |archive-date=10 April 2018 |date=7 July 2011 |quote=like Snoek Piquante which seems to have become a kind of shorthand for everything unpalatable about food rationing}}</ref> and the tinned pork product [[Spam (food)|Spam]] appeared in the national diet. Since butter, sugar, eggs and flour were all rationed, English dishes such as pies and cakes became hard to make from traditional recipes. Instead, foods such as carrots were used in many different dishes, their natural sugars providing sweetness in novel dishes like carrot [[fudge]]. The diet was less than enjoyable, but paradoxically, rationing meant that overall the population was healthier than ever before, and perhaps ever since.{{sfn|Dickson Wright|2011|pp=417–424}} The [[Ministry of Food (United Kingdom)|Ministry of Food]] employed home economists such as [[Marguerite Patten]] to demonstrate how to cook economically. After the war, Patten became one of the first television cooks, and sold 17 million copies of her 170 books.<ref name=guardian>{{cite news |last1=Elgot |first1=Jessica |title=Cookery writer Marguerite Patten dies aged 99 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jun/10/cookery-writer-marguerite-patten-dies-aged-99 |access-date=19 April 2017 |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=10 June 2015}}</ref>

[[File:Ratatouille.jpg|thumb|[[Elizabeth David]]'s 1950 ''[[A Book of Mediterranean Food]]'' changed English cooking with dishes such as [[ratatouille]].]]

[[Elizabeth David]] profoundly changed English cooking with her 1950 ''[[A Book of Mediterranean Food]]''.{{sfn|Panayi|2010|pp=191–195}} Written at a time of scarcity, her book began with "perhaps the most evocative and inspirational passage in the history of British cookery writing":{{sfn|Panayi|2010|pp=191–195}}

{{blockquote|The cooking of the Mediterranean shores, endowed with all the natural resources, the colour and flavour of the South, is a blend of tradition and brilliant improvisation. The Latin genius flashes from the kitchen pans. It is honest cooking too; none of the sham Grand Cuisine of the International Palace Hotel<ref>David, Elizabeth (1950). ''[[Book of Mediterranean Food]]''. London: John Lehmann</ref>}}

All five of David's early books remained in print half a century later, and her reputation among cookery writers such as [[Nigel Slater]] and [[Clarissa Dickson Wright]] was of enormous influence. The historian of food [[Panikos Panayi]] suggests that this is because David consciously brought foreign cooking styles into the English kitchen; she did this with fine writing, and with practical experience of living and cooking in the countries which she wrote about. She deliberately destroyed the myths of restaurant cuisine, instead describing the home cooking of Mediterranean countries. Her books paved the way for other cookery writers to use foreign recipes. Post-David [[celebrity chef]]s, often ephemeral, included [[Philip Harben]], [[Fanny Cradock]], [[Graham Kerr]] ("the galloping gourmet"), and [[Robert Carrier (chef)|Robert Carrier]].{{sfn|Panayi|2010|pp=191–195}}<ref>{{cite news |author=Pile, Stephen |title=How TV concocted a recipe for success |url=https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-daily-telegraph/20061016/282063387459485 |work=The Daily Telegraph |date=16 October 2006}}</ref>
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=== Twenty-first century ===
* [[Michel Roux Jr.]] (''Le Gavroche Cookbook'', 2001)
* [[Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall]] (''The River Cottage Cookbook'' 2001)
* [[Antony Worrall Thompson]] (''GI Diet'' 2005)
* [[Heston Blumenthal]] (''The Fat Duck Cookbook'' 2008)
* [[Mary Berry]] (''Baking Bible'' 2009)
* [[Clarissa Dickson Wright]] (''A History of English Food'' 2011)
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