Romano-British agriculture, highly fertile soils and advanced animal breeding produced a wide variety of very high quality foodstuffs for indigenous Romano-British people. Anglo-Saxon England developed meat and savory herb stewing techniques and the Norman conquestreintroduced exotic spices and continental influences back into Great Britain in the Middle Ages as maritime Britain became a major player in the transcontinental spice trade for many centuries after. Following the Protestant Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries “plain and robust” food remained the mainstay of the British diet, reflecting tastes which are still shared with neighbouring north European countries and traditional North American Cuisine. In the 18th and 19th centuries, as the Colonial British Empire began to be influenced by India’s elaborate food tradition of “strong, penetrating spices and herbs”, the United Kingdom developed a worldwide reputation for the quality of British beef and pedigree bulls were exported to form the bloodline of major modern beef herds in the New World. Developments in plant breeding produced a multiplicity of fruit and vegetable varieties, with British disease-resistant rootstocks still used globally for fruits such as apples.
During the World Wars of the 20th century difficulties of food supply were countered by official measures, which included rationing. The problem was worse in WWII, and the Ministry of Food was established to address the problems. Due to the economic problems following the war, rationing continued for some years, and in some aspects was more strict than during wartime. Rationing was not fully lifted until almost a decade after war ended in Europe, so that a whole generation was raised without access to many previously common ingredients. These policies, put in place by the British government during wartime periods of the 20th century, are often blamed for the decline of British cuisine in the 20th century.
In common with many advanced economies, rapid urbanisation and the early industrialisation of food production as well as female emancipation have resulted in a highly modern consumer society with reduced connection to the rural environment and adherence to traditional household roles. Consequently, food security has increasingly become a major popular concern. Concerns over the quality and nutritional value of industrialised food production led to the creation of the Soil Association in 1946. Its principles of organic farming are now widely promoted and accepted as an essential element of contemporary food culture by many sections of the UK population, and animal welfare in farming is amongst the most advanced in the world. The last half of the 20th century saw an increase in the availability of a greater range of good quality fresh products and greater willingness by many sections of the British population to vary their diets and select dishes from other cultures such as those of Italy and India.
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It is not generally a nostalgic movement, although efforts have been made to re-introduce pre-20th-century recipes. Ingredients not native to the islands, particularly herbs and spices, are frequently added to traditional dishes.
Much of Modern British cooking also draws heavily on influences from Mediterranean cuisines, and more recently, Middle Eastern, South Asian, East Asian and Southeast Asian cuisines. The traditional influence of northern and central European cuisines is significant but fading.
The mid-20th-century British style of cooking emerged as a response to the depressing food rationing that persisted for several years after the Second World War, along with restrictions on foreign currency exchange, making travel difficult. A hunger for exotic cooking was satisfied by writers such as Elizabeth David, who from 1950 produced evocative books whose recipes (mostly French and Mediterranean) were then often impossible to produce in Britain, where even olive oil could only normally be found in dispensing chemists rather than food stores. By the 1960’s foreign holidays, and foreign-style restaurants in Britain, further widened the popularity of foreign cuisine. Recent Modern British cuisine has been very much influenced and popularised by TV chefs, all also writing books, such as Fanny Cradock, Clement Freud, Robert Carrier, Robert Irvine, Keith Floyd, Gary Rhodes, Delia Smith, Gordon Ramsay, Ainsley Harriott, Nigella Lawson, Simon Hopkinson, Nigel Slater and Jamie Oliver, alongside The Food Programme, made by BBC Radio 4.