England

English food has traditionally been based on beef, lamb, pork, chicken and fish and generally served with potatoes and one other vegetable. The most common and typical foods eaten in England include the sandwich, fish and chips, pies like the cornish pasty, trifle and roasts dinners. Some of the main dishes have strange names like Bubble & Squeak, Spotted Dick and Toad-in-the-Hole.

What may appear strange to our overseas visitors is that not all our puddings are sweet puddings; some are eaten during the starter or main course like Yorkshire Pudding and Black Pudding.

The staple foods of England are meat, fish, potatoes, flour, butter and eggs. Many of the dishes are based on these foods.

AFTERNOON TEA (The traditional 4 o'clock tea)

This is a small meal, not a drink. Traditionally it consists of Tea (or coffee) served with either of the following:

- Freshly baked scones served with cream and jam (Known as a cream tea)

- Afternoon tea sandwiches often thinly sliced cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

- Assorted pastries

Now most ordinary British families do not have time for afternoon tea at home, but in the past it was a tradition. It became popular about one hundred and fifty years ago, when rich ladies invited their friends to their houses for an afternoon cup of tea. They started offering their visitors sandwiches and cakes too. Soon everyone was enjoying Afternoon tea.

HIGH TEA (The traditional 6 o'clock tea)

The British working population did not have afternoon tea. They had a meal about midday, and a meal after work, between five and seven o'clock. This meal was called 'high tea' or just 'tea'.

Traditionally eaten early evening, High tea was a substantial meal that combined delicious sweet foods, such as scones, cakes, buns or tea breads, with tempting savouries, such as cheese on toast, toasted crumpets, cold meats and pickles or poached eggs on toast. This meal is now often replaced with a supper due to people eating their main meal in the evenings rather than at midday.

History

The earliest record of human activity in England dates back to over 500,000 years ago, although the repeated ice ages made much of Britain uninhabitable for extended periods until as recently as 20,000 years ago. Stone Age hunter-gatherers eventually gave way to farmers and permanent settlements, with advanced megalithic cultures arising in western England some 4,000 years ago. It was replaced around 1,500 years later by Celtic tribes migrating from continental Western Europe, mainly from France. These tribes were known collectively as "Britons"--a name bestowed by Phoenician traders and an indication of how, even at this early date, the island was part of a Europe-wide trading network.

The Britons were significant players in continental affairs and supported their allies in Gaul militarily during the Gallic Wars with the Roman Republic. This prompted the Romans to invade and subdue the island, first with Julius Caesar's raid in 55 BCE, and then the Emperor Claudius's conquest in the following century. The whole southern part of the island --roughly corresponding to modern day England and Wales--became a prosperous part of the Roman Empire. It was finally abandoned early in the 5th century when a weakening Empire pulled back its legions to defend borders on the Continent.

Unaided by the Roman army, Roman Britannia could not long resist the Germanic tribes who arrived in the 5th and 6th centuries, enveloping the majority of modern-day England in a new culture and language and pushing Romano-British rule back into modern-day Wales and western extremities of England, including Cornwall and Cumbria. Others emigrated across the channel to modern-day Brittany, thus giving it its name and the Breton language. But many of the Romano-British remained in and were assimilated into the newly English areas.

The invaders fell into three main groups: the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. Gradually, recognisable states formed and began to merge with one another, the most well-known state of affairs being the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. From time to time throughout this period, one Anglo-Saxon king, recognised as the "Bretwalda" by other rulers, had effective control of all or most of the English; so it is impossible to identify the precise moment when the Kingdom of England was unified. In some sense, real unity came as a response to the Danish Viking incursions which occupied the eastern half of England in the 8th century. Egbert, King of Wessex (d. 839) is often regarded as the first king of all the English, although the title "King of England" was first adopted two generations later by Alfred the Great (ruled 871-899).

The principal legacy left behind in those territories from which the languages of the Britons were displaced is that of toponyms. Many of the place names in England