British gastronomy (yes, it DOES exist!!)

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"It was in the 19th century that the Great British breakfast began to come into its own," says Simon Majumdar, author of Eating for Britain: a Journey into the Heart (and Belly) of the Nation. Victorian cook Isabella Beeton wrote of a whole range of dishes which could be cooked for breakfast, from bacon and eggs to mutton chops, sheep's kidneys and potted fish. The fried breakfast we know today was popularised by the rise of tourism around Britain from the 1960s onwards, when it became the standard breakfast offered by B&Bs.

The meal is one of few dishes which can be found in every corner of Britain, but there are some regional variations. After sampling over 100 different fry-ups on a year-long trip round Britain to research his book, Majumdar decided the best is the Ulster fry-up, which boasts "the added glories of soda bread and potato cakes".

Britain has long had an obsession with tea and biscuits. Majumdar says the beverage first became popular among the upper classes in the 17th century when it was the favourite drink of Charles II's Portuguese wife, Catherine of Braganza. It did not become popular with the working man until the 19th century, when tea began to be produced in places other than China, and the price of it dropped.

Although cake-like biscuits existed in the Middle Ages, and hard, dry biscuits were commonly eaten by British sailors, the biscuit as we know it today dates from the 19th century, when equipment capable of mass production was developed. By 1903, Huntley & Palmer's alone were offering 400 varieties.

One of Yorkshire's most famous sweet treats is parkin, a dense cake made of treacle, oats and ginger. It is believed to date from the 19th century, when ginger and treacle, produced by slave labour in the Caribbean, were shipped into west coast ports like Liverpool, then transferred to east coast ports for export to Europe. The name is apparently an old diminutive of the name "Peter".

"Few dishes can be more associated with a place than the simple, savoury and delicious combination of slow-cooked meat and potatoes that is the Lancashire hot pot," says Majumdar. Because the dish, which dates back hundreds of years, includes once-expensive ingredients such as lamb, it is sometimes claimed that it was mainly eaten by the wealthy. Majumdar believes however that it was also favoured by working-class families who slaved for long hours in mills, factories and mines, as they could leave the meal to cook while they were out.

Fish and chips is probably Britain's most famous meal. Like many great British foods, it owes its existence to immigration. Jewish refugees from Portugal and Spain brought over the tradition of frying fish in a thin layer of flour, while Huguenot immigrants were responsible for popularising potatoes fried in fat.

During the Second World War, fish and chips was one of the few things never rationed, "so worried was Churchill's government about the impact it would have on the nation's morale".

Roast beef has long been part of British culinary tradition: in the 18th century, Henry Fielding praised it as an "Englishman's food", which "ennobled our brains and enriched our blood". The Sunday lunch probably originates from the hearty meal of meat and potatoes which landowners would reward their labourers with on a Sunday after church; when families started cooking their own Sunday lunches, they would often use the remains as a basis for meals for the next week.

Pie and mash, and its close friend, the jellied or stewed eel, dates back to 17th century London, when street sellers would plie the public with pies filled with hot eels taken from the Thames. By the 1874, there were more than 30 pie and mash shops in the capital. Most pies were by that point filled with meat, but the accompanying "liquor" was made of a mixture of water used to cook eels, and parsley.

Such pie and mash shops are now sadly on the wane: you could find over 80 in London in 1995, but the number is now far smaller.

"The balti," says Majumdar, "is a uniquely British dish". It is said to have originated in Birmingham, when restaurant owners looking to create a slightly healthier curry than those usually favoured by their customers invented a one-pot dish using basic ingredients and spices. The name is believed to come from the way it is cooked; it means "bucket" in Punjabi.

The Cornish pasty is one of Britain's oldest snacks. Until the 14th century, the pastry case was intended only to protect the contents inside, and would not have been eaten: it was when chefs from Italy able to make edible pastry arrived in Britain that the pasty as we know it today developed. It's said that miners used to hold onto - and later throw away - the crimped edge, to avoid covering their food with dirt.

The Melton Mowbray pork pie, named after the town of Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, rose to popularity in the 19th century among fox-hunters, as "its hard pastry case and jellied filling ensured that it would survive the rigours of being carried during a long day's hunt". The pies contain only six ingredients - pork, flour, lard, salt, pepper and hot water - and since 2008 have had what the EU calls "protected geographical status", meaning only pies from this area can carry the Melton Mowbray name.

Trifle takes its name from the French word trufle, which means a whimsy or deceit, and has its roots in 16th century desserts such as the syllabub or fool. Majumdar says the earliest recipe he can find for it is in a 1585 cookery book called The Good Huswifes Jewell, which describes a concoction of thickened cream, sugar, ginger and rosewater. Later on, custard (which dates back as far as the Romans) was added, while King Charles I's cook, Joseph Cooper, recorded the addition of bread soaked in "sack" wine, or sherry.

Records of steamed puddings stretch back to the 1600s, but it was between the mid-19th century and the early years of the 20th century that steak and kidney pudding was most popular. "The... benefit was that once the pudding was wrapped in its pudding cloth or covered basin and set to steam, it could be left for a number of hours, allowing the cook to attend to other chores," says Majumdar. He links the decline in its popularity to the Second World War, when many women began working, and no longer had time to make such a long-winded dish.

Crabs caught off the seaside town of Cromer, Norfolk are smaller than most crabs available around Britain, and are notable for both their sweetness and for their abundance of white meat compared to dark. The number of fishermen in Cromer has decreased in recent years, but around 12 ships still head out every day to catch what they can.

Clotted cream is yet another famous British food which we probably owe to foreign visitors. Phoenican merchants in the first century BC may have traded the method for making it to Cornish locals in return for tin. It is, says Majumdar, a cream found in very few places in the world - though he has seen it in both Mongolia and Lebanon. Apparently, Queen Elizabeth, the late Queen Mother, had a half-pound tub delivered every week.