The Most British Dessert

 

National dishes are a really hard thing to nail down in many countries. As a Canadian it seems that one of our national pastimes/arguments is to try and figure out what our national dish might be. Then you can get into the details of food when it comes to nationalities and try to figure out what a countries national dinner, breakfast, lunch or even dessert might be. I assure you that there are countries that look into it with that much detail, and people who are strong and proud of their national lunch.

Since this is a site dedicated to sweets and treats, I always try and figure out what a particular countries national candy or national dessert might be. Maybe I should be a little more politically correct and say that it’s their most (insert the name of a country) dessert or candy. On a recent trip to the UK, I think I might have figured out what is the most British dessert. I’ll be honest, I didn’t look into the history of this dessert, I simply thought about all of the times I’ve visited this part of the world and what I’ve found that is unique, always around, and who’s flavours really seem to represent the types of desserts they have at most places. This dessert has the added bonus of having a name that seems to suit the British English. I’m talking about sticky toffee pudding.

In all my travels I don’t think I’ve travelled anywhere else in the world that really celebrates sticky toffee pudding like the Brits. It’s not a special dessert by any stretch of the imagination, it’s an everywhere dessert. One could picture British royalty enjoying this dessert, but you can also find it in all of the pubs all over the country. From fine dinning restaurants to people’s kitchens, this is truly a dish that’s all over the UK.

The flavours of the dessert are also very in tune with the flavours of the UK as well. First of all it’s very sweet, and I’ll go on record to say that I find the British palette to be sweeter, rather than savoury. There’s also often raisins or dried fruit found in sticky toffee pudding. While dried fruit is not exclusively a British thing, it is very common in many of the cakes and desserts. The fact that there’s a cream added to this dessert is also a very British thing. It can be a warm cream or an ice cream, often vanilla, and a great accompaniment to this dessert.

Finally the name “sticky toffee pudding”, just sounds so English. More specifically it sounds like the English one speaks if you’re from the UK. While we might all use any or all of these words in other English speaking countries, the combination sounds very British.

Probably the most important reason that this could be the UK’s national dish is that no one on earth does it better. I’ve probably had dozens of sticky toffee puddings in my life, from finest to the restaurants to the local pubs and even from the grocery stores, and all of them taste great. There are some that are better than others, but I’ve had a hard time finding one I didn’t like in the UK.