Clash of the cuisines

·         Majority of diners refuse to try vegan or vegetarian alternatives

·         Yorkshire pudding voted UK’s favourite regional dish

·         Over half of Brits don’t know a Cumberland sausage contains sausage

·         Scones: it’s official – jam then cream

Despite the huge rise of vegansism in the UK, vegan substitutes for traditional British dishes are being given the ‘chop’ by many British diners.

Over half (55 per cent) refuse to even try vegan or vegetarian remakes of favourites like Yorkshire pudding, fish and chips, shepherd’s pie, Eton mess and sticky toffee pudding, which suggest the plant-based alternatives, really ‘get their goat’.

Londoners particularly were the most ‘chicken’, refusing to go ‘cold turkey’ on their meat intake, with over two thirds (67 per cent) saying they wouldn’t be prepared to try a vegan or vegetarian twist on traditional favourites.

The research by Privilege Home Insurance found that men were the most open when it came to trying vegan versions, with almost half saying they would give things a try, compared to four in ten women.

These surprising results came as part of a larger study to find the nation’s favourite regional dish.

And never mind Bake Off, it was the humble pudding from Yorkshire that was found to be filing the nation’s stomachs, after coming out on top.

The Yorkshire puds beat off stiff competition from the cream tea (Cornwall/ Devon), Cornish pasty (Cornwall), tikka masala (Glasgow), and the Bakewell tart (Bakewell, Yorkshire), which filled the rest of the top five places respectively.

At the other end of the table, Cornwall’s fishy dish, stargazy pie, was the UK’s least favourite alongside the Bedfordshire clanger, Banbury cake, black peas (Lancashire) and scallop butty (North of England).

London’s jellied eels didn’t fare too well either, along with other seafood dishes including cullen skink (Scotland) and potted shrimps (Lancashire), which were also among the most disliked.

The poll found that despite loving their piece of Yorkshire, only half who put it as their favourite dish actually know how to make a Yorkshire pud.

In fact the ingredients of several regional dishes were a mystery to many, with a third (30 per cent) not knowing cream tea includes scones, four in ten oblivious to the fact that banoffee pie contains bananas, and astonishingly, over half admitting they didn’t know Cumberland sausages contained…well, sausage. 

In the game of scones, which pitted the Cornwall way of eating cream tea (jam then cream) against the Devonshire method (cream then jam), Cornwall came out on top, taking 45 per cent of the vote, compared to Devon’s 15 per cent, settling the century old debate of which filling comes first.

The war of the desserts was won by the traditional Bakewell tart, which stuck it to the sticky toffee pudding, which came in second, followed by Eton mess.

Carried out amongst 2,000 UK adults, the study also found that tikka masala was more popular 463 miles away in Brighton, than in its home town of Glasgow.

Christian Mendes, Head of Privilege Home Insurance, said: “It’s really surprising to see that even though there’s been a rise in the popularity of veganism, so few people are willing or open minded enough to try vegan alternatives.

“Personally, I’ve always preferred jam then cream on my scones! I’m not surprised that the mighty Yorkshire pudding came out on top, it is a fantastic British dish, but I am sad to see that so few of us know how to make it.

“As a British brand we embrace our heritage, and with that, its hundreds of years of evolution and diversity that makes each region so unique. It’s great to see how popular these regional dishes remain – even if we don’t know what’s in them!”

Vegetarian / Vegan Twists on Traditional Dishes We Wouldn’t Try

1     Banana blossom fish and chips (31 per cent)

2=  Tofu tikka masala (28 per cent)

2= Tofu balti (28 per cent)

2= Tofu mince shepherd’s pie (28 per cent)

5    Vegetarian haggis (26 per cent)

6    Vegan sausages (21 per cent)

7=  Mushroom wellington (20 per cent)

7=  Vegan Eton mess (20 per cent)

9=  Vegan sticky toffee pudding (19 per cent)

9=  Vegan Yorkshire pudding (19 per cent)

Top 15 Regional Dishes:

1.      Yorkshire pudding (Yorkshire)

2.      Cream tea (Cornwall/Devon)

3.      Cornish pasty (Cornwall)

4.      Tikka masala (Glasgow)

5.      Bakewell tart (Bakewell, Yorkshire)

6.      Sticky toffee pudding (Lake District)

7.      Eton mess (Eton)

8.      Balti (Birmingham)

9.      Haggis (Scotland)

10.    Porkpie (Leicestershire)

11.     Cumberland sausage (Cumbria)

12.     Lancashire hot pot (Lancashire)

13.     Banoffee pie (East Sussex)

14.     Soda bread (Ireland)

15.     Welsh cakes (Wales)

Top 10 Most Disliked Regional Dishes:

1=  Bedfordshire clanger (Bedfordshire) & Stargazy Pie (Cornwall)

3    Banbury cake (Banbury)

4    Black peas (Lancashire)

5    Scallop butty (North of England)

6    Saveloy dip (Newcastle)

7=  Kendall mint cakes (Lake District) & Laverbread (Wales)

9    Potted shrimps (Lancashire)

10  Parmo (North East England)

11=Jellied eels (London) & Pease Pudding (Northumberland)

13  Cullen skink (Scotland)

14  Scouse (Liverpool)

15  Panackelty (North East England)

ENDS

For more information, please contact: Georgia Andrewes at Richmond & Towers: 

georgia@rtc.london mailto:georgia@rtc.london/ 020 3179 0720

Notes to editors:

Research carried out amongst a nationally representative sample of 2,001 UK adults by Opinium Research between 4^{th and} 7^th January 2018.

Origin of Chicken Tikka Masala: Historians of ethnic food Peter and Colleen Grove discuss various origin-claims of chicken tikka masala, concluding that the dish "was most certainly invented in Britain. They suggest that "the shape of things to come may have been a recipe for Shahi Chicken Masala in Mrs Balbir Singh’s Indian Cookery published in 1961". Another explanation is that it originated in an Indian restaurant in Glasgow, Scotland. This version recounts how a Pakistani chef, Ali Ahmed Aslam, proprietor of the Shish Mahal restaurant in the west end of Glasgow, invented chicken tikka masala by improvising a sauce made from yogurt, cream, and spices. In 2013, his son Asif Ali told the story of its invention in 1971 to the BBC's Hairy Bikers TV cookery programme. It is this latter origin that has been embraced in this research. [Adapted from Wikipedia].

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