British vs Chinese food & cuisine

At home, families focus more on practical balance: making sure the meal isn’t too oily, too salty, or too monotonous in texture or temperature. The full harmony is more typical of banquets, holiday meals and restaurants.

Pies are everywhere. Pub menus still feature steak and kidney, rich beef and gravy in pastry. The Cornish pasty was once a miner’s packed lunch, filled with beef, potato, swede, and onion. Sweet pies like apple with custard or sticky treacle tart are classics. Pork pies are eaten cold with jellied stock. But Shepherd’s pie (lamb), cottage pie (beef),  and fish pie, though called ‘pies’, still swap pastry for mashed potato topping.

In the south, rice takes many forms. Long-grain varieties stay fluffy, medium grains are softer, and glutinous rice becomes sticky when cooked, despite containing no gluten. Beyond steamed rice, it appears as congee, noodles, sheets, cakes, and pastries. Fermented or ground, rice yields snacks, steamed cakes, and delicate dumpling skins.

In the north, wheat replaces rice but isn’t baked into crusty loaves. It’s transformed into steamed buns, dumplings, and noodles – hearty dishes suited to the colder climate.

Chinese cuisine transforms starches like wheat, mung beans, peas, potatoes, and sweet potatoes into entirely new textures rather than just flour. These are turned into glass noodles, liangfen (a cool jelly-like dish), and chewy wheat sheets for stir-fries or salads. The goal is to create smooth, slippery, or elastic sensations.

Grains also become fermented seasonings. Black Shanxi vinegar, dark and umami-rich, is made from sorghum, barley, or rice and used for dipping dumplings. Huangjiu, or yellow rice wine, made from rice or millet, serves as both a drink and a cooking ingredient, adding sweetness and aroma to dishes like drunken chicken and red-braised meats.

The British love preparing their root veggies with a two-stage method: parboiling followed by high-heat roasting.  Honey glazing is another practice; it involves adding honey only in the final 8-10 minutes of cooking to achieve caramelization without burning. Later, it was often combined with thyme or sage.

Green peas, or mushy peas, are a British classic, both nostalgic and practical,  loved for their comfort-food appeal and mild sweetness.

Cutting is deliberate and precise. Thin ginger or scallion slices flavor oil quickly; diagonal cuts keep stems crunchy; crosswise cuts help lotus root stay crisp. Using different parts of one vegetable: leaves, stems, roots, adds variety without extra ingredients.

Aromatics like leeks, scallions, garlic chives, and Chinese celery are treated as vegetables, not just seasonings. Clear soups showcase napa cabbage and winter melon, while hot pots highlight mushrooms, greens, and tubers.

Soy stands as a major pillar. China pioneered soy cultivation, using it fresh, dried, fermented, and curdled. No other cuisine has integrated it as deeply.

China also led in mushroom cultivation, with shiitake recorded over 800 years ago, followed by wood ear, enoki, oyster, and straw mushrooms. Valued for texture and umami, dried mushrooms enrich soups and braises with their soaking broth.

Potatoes, common in the north and west, appear in light, tangy stir-fries or soy-braised stews — never creamy or heavy. Their starch is also used to make noodles.

The Sunday roast traditions are Britain’s weekly meat celebration. Most families choose between lamb with mint sauce, roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and gravy, or pork with crackling and apple sauce.

For weekday comfort, bangers and mash is quintessentially British. Brits eat more sausages per capita than Germans, despite Germany’s reputation for sausage-making.

Another British institution, served as a weekend treat, is the full English breakfast, featuring bacon, eggs, sausages, black pudding, baked beans, grilled tomatoes, and mushrooms.

Families simply add more meat to familiar dishes – larger portions, richer versions, or more dishes per meal – without changing the vegetable and grain foundation.

Pork is the everyday staple, chicken provides light broths and weekday meals, and duck carries festive importance. Beef, lamb, and offal hold regional significance. China was among the first to domesticate pigs, which became symbols of prosperity and family. They thrived in traditional farms, feeding on crop byproducts and kitchen waste.

Iconic meat dishes include Peking duck with sweet bean sauce, Hong Shao Rou (soy-braised pork belly), Sichuan Twice-Cooked Pork, Dongpo Pork from Hangzhou, spicy Kung Pao Chicken, and Cantonese Char Siu glazed with honey and soy.

Cod is the fish of choice in the famous fish and chips dish, and haddock is the second most popular white fish and the most popular fish for smoking, commonly dyed bright yellow.

Mollusks are eaten widely, from street stalls to banquets, placing China among the world’s top consumers. Seafood is often cooked alive or freshly killed using quick methods and light sauces — soy, ginger, scallion, Shaoxing wine, or a hint of vinegar. Regional favorites include drunken shrimp in rice wine, salt-and-pepper squid, crab with ginger and scallion, and abalone braised in oyster sauce.

Back on the British preferences: red Leicester claims second place with 20% popularity, followed by mozzarella at 18%, then halloumi and brie tied at 15% each. This ranking shows how traditional British cheeses hold their ground against international favourites.

Scotch egg is a classic pub snack: a hard-boiled egg wrapped in seasoned sausage meat, coated in breadcrumbs, and deep-fried. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with Scotland. It’s so quintessentially British that it’s become a symbol of traditional pub food.

British pubs have a unique tradition of serving pickled eggs as bar snacks, often sitting in large jars behind the bar for months. These vinegary eggs are salty, and they do increase beer sales – a brilliant bit of British business psychology disguised as food.

Milk and dairy are rare since most Chinese were historically lactose intolerant. Dairy traditions exist mainly in Inner Mongolia and Tibet, with yogurt, butter tea, and curds. In Han cuisine, dairy appears mostly in modern desserts, milk breads, and Hong Kong–style milk tea.

Instead of dairy, Chinese cuisine turns to soy milk and tofu for creamy textures and protein.

Fruit-based desserts are very popular, especially crumbles and pies like treacle tart, Bakewell tart, and banoffee pie. Eton mess – a delightful chaos of strawberries, meringue, and cream – is another favorite.

What Brits really love is the combination of rich, warming flavors with creamy accompaniments. Almost everything comes with custard, cream, or both. There’s also a nostalgic element – many of these desserts evoke childhood memories and family traditions.

Nuts aren’t used extensively in traditional British cuisine compared to many other cuisines.

Chinese desserts are light, subtly sweet, and texture-focused. Ingredients like rice flour, beans, sesame, nuts, and fruit replace dairy and heavy cream. Sweetness comes from red bean paste, lotus seeds, or glutinous rice rather than refined sugar.