National english meals

Early Days of English Cuisine
In the Middle Ages, English food closely resembled the food that was eaten in other European kingdoms. Overall, the food was very simple because the global spice trade had yet to get started. Most people ate whatever meat they could catch, such as local birds as well as vegetables and (occasionally) fruit, which were pickled and salted for preservation. Exotic fruits were hard to come by and enjoyed mostly by the royalty and aristocracy.
In the later middle ages, spices became more common but they were expensive and had to be imported, and therefore were only accessible to the wealthy, who used them to season fresh-hunted meat and fish. Many people in the Middle Ages, specifically the rich, stayed away from fruits and vegetables as these foods were associated with causing illness. At this stage, cane sugar did not exist in the diet of English people.
The Tudor and Elizabethan Period
At the beginning of the Tudor period, much of the vegetables available were cabbages and onions. Peasants still stuck to the types of meat they could gather, such as blackbirds, pheasants, hens, and ducks, while the wealthy ate more expensive meat such as venison, swan, geese, and boar.
However, as European nations began ocean exploration, new foods were introduced from the Americas like tomatoes, potatoes, spices, peppers, and game. These items gradually made their way into the mainstream English diet. It cannot be overstated how dramatically the diet of the English changed once its explorers began colonizing the new world. Can you imagine a Sunday Roast without potatoes? Sugar cane was also discovered and began to be cultivated in England’s colonies in the Caribbean (which drove the early slave trade). Sugar became part of the English diet. Tooth decay became a real problem in this time period as the over-consumption of sugar began to rot the mouths of the English (perhaps the beginning of the mostly untrue stereotype that the English have bad teeth).
Georgian Cuisine
The Georgian era - which ran from George I in 1660 all the way to George VI in 1830 - was a golden age for English expansion around the world. It saw the rise of the North American empire, then its loss in the American Revolution. It saw wars with the French and in India. But it also drastically changed English food.
This era saw the birth of common English dishes such as roasts - like roast beef. Georgian diet was very rich with butter, cream and eggs - along with meat, that could now be transported quickly via developed transportation routes. Storage was also improved with the Georgians developing ice houses to store food longer before being eaten. Sugar was now a common, everyday addition to food. This field the Caribbean slave trade and many of Britain’s iconic stately homes can trace their wealth back to slavery.
Spices were very popular in the Georgian era as their variety and type could be sourced from all over the expanding British empires. Stuff like nutmeg, cardamom, cloves, and peppers became very popular in everyday cooking.