A short listening exercise for the TEFL classroom about British food.
British food doesn’t have a very good reputation, but fish and chips and a good cup of English tea are two things you should try if you are ever in Britain.
Fish & chips
Fish and chips became a _______________ meal for working class people in Britain because of the advances in trawl fishing in the North Sea and the development of the railway network in the middle of the 19th century. According to the Oxford English Dictionary the first ________ of the word ‘chips’ to mean fried potatoes appeared in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, which was published in 1859..
Tea
Every day in Britain approximately 165 million cups of tea are ___________, but in fact the British were one of the last countries in Europe to try tea. It first arrived in Britain in 1662 when Charles II ___________ the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza, who brought her favourite drink to the English court. At that time tea came from China, and one of the first places in Britain to sell it was Garraway’s coffeehouse in 1667. Tea drinking ___________ became more popular over the next century, and in the 19th century tea began to be grown in India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
These are two other traditional dishes from different parts of Britain, but ones you might not be so keen to try.
Jellied eels
Jellied eels are a traditional English ___________ that originated in the 18th century, primarily in the East End of London. The dish consists of chopped eels boiled in a mixture of water, vinegar and spices. The eel was a ___________, nutritious and readily available food source for the people of London, particularly the poor. The cooking process releases proteins from the fish into the water, and when it cools it forms a jelly. It can be eaten hot or cold.
Haggis
Haggis is a traditional ______________ dish containing sheep’s heart, liver and lungs, minced with onion, oatmeal, suet and spices. It is then ___________ in the sheep’s stomach, although most modern commercial haggis is prepared in a casing rather than an actual stomach. It was a popular dish for the ___________, because it was made from left over parts of the sheep and was cheap but nourishing.
source
