The ultimate comfort food

‘You are what you eat.’ The old phrase always reminds me of Denzil, John Sparkes’s character in the comedy sketch show Absolutely, who quotes it to his girlfriend and then adds: ‘And you have obviously eaten something very stupid.’ Pete Brown, on the other hand, has taken it as the theme of his book about British food. By examining nine classic ‘dishes’ — fish and chips, the full English, cream tea, crumble and custard, pie and peas, a cheese sandwich, spag bol, curry and the Sunday roast — he builds a picture not just of the grub itself but of the people who put themselves outside it.

It says something about the British, for instance, that cheddar sells more by volume in this country than all other cheeses put together. To sample a sandwich of the stuff, Brown heads to the Kent town whose earl gave the bread-based snack its name.