From music to film, art and food, it’s fair to say Britain’s cultural influence on the world is truly universal.
In fact, in the past 1,000 years, this little island lays claim to numerous dishes that have been exported around the world.
Now, MailOnline’s new interactive map reveals the birthplace of 40 famous British delicacies, from the Scotch egg to haggis, banoffee pie and the chocolate bar.
Also included is triple cooked chips, a recipe that chef Heston Blumenthal devised at The Fat Duck restaurant in Bray, Berkshire in 1995.
There’s also Marmite, invented by accident by German scientist Justus Liebig in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, after discovering that leftover brewers’ yeast could be concentrated and consumed.
And who can overlook the humble Gypsy tart, created on Kent’s Isle of Sheppey 100 years ago or more.
Legend has it that a woman on the Isle of Sheppey took pity on some impoverished children and invented a tart using whatever ingredients she could find.
MailOnline also takes a closer look at nine of these 40 cultural wonders, including the Cornish pasty and its very controversial history.
A gypsy tart is a type of tart made with evaporated milk, sugar and pastry. Legend has it that a woman on the Isle of Sheppey took pity on some impoverished children and invented a tart using whatever ingredients she could find
HAGGIS
It’s Scotland’s national dish, famously immortalized by legendary poet Robert Burns as ‘great chieftain o’ the pudding-race’ in 1786.
But the origin of haggis – made of offal, oats and spices and famously served with ‘neeps’ (turnips) and ‘tatties’ (potatoes) – appears to be English.
The first recorded recipes using the name ‘hagws’ or ‘hagese’ come from English cookbooks in the 15th century.
No mention of haggis appears in any ‘identifiably Scottish text’ until 1513, when it briefly appears in a verse by William Dunbar, a Scottish poet and priest at the court of James IV.
But this is nearly 100 years after the earliest recording of a haggis recipe, in an English cookery book called ‘Liber Cure Cocorum’ dating from around the year 1430 and originating in Lancashire.
It’s widely considered a Scottish creation and is frequently described as the country’s national dish. But could haggis actually be English?
‘What many people don’t know is that Scotland’s national dish was invented by their auldest of enemies: the English,’ said Scottish writer Emma Irving in a controversial article for The Economist.
According to Professor Rebecca Earle, a food historian at the University of Warwick, historical versions of haggis may have existed in England and Scotland in different forms.
‘Lots of cultures have versions of a sausage-like thing comprising meat offcuts and some sort of grain,’ she told MailOnline.
‘The specificities of that combination of grain and meat – oats, rice, wheat, lambs’ lungs, pig’s blood – is what makes each dish distinctive, but all are part of a broader category of food shared by many people.’
CHICKEN TIKKA MASALA
A legion of British curry fans will chow down on chicken tikka masala every Friday night without knowing it’s not authentically Indian at all.
In fact, the dish – consisting of marinated chicken cooked in a tandoor oven and served in a creamy tomato sauce – was created by British Asian cooks in Britain in the 1970s.
Pakistani-Scottish chef Ali Ahmed Aslam is widely credited as the first one to make it, at his renowned Shish Mahal restaurant in Glasgow.
Legend has it that it was in Mr Ali’s Glasgow restaurant that Britain’s favourite curry dish chicken tikka masala was created
As the oft-repeated legend goes, a customer complained to Mr Ali about his chicken tikka dish being too dry.
This prompted Mr Ali to hastily mix in a tin of condensed soup and spices to create what has now become a curry house favourite.
Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook proclaimed it as ‘a true British national dish’, although some still claim it has its origins in India’s Punjab region.
ARCTIC ROLL
Still a mainstay of school dinners and dinner parties alike is the Arctic roll – a slice of vanilla ice cream wrapped in a thin layer of sponge cake, separated by jam.
Arctic roll was invented in the 1950s by Ernest Velden, an immigrant from then Czechoslovakia who fled the Nazis during the Second World War.
Mr Velden set up a factory in Eastbourne producing Arctic Roll, which was later bought by Birds Eye and manufactured on a national scale in the 1970s.
In the late 1990s, the company stopped manufacturing Arctic Roll after sales of the product dropped by 50 per cent.
In the late 90s, the company – then Birds Eye Walls – ceased manufacturing Arctic Roll after sales of the product dropped
But it was revived in 2008 due to ‘overwhelming consumer demand’ as families looked for low-cost foods after the global economic crisis.
Although widely loved as a nostalgic and easy-to-prepare comfort food, Arctic roll has long drawn criticism.
Food writer Nigel Slater described it as tasting of ‘frozen carpet’, food critic called it ‘naff’ and radio presenter Jane Garvey branded it a ‘low-level pudding’.
PRAWN COCKTAIL
Another old-school dinner-party classic is the prawn cocktail – cooked prawns served in a glass with lettuce, lemon and Marie Rose sauce (which despite the posh name is simply ketchup and mayonnaise mixed together).
TV chef Fanny Cradock is said to have invented it in the 1960s by reinterpreting American shrimp and oyster cocktails, made with cocktail sauce and garnished with dill.
While the American cocktail sauce has ketchup, horseradish, vinegar and Worcestershire sauce, Craddock is credited with replacing vinegar with lemon juice and mixing in mayonnaise too, while opting for prawns as the preferred crustacean.
Cradock filmed her cookery show in the kitchen of the Dower House, Hertfordshire, which may be the closest we get to identifying a spiritual home for this dish.
Prawn cocktail is simply cooked prawns served in a glass with lettuce, lemon and Marie Rose sauce (which despite the posh name is ketchup and mayonnaise mixed together)
However, an early reference to prawn cocktail on TV was made in 1962 by Coronation Street character Annie Walker.
This suggests there may have been British public awareness of prawn cocktail prior to Cradock, who may have only popularized it.
BAKEWELL PUDDING
Today, few people remember the Bakewell pudding, which harks back to the Derbyshire town of Bakewell in the 19th century.
Consisting of a flaky puff pastry base, jam and an almond custard filling, Bakewell pudding precedes the now more popular Bakewell tart.
As legend goes, Bakewell pudding was first made by accident in 1820 by one Mrs Greaves, who was the landlady of the White Horse Inn in the town.
Mrs Greaves supposedly left a recipe for her cook to make a jam tart, but the cook botched the instructions, creating an egg custard resembling a pudding.
Bakewell pudding inspired – and has largely been replaced by – Bakewell tart, which has spawned legions of cheap imitations.
Consisting of a flaky puff pastry base, jam and an almond custard filling, Bakewell pudding (pictured) precedes the now more popular Bakewell tart
Pictured, a modern-day shop in Bakewell selling Bakewell pudding (towards the bottom of the window display)
Bakewell pudding uses puff rather than shortcrust pastry, tends to be served warm, and has a softer and luxurious egg custard filling.
BROWN SAUCE
HP sauce is the UK’s most popular brown sauce – a style of condiment typically containing molasses, vinegar, tomatoes, dates and spices.
But the original brown sauce – simply called A1 – pre-dates HP by 60 years.
A1 sauce was invented in 1824 by Henderson William Brand, a chef to King George IV, Vauxhall, London.
It hit British shelves in 1831, marketed as a condiment for ‘fish, meat, fowl and game’ dishes.
Meanwhile, HP sauce didn’t get invented until 1884, in Nottingham.
Confusingly, A1 sauce is no longer sold in the UK but is found all over North America, where it’s popular with home barbequers and steak lovers.
A1 – a British creation – is the original brown sauce, dating back to 1831. But sadly it’s no longer available on the UK high street
SCOTCH EGG
Despite the name, the Scotch egg – a boiled egg wrapped in seasoned sausage meat and breadcrumbs – is not Scottish at all.
While we know the Scotch egg is English, where exactly it came from is still a hotly contested matter.
The most popular claim is it was devised up in Whitby, Yorkshire in the 19th century, but originally used fish paste before switching to sausage meat.
But the name in those days was ‘Scotties,’ allegedly because they were made at an eatery by the name of William J Scott & Sons close to the seafront.
Fortnums & Mason – the London department store founded in 1707 – claims to have invented the scotch egg in 1738, although it doesn’t offer documentary proof.
‘The first and the best, we created the Scotch Egg in 1738 as a meal for travellers heading west from Piccadilly,’ Fortnums & Mason says.
‘At the time, we referred to it as a “scotched” egg because of anchovies added to the meat to give it a stronger flavour, and to cut through the fattiness of the meat.’
It’s fair to say the Scotch egg has had a recent period of cultural renaissance, with high-end versions boasting quality sausage meat and fancy egg varieties with luxurious soft yolks
CORNISH PASTY
Much like surfing and picturesque coastlines, the pasty – meat and vegetables baked in a pillow of pastry – is synonymous with Cornwall.
But unfortunately for the Cornish tourist board, there’s a real lack of recorded evidence to pinpoint the pasty to Britain’s southernmost county.
The earliest known reference to pasties is a 13th-century charter granted by King John of England (in 1208) to the town of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk.
The record says that every year the town is bound to send to the sheriffs of Norwich ‘one hundred herrings, baked in twenty four pasties’.
There’s also a mention by 13th-century chronicler Matthew Paris, who wrote of the monks of St Albans Abbey living ‘upon pasties of flesh-meat’.
Dr Todd Gray, chairman of the Friends of Devon’s Archives, ruffled Cornish feathers about 20 years ago by saying rival Devon invented the pasty.
He said pasties ‘originated in Devon and spread to Cornwall later’ after finding a Devon pasty reference from the 16th century – about 200 years after the first Cornish one (1746).
Pictured, Cornish pasties on sale at a Mines A Pasty shop in Lymington – but are they really authentically Cornish?
Banoffee pie consists of a buttery crust filled with a thick caramel sauce or dulce de leche, topped with sliced bananas and whipped cream
While Dr Gray might have been correct about its lack of Cornish identity, the historical records show it in fact originated much farther east.
BANOFFEE PIE
The audaciously indulgent addition of banana to toffee and whipped cream means banoffee pie is commonly mistaken for an American dish.
But it fact it was created in England, and relatively recently too.
It was devised in 1971 by Nigel Mackenzie and Ian Dowding, the owner and head chef respectively of the former Hungry Monk Restaurant in Jevington, East Sussex.
The duo claimed to have been inspired by the San Francisco dessert Blum’s Coffee Toffee Pie, which the chef had had trouble perfecting.
The toffee was made by boiling sugar, butter and cream together, but sometimes it ‘didn’t set at all’ and other times ‘dried like concrete’, Dowding later said.
He decided to make the toffee sauce instead by boiling cans of condensed milk unopened in water for several hours to make dulce de leche, and then tried the addition of several fruits before settling on bananas.
Dowding added: ‘We tried some different variations, Apple was quite good, mandarin oranges were downright disgusting.
‘Nigel suggested bananas and straight away we knew we had got it right.
‘It’s not as if we’d discovered the double helix or cold fusion, but it has been a phenomenon that a simple pudding has become world famous.’