The Sunday roast is the most important meal in the British week. It is eaten at lunchtime rather than in the evening, it takes most of the morning to cook, and it is the one occasion when families who otherwise eat separately sit down together.
What is on the plate
The meat
Roast beef is the classic — the meal is old enough that the French nickname for the English, les rosbifs, dates from the 18th century. Chicken is now the most common in practice, with lamb and pork close behind. Each brings its own accompaniment: horseradish with beef, mint sauce with lamb, apple sauce and crackling with pork, and bread sauce with chicken.
Roast potatoes
The most important item, and the one that separates a good roast from a mediocre one. They are parboiled, roughed up, and roasted in very hot fat — goose fat, beef dripping or oil — until the outsides are deeply crisp and the insides are fluffy. Anyone can roast a chicken; the potatoes are where the reputation is made.
Yorkshire pudding
A batter pudding baked in very hot fat until it puffs up hollow and crisp. Traditionally served with beef, it now appears alongside everything. In Yorkshire it was historically served first, on its own with gravy, to take the edge off appetites before the expensive meat arrived.
Vegetables and gravy
Carrots, peas, cabbage, broccoli, parsnips, cauliflower cheese, and — at Christmas at least — Brussels sprouts. Over all of it goes gravy, made from the meat juices in the roasting tin. There is no such thing as too much gravy, and running out is a domestic crisis.
The pub roast
Sunday lunch in a pub is a national institution in its own right. Almost every pub in the country serves one, they get busy, and booking is genuinely advisable. A good pub roast is one of the best value meals in Britain; a bad one — dry meat, soggy potatoes, gravy from a packet — is a source of real disappointment and lengthy online reviews.
Afterwards
The correct sequence is: eat too much, declare you could not manage pudding, have pudding anyway, then either go for a walk or fall asleep in front of the television. Both are traditional.
Monday’s dinner is the leftovers, and Tuesday’s is bubble and squeak — the leftover vegetables and potato fried into a cake. Nothing from a Sunday roast is wasted.