The Exotic English Tradition of Sunday Roast | British Culture I Love

11 MINUTE READ

There’s something about the Sunday Roast that feels quintessentially English. We see it advertised as a “thing” on Sundays at pubs and restaurants across England. Carveries are also still popular in some smaller, traditional towns. It is a lot of work to produce a full roast dinner with all the trimmings and in today’s busy, fast-paced world, most people seem to go out for their Sunday Roast. Author Across Cultures Yang-May Ooi wondered if people still cook roast dinners regularly at home on Sundays. She asked some English friends and the answer surprised her… 

Sunday Roast and an English Family Tradition

I realised the other day that for almost 50 years, since arriving in England in 1975, I had never had a Sunday Roast cooked at home by an English local until a few years ago. Of course, I have had roast meals during all those decades but they have always been at pubs, restaurants or carveries – never at an English person’s home.

It was only when I met my new partner Mills*, who is proudly part English and part Welsh, that I had my first Sunday Roast at home made by her. 

She doesn’t make Sunday Roast for the two of us every week – it is a huge amount of work, especially timing all the different elements to be ready at the same time. But once in a while when she feels inspired or we just fancy a good, solid, traditional meal, she would spend the whole Sunday morning in the kitchen in a tour de force of cooking. 

Modern Family

When her grown-up children are back visiting, especially at Easter, she would plan the Easter Sunday roast a week or so in advance, ordering organic lamb from the butcher and fresh vegetables from the local organic farm. She would then prepare the potatoes and veg on Saturday ahead of time. On the Sunday morning, she would truss up the lamb and season it, working out the timings like a military operation. 

Her daughter would lay the table making sure to create a sense of occasion and her son would open the special bottle of wine he would have brought. It’s a ritual I love being part of – but without having to do anything! We would then all sit down to delicious roast lamb with roast potatoes, roast veg, gravy and home-made mint sauce, passing the serving dishes, taking turns with the gravy jug, helping ourselves to more of whatever is in front of us. 

A Weekly Ritual

Not long ago, Mills had some of her old school friends over for lunch. As we sat round the dining table, the patio doors open to the late spring in her garden, it occurred to me that all of them were English. They had all known each other for almost fifty years, through uni, then work and weddings and young families. Naturally,  they swapped news of their grown-up children and aged parents, wondering about downsizing, retirement and who might become a grandmother first. 

In a lull in the conversation, I asked if any of them still cooked Sunday Roast. 

“Yes!” Sally* said. “Absolutely! If I didn’t make Sunday lunch every week, there’d be an outcry.”

She and her husband lived in London, their two adult children close enough to pop home most weekends. 

“It would be a roast?”

“Yes, it has to be roast. Whether it’s beef or pork or chicken – the meat doesn’t matter. The roast is the thing. And with all the trimmings.”

I was incredulous. “Every Sunday?”

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“Every week, yes. But only in the winter.”

“That’s still a lot of work!”

“Yes, but it’s about having the family together.” Sally smiled, her eyes looking back into the past.  “When I was little, we’d have Sunday Roast over at my grandparents’ – grandma would make the roast just like she used to do when my mum was little. I remember there would be gravy and potatoes and all the veg… I loved it!”

From Mother to Daughter

Sally went on, “Then at some point, it was my mum who did Sunday lunch for everyone at my parents’ house and my grandparents would come to us. After I got married, it was my turn at our house. That’s what the children grew up with. It hasn’t changed now that they have their own lives – they still love coming back on Sundays. And of course, Rupert* and I love having them home.”

Claire* chimed in, “It’s the same for us. I make a roast when the boys come home but you know, they’re in London now and it’s a bit of a trek to the Cotswolds where we are. So they don’t come up so often these days with everything they’ve got on in their lives.” 

She laughed. “They’re not very good at giving me notice – and sometimes they bring their girlfriends, or they don’t. So it’s a bit chaotic when I don’t know how many people to cook for, suddenly at short notice. I would also go and get my mum and drive her over –  she loves it, too.”

She paused, reflecting. “We’re at this transition point. It won’t be long before the boys stop coming every few weeks. It will happen only a few times a year. So James* and I have to think about what we’re going to do. I suppose we’ll just go to the pub for Sunday Roast more often – which is what we do now when it’s just the two of us.”

The others round the table nodded in recognition. They all had variations of this English Sunday Roast ritual. 

Mills said, “The great thing about a big roast is that for the rest of the week, you can have cold cuts or turn some of it into curry or stir-fries. It brings the family together but it’s also a good way to economise.”

The Exoticism of Englishness

The different families would each have their own ritual for who would carve. Sometimes it would be the man of the family as was traditional. Other times it would be the eldest daughter when dad was not very good at it or the women themselves, asserting their modern identities. 

I asked if they would bring out special crockery and cutlery or serving platters. No, it was mostly items they had inherited from their parents or grandparents, things that had always been in their lives. 

Claire said, “All this is rather boring. Are you sure you want to hear us chattering about it?”

I cried, “It’s not boring at all. To me, this is really exotic! This is real English people doing this real English tradition that I only ever read about in books or saw on TV. It’s like for you hearing about real Chinese families and what our meal time rituals are!”

Growing up in a Chinese-Malaysian family, Sunday Roast wasn’t part of my upbringing. The first time I had English roast dinners was at boarding school. The only home cooked roast we had as a family was once during one school holiday in England when my brother, who loves cooking, made roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with all the trimmings. It was almost 45 years ago and I still remember it. 

I continued, “I love that you all have your family’s dishes and things, passed down through the generations. When I first started out in London after uni, I had to buy everything for my flat – every single thing.”

Our friends looked puzzled.

I explained, “All our family stuff was in Malaysia in my parents’ house in KL. My mum would bring a few things in her suitcase every so often when she came over. Or I would do the same when I went back on holiday. So I have some lovely glasses and Chinese bowls and things like that. But to furnish my whole flat this way would have taken forever!”

“Oh, gosh, of course…” Claire said slowly. “I didn’t even think about that. Your family being so far away and you having to start your life here completely from scratch.”

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Digital Meals

Perhaps it was this that first cast the seed for my fascination – longing? – for Belonging all those years ago. When my English friends at boarding school headed home for the day on Sundays and I stayed behind in the suddenly quiet and empty school with other overseas boarders. When my uni friends might pop home for the weekend during term and return with home-cooked goodies from their mums. When the parents of my adult friends in our twenties would come down to London to visit, their dads bringing power tools to help them put up shelves and their mums unpacking home-made jams and cakes. 

And I would meet up with my peer group in Chinatown or in pubs for Sunday lunch or look through the Yellow Pages for a handyman or work out how to make my favourite banana bread from an old Malaysian cookbook I had brought over in my suitcase. Writing letters on blue aerogrammes for decades and waiting a week or more for the replies. Calling home once a week on a crackling land line to catch up with news from home and share my news with my parents. Then came faxing, and dial up emails and finally Whatsapp and video calls. 

Perhaps that is why my family and I share photos of our meals on the family Whatsapp group these days. We used to write home about our English meals as part of our way of sharing our lives back and forth across the flights of aerogrammes and the buzzing wires of the fax machine. My father would ask during most phone calls what we had been eating and my parents would tell us about their weekend dinners or lunches out with their friends. On our holiday travels, we would report back on the local food we tried. Maybe it’s just our family thing. Or a Malaysian thing – we are a nation, after all, known to be mad about food. Or a bonding thing for many who find themselves far apart from those they love. 

What about You?

Family meals together are a thing whichever culture we are from and wherever we may be. It warms my heart when I see Italian families together on Sundays at trattorias in Rome or Polish families at Polish restaurants in London or Chinese families in Chinatown anywhere in the world. And to think of the families I don’t see coming together in their homes round plates of curries or stews or barbecued meat – or Sunday Roast Dinners. 

Do you come together over Sunday Roast? Who does the cooking – and carving? Or do you gather round another food tradition? Who hosts? Or maybe you all go out somewhere together? Do drop me a line or add a comment. I’d love to hear your story. Or share this with friends and hear what they do!

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*not their real names

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Photos:

roast dinner – https://pixabay.com/photos/food-sunday-dinner-english-meal-976053/ 

family – https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-family-celebrating-thanksgiving-5591233/

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