British food has the worst international reputation of any cuisine in the West and the most underrated technique. The dishes in this chapter — fisherman’s pie, beef Wellington, shepherd’s pie — reward precise sauce work and structural pastry.
These dishes were not introduced to America by celebrity chefs. They were introduced by immigrant cooks and held in the canon by people who took comfort food seriously enough to build it correctly.
British food, properly built, is a clinic in fat management and structural integrity. The chefs in this chapter brought both.