British food can get a bad rap. In spite of having some truly incredible restaurants, our food scene often gets reduced down to being bland, beige and a little bit weird. While that’s far from the truth, there are several dishes we can blame for giving English food its poor reputation.
The worst culprit of them all? Jellied eels. That’s according to TasteAtlas’s list of the 62 worst English foods. Based on roughly 600,000 responses from the site’s readers, jellied eels had an overall rating of just 2.1 percent.
Made by boiling chopped eels with herbs and leaving them cool down and produce their own gelatin (hence the ‘jellied’), TasteAtlas describes the dish as ‘delicate and soft, and while some may say it’s unpleasant, [the eels’] flavor is unique - mild, slightly salty, like pickled herring, but without the unusual “fishy” scent’. Delightful.
In January, jellied eels was also ranked the seventh worst dish in the world by TasteAtlas. But Time Out food editor Leonie Cooper said at the time: ‘The fact that oysters are considered a delicacy but jellied eels are branded ludicrously rank, inedible or worse seems unfair to us.
‘Though both are sloppy and reminiscent of gulping down a mouthful of seawater, oysters seem to have left eels behind. We call for a rebrand and justice for jellied eels in 2025.’
Moving on, the second most despised English food on the list is yeasty, sticky and intensely salty Marmite. Following in third place is perhaps the more surprising entry of cucumber sandwiches, which have a overall rating of 2.9 percent.
Further down the list are some more eyebrow-raising entries. Christmas pudding landed fourth place, Britain’s beloved bangers and mash is ranked the 41st worst, while the classic Victoria sponge placed 54th.
The full 62 worst dishes in England, according to TasteAtlas
- Jellied eels
- Marmite
- Cucumber sandwich
- Christmas pudding
- Saveloy
- Pease pudding
- Devils on horseback
- Newmarket sausage
- Phall
- Hog’s pudding
- Faggots
- Hard sauce
- Pie barm
- Scouse
- Cherries jubilee
- Fruit fool
- Manchester tart
- Fidget pie
- Egg sandwich
- Bread and butter pudding
- Brandy snaps
- Barm cake
- Summer pudding
- Bath bun
- British burrito
- Lardy cake
- Madeira cake
- Peach melba
- Bakewell flapjack
- Pollock fish and chips
- Kentish huffkins
- Apple sauce
- Scotch eggs
- Cauliflower cheese
- Steak and kidney pie
- Coronation chicken
- Jam roly-poly
- Mulligatawny
- Saffron cake
- Cornish saffron buns
- Bangers and mash
- Steak and kidney pudding
- Potted shrimps
- Tutti Frutti ice cream
- English muffin
- Trifle
- Cornish pasty
- Pie and mash
- Bubble and squeak
- Lancashire hotpot
- Lincolnshire sausage
- BLT Sandwich
- Shepherd’s pie
- Victoria sponge
- Toad in the hole
- Traditional Cumberland sausage
- Eggy bread
- Bakewell pudding
- Parmo
- Grasmere gingerbread
- Cornish fairing
- Fat rascal
See the full TasteAtlas ranking of England’s worst dishes here. Despite all that, English cuisine was named one of the best in the world in TasteAtlas’ most recent guide.
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