English and Czech cuisines vary in many ways.

English cuisine is not very popular in the world but even though it doesn′t have the best reputation, there are a few hidden gems to be found in the average English cuisine. Comparing to Czech cuisine, English cuisine looks healthier, because they eat lot more vegetables than Czechs. On the other hand, English cuisine is rather plain and tasteless.

1                   Breakfast

A typical breakfast in a Czech home is: bread with butter, cheese, eggs, ham or sausage, jam or yogurt. For a quick breakfast, a Bohemian pastry topped with poppy seeds, cottage cheese, or plum jam may be bought at a bakery. Most Czechs start the day with a cold breakfast. Hot breakfasts are not so common (except sausages with mustard). Coffee is drunk in the morning (although, it′s usually coffee of the instant variety). Tea and juices are also popular.

English breakfast is very different to Czech breakfast, because English breakfast is usually a very big meal. A full English cooked breakfast (or "Full English" or "The Full English Fry-up") is a hot dish of fried bacon, sausage, beans, egg, fried toast, tomatoes and sometimes mushrooms. It is usually served with a cup of tea or coffee. However, today people prefer a light breakfast consisting of cereals or porridge and toasts and marmalade.

So, it can be said, that the main difference between Czech and English cuisine is that English breakfast is a very important and big meal of the day, while Czech breakfast is fast and rather small meal.

2                   Lunch

Most English eat only a cold lunch. At school or at work they usually eat only a sandwich, packet of crisps and some fresh lemonade. Very popular diet, which is available in the refreshment stand, is the fish and chips = fish (cod, haddock, and plaice) deep fried in flour batter with chips (fried potatoes) dressed in malt vinegar. This is England′s traditional take-away food.

Another favourite quickie is jacket potatoes, which is essentially a baked potato with fillings such as beans in tomato sauce, canned tuna with mayonnaise, etc. At the weekend they usually eatTraditional Sunday Lunch which is consisting of roast meat - pork, beef, lamb or turkey, various kinds of boiled vegetable, boiled and fried or mushed potatoes and Yorkshire puddingswith thick brown sauce called gravy. Each kind of meat is eaten with different sauce: pork - with apple sauce, beef - with mint sauce /horseradish sauce, turkey - with cranberry sauce.

Another traditional meals are: Shepherd′s Pie, Cottage Pie, Cumberland Sausage, Bubble and Squeak, Gammon Steak with egg.

On the other hand, Czech hearty lunch is the main meal of the day. It′s the opposite of the British lunch. It always is a hot meal consisting of a soup, the main course and sometimes a sweet.

A Czech meal often starts with soup : potato soup, garlic soup, chicken noodle soup, beef soup with liver dumplings, sauerkraut soup(zelňačka), dill soup ( made from sour milk) = kulajda

The main course usually consists of meat and a side dish .The most popular meats are chicken and pork followed by beef. Meat is usually served with some kind of sauce. Sauces play an important role in the Czech cuisine as they are very popular (Sirloin, Tomato, Dill, Creamy etc.). Popular dishes may also include goulash, roast beef in a creamy sauce topped with lemon and cranberries. One of the most popular dishes is called vepřo-knedlo-zelo. It is roast pork served with sauerkraut and dumplings. Dumplings are made by boiling (or steaming) a mixture of flour, eggs, milk, and either dried bread crumbs or potatoes.

3                   Dinner

English dinner is usually warm. Traditional English food is quite limited and the British often joke that their traditional food occurred Indian curry, Chinese noodles or Italian pizza. Typical English dinner is : Toad-in-the-Hole (sausages covered in batter and roasted), Lancashire Hotpot - a casserole of meat and vegetables topped with sliced potatoes, Bubble & Squeak - typically made from cold vegetables that have been left over from a previous meal, often the Sunday roast,Black Pudding (Blood Pudding) - looks like a black sausage. It is made from dried pigs blood and fat)

Czechs prefer a light dinner since their lunch is the main meal. The exact type of dinner will depend on a particular family′s style, but you might find dinner to include cold dishes with meat, cheese and vegetables as well as cooked meals. Some Czechs love dinner roast chicken with potatoes or rice. Also popular are the potato pancake = bramboráky. Bramboráky are fried pancakes made of rough-grated or fine-grated raw potatoes, flour, milk and sometimes sliced sausages (but this is not common, because bramboráky are usually intended to be a vegetarian meal). Pork or chicken schnitzel with mashed potatoes is one of the most favourite Czech meals. In Delicatessen Open-faced sandwiches are also popular. They are commonly made with cold meat, salami, eggs, cheese, or mayonnaise-based salads, such as ham and pea, or potato

4                   Desserts

Very popular sweets in UK are donuts. They are prepared in various forms as a sweet snack that can be homemade or purchased in bakeries, supermarkets, food stalls. Another very popular dessert is a pudding - the dessert course of a meal (`pud′ is used informally). In Britain, we also use the words ′dessert, ′sweet′′ and ′afters′. The more traditional and well known home-made puddings are apple or rhubarb crumble, bread and butter pudding, spotted dick and trifle. The traditional accompaniment is custard, known as crème anglaise (English sauce). Britishmuffins is a small, round, flat type of yeast leavened bread.

In the Czech Republic sweets are very popular. Desserts come in many varieties and tend to be heavy and fatty because butter and whipped cream are often used. Some popular desserts are: pancakes filled with jam, honey cake called Medovník, blueberry dumplings, apple strudel.

Beverages

Beer is regarded by the Czechs themselves as their national drink. It can be dark, light, mixed, wheat etc. There are over 470 different types of beer in the Czech lands. Beer has been brewed here from time immemorial. The first written record related to beer dates from 993.The history of beer-brewing in Czech can be explored in the unique and the oldest Brewery Museum in Plzeň.Pride of place among beers is held by Pilsner Urquell (Prazdroj), claimed not only by the Czechs to be the best beer in the world. This is followed by Budvar (Budweiser, in the USA Czechvar) from České Budějovice.

Another dring that is worth to mention is wine.The best wine producing regions can be found in South Moravia. Some of the most popular types are Veltlínské zelené, Müller-Thurgau and Moravian Muscat, red wines = Frankovka and Svatovavřinecké.

A bottle of Becherovka makes a great souvenir for visitors to the Czech Republic to take home. This bitter herb liqueur hails from the famous spa town of Carlsbad, where thanks to its curative properties; people call it the ′13th spring′.

The most popular drink in England is a tea (five o′clock tea).Tea in Britain is traditionally brewed in a warmed china teapot, adding one spoonful of tea per person and one for the pot. Most English like their tea strong and dark, but with a lot of milk. Another British favourite drink is aginger beer (non-alcoholic drink)

Most of the traditional British drinks, however, are alcoholic (apple cider, ale, stout, pimms). They serve 2 main kinds of beer - lager and bitter+ Guinness beer.

Typical Czech drink is Kofola. In England we find the traditional lemonade Lucozade.

5                   English traditional meals

Shepherds Pie - minced lamb meat and vegetables covered with mashed potatoes.

CottagePie - minced beef and vegetables covered with mashed potatoes.

Gammon Steak with egg - Smoked ham with fried egg.

Bubble Squeak - Baked potatoes with cabbage and leftovers from previous meals.

Bangers and Mash - sausages with mashed potatoes.

Pies - The equivalent of puff pastry filled with meat, vegetables and sauce ..

Toad in the hole - Sausages baked in pancake batter.

Beef Stew and Suet Dumplings - chili with beef and dumplings.

Fish and chips - fried fish with fries

Black pudding and white pudding - Type the name black pudding sausage is typical of Lancashire, and then Scotland and Ireland, and the taste is very similar to the Czech pudding. White pudding is an English equivalent of sausage.

6                   Czech traditional meals

Tripe soup may sound to certain foreign visitors like a rather exotic food, it is one of the most popular in Czech. Tripe (boiled beef stomach cut into fine strips) are further cooked with a powdered paprica mixture which gives the soup a pleasantly sharp, spicy flavour.

Pig killing and butchering

It is a traditional event which has survived predominantly in village households. At the end of winter, a hired butcher slaughters a pig which was either purchased or bred by the family themselves. Assisted by the whole family, the butcher prepares a number of exquisite delicacies: a special soup, Ovar (various kinds of boiled pork), Brawn (tlačenka) and black and white pork pudding =skins filled with a seasoned mixture of meat, pearl barley and bread crumbs.

Toasted slices or topinka is a slice of semi-dark bread fried in fat and sprinkled with salt and brushed liberally with garlic.

Brawnwhich is served with finely chopped onion, diluted vinegar and some good bread.

Pickled sausage slices (utopenci) =smoked meat steeped in vinegar juice with an abundance of onion.

Beer cheese = speciality called Olomouc cakes of cheese a strongly aromatic curd cheese, served with butter and fresh bread.