English beef: a proud tradition

Like nothing else, the raising and eating of beef is intrinsic to English culture and tradition
Judging cattle in the arena at the Devon County Show
Judging cattle at the Devon County Show, Exeter, England. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Nothing – not cricket, not the flag of St George – is as English as beef. It has been a symbol and source of national pride for centuries. The song The Roast Beef of Old England, written in 1731, was once a national anthem, sung by the audience in theatres. It's still played when officers of the Royal Navy sit down to eat.

When mighty Roast Beef was the Englishman's food,
It ennobled our brains and enriched our blood.
Our soldiers were brave and our courtiers were good
Oh! the Roast Beef of old England,
And old English Roast Beef!

As the lyrics go on to tell you, English roast beef summed up the differences between us and namby-pamby, ragout-loving nations that messed around with their meat. (In turn, in the 18th century, French writers would sneer about how the national diet made the English "rosbifs" oafish and uncivilised).

But there's no doubt, as the old cookbooks show, that the British loved their beef. A big roast was the usual Christmas food (turkey is an import from the United States), because male cattle were often killed at the end of the year. Later in the winter, salted beef was the norm; I have a 1920s cookbook with instructions on how to "salt a whole bullock". Salt beef could be rinsed and boiled, and it survives today as a sandwich filling – and as corned beef (the "corns" are the grains of salt).

We ate our roasts in the old days well-matured, usually till the outside of the carcass was turning rotten. Nowadays, traditional high street butchers who dry-age the best cuts of beef at low temperatures for three or four weeks don't wait for maggots to appear, but I've watched them sniff a side of beef in the cold store for a hint of "cheese" to tell them it's ready. The meat, properly aged, is gorgeous: a dark red, more tender and with a fuller flavour.

Breeding cattle for meat, rather than for the dairy trade, appears to have been invented in Britain, with breeds singled out for eating from the 15th century onwards. The classic breeds, such as Hereford, Galloway, South Devon and Aberdeen Angus, have now been adopted across the northern hemisphere. A good butcher will be able to tell you what the breed is and where it comes from, and some supermarkets now list breed and provenance.

British beef is certainly better, and not just because the cattle species used in hotter places such as Australia and South America that export here are not as tasty. But by far the most important factor in the taste of beef, the research shows, is the animal's diet. Unlike in America, English cattle are still largely fed on what they would naturally eat - grass and fodder made from it like silage and hay. Grass-fed meat always proves tastier in comparison tests and it's certainly healthier, with more vitamins, less unhealthy fat and beneficial Omega-3 fatty acids. Free-range cattle are also much less of a strain on the environment than cattle reared in feed-lots. Butchers, and some supermarket labels, may be able to tell you if beef is grass fed, and organic beef must be fed on a minimum of 60% foraged material.

Our beef is safer and healthier now than it has ever been. We don't perhaps eat as much of it as our ancestors: if they took the advice of The Cook's Oracle, a best-selling 19th century lifestyle book, they would have been eating 3kg of meat a week. But our love of a good roast has not changed since the journalist Ned Ward wrote in 1809 of London clubs serving "the true British Quintessence of Malt and Hops, and a broil'd Sliver off the juicy Rump of a fat well-fed Bullock" and of men eating steaks until they were "Knuckle deep in the Gravy".

Next month read Alex Renton on how to get the most out of your beef