{"id":714907,"date":"2026-07-28T07:04:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T07:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/714907\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T07:04:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T07:04:13","slug":"cottage-pie-and-glass-of-red-anyone-britons-shun-salad-despite-heat-in-reverse-comfort-eating-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/714907\/","title":{"rendered":"Cottage pie and glass of red, anyone? Britons shun salad despite heat in \u2018reverse comfort eating\u2019 | Food"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forget a crisp salad and glass of chilled ros\u00e9. Enervated Britons are seemingly more likely to crave a rich cottage pie and a robust red in heatwaves.<\/p>\n

In a trend termed \u201creverse comfort eating\u201d, Waitrose\u2019s cottage pie sales have soared 110% in the last month and South African red wine is up 68% compared with the same period last year. The surprise spike in demand for winter comfort foods also includes retro chicken, bacon and leek pie (up 41%), chicken korma (up 67%) and chicken and ham gratin (68%).<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, home cooks are happy standing over the stove despite the sweltering heat, with searches for traditional food classics on the supermarket chain\u2019s recipe site up 67% for toad-in-the-hole, 91% for spaghetti bolognese and 57% for rarebit mac and cheese.<\/p>\n

Another 1950s staple, along with cottage pie and toad-in-the-hole, trifle is also high on shopping lists, with the supermarket seeing a 100% year-on-year increase in sales of its strawberry version.<\/p>\n

Toad-in-the-hole. Photograph: Dan Matthews\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

The food historian and author Seren Charrington-Hollis<\/a> recently catered for a VIP event at the Llangollen Eisteddfod music festival, where her cottage pies and lamb hotpots were in huge demand \u2013 to her surprise, \u201cas it was unbearably hot\u201d, she said. \u201cBut they all wanted these home-cooked meals,\u201d she said, adding that the guests were fed up of salads.<\/p>\n

The cost of living crisis, global wars and conflicts and political change at home all contributed to uncertainty, while the unusual heat added to the feelings of discomfort, said Charrington-Hollis, whose forthcoming book is on nostalgic food from childhood.<\/p>\n

If it all seemed very \u201cschool dinners,\u201d she said, \u201cI think it\u2019s very much a psychological switch, of people wanting to really indulge in home-cooked food and traditional food.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, not just politically, economically, but also the weather is not quite right. I think we\u2019re completely out of sync. We\u2019re not used to all this warm weather. And what better way to connect with ourselves and almost get back to our roots than through food. And I think that\u2019s what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust simplifying things, because I think we just need to be able to cope and reset. It\u2019s almost like a reset button, that\u2019s what I\u2019m feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another 1950s staple, trifle, is also high on heatwave menus. Photograph: Shaun A Daley\/Alamy<\/p>\n

The chef Simon Wood believes the cost of living crisis is a factor. Such dishes have long been pub classics. But with cutbacks on eating out, \u201cI think they\u2019re trying to get that hint of going out to the pubs but maybe doing it at home,\u201d said the 2015 MasterChef winner.<\/p>\n

As for choosing hot and hearty ready meals in the heat, Wood said time constraints and lack of skills in the kitchen were drivers. Also, people are \u201csick of salad\u201d, and for those supermarket shopping just once a week \u201csalad may not last\u201d.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s not all 1950s trad wife stuff \u2013 chicken korma sales were up 67%. Photograph: Old Visuals\/Alamy<\/p>\n

In the sense of comfort eating, said Prof Rebecca Earle, food historian the University of Warwick, \u201ctrying to use food as a way of assuaging some kind of unhappiness or distress, then I think this is what people have done for a very long time\u201d.<\/p>\n

That the popular dishes also included chicken korma showed it was \u201cnot all 1950s, trad wife stuff\u201d, she said. \u201cAmid all of those, let\u2019s say, postwar kind of white British dishes, we have a little glimmer of a multicultural Britain coming through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen Parkins-Knight, Waitrose\u2019s senior innovation chef, has his own theories on why people are craving the nostalgic staples. \u201cForget the thermostat \u2013 when a heatwave goes on, raw salads and chilled plates can often lose their cool fast,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing is a trend in \u2018reverse comfort eating\u2019 \u2013 after spending all day drained by the heat, people crave rich, grounding staples to recharge, pivoting back toward comfort and familiarity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Forget a crisp salad and glass of chilled ros\u00e9. Enervated Britons are seemingly more likely to crave a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-714907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}