Sunday lunch is supposed to bring families together. Whoever came up with that idea had clearly never tried to serve one to six British people.
In my house, Yorkshire puddings alone might end my marriage. They are my favourite thing on the plate and, as far as I’m concerned, belong beside beef, chicken, lamb, pork and anything else capable of producing gravy. My husband finds this appalling.
Arguing about the Sunday roast has become almost as much of a British tradition as eating one. Which is worth remembering as Gen Z finds itself charged with the latest crimes.
New research commissioned by Lightspeed, surveying 2,000 UK diners, suggests 39 per cent of Gen Z respondents add ketchup to their roast. Twenty-six per cent add mayonnaise, 23 per cent hot sauce and 19 per cent chilli oil.
Another 14 per cent deploy hot honey. Nine per cent have introduced kimchi and 7 per cent avocado. Fourteen per cent have abandoned gravy entirely, which, quite frankly, feels like a cry for help.
The potatoes, obviously, are where Britain draws the line. Asked which parts of a roast should never change or disappear, 68 per cent put roast potatoes first, ahead of meat at 65 per cent, gravy at 63 per cent and Yorkshire puddings at 60 per cent.
This is awkward because, by those standards, I commit a graver offence: I don’t think roast potatoes are the best form of potato. They are very good – obviously, I am not insane. But give me garlicky thousand-layer potatoes and I will happily abandon tradition.
“Chef here, so brace yourself: ketchup on a roast is a criminal offence. I’ll have my people call your people,” says chef consultant Mike Reid of Chop House & Tavern. “Hot sauce on the crackling/crispy bits though? Non-negotiable.”
Before anyone starts pointing fingers at TikTok, Britain has been prosecuting people for roast dinner offences for years
Clearly, nobody agrees on the rules.
Lara Mitchell, of The Devonshire, itself a roast dinner church of sorts, is firmly on the other side of the ketchup wars. “Ketchup always. Gravy only if I feel like it. Mash potato in the Yorkshire with peas is also elite.”
“I love salad cream with a roast dinner – even with gravy, it’s a top combo!” says cook and writer Loukia Constantinou. Food influencer Kar-Shing Tong (@ks_ate_here) likes “chilli oil, sriracha, hummus, kimchi” and “basically anything that adds a different flavour profile” on his.
Before anyone starts pointing fingers at TikTok, however, Britain has been prosecuting people for roast dinner offences for years.
The charge sheet over the past two decades has included ketchup, mayonnaise, mango chutney, sour cream, baked beans, avocado, fried eggs, chips, cheesy pasta and even what some heatens describe as a “roast burrito”.
Ketchup on a roast is a criminal offence. I’ll have my people call your people. Hot sauce on the crackling/crispy bits though? Non-negotiable
Mike Reid, chef at Chop House & Tavern
Gen Z did not invent roast-dinner crimes – they were either not born or too small to reach the hob. But they did inherit a thriving criminal atmosphere.
Nor has there ever been a single historically correct plate to desecrate. The recognisable Sunday roast developed gradually, becoming an established domestic ritual over the 18th and 19th centuries, and even the things we now treat as sacred have changed.
A precursor to Yorkshire pudding appeared in print in 1737 as “dripping pudding”, cooked beneath roasting meat to catch its juices, and sometimes served separately.
Different family histories create different rules. Charlotte Cavanagh, a writer, boxer and PR, says: “My mum is from the Philippines and so we always have rice with our roast too (and potatoes). It soaks up the gravy better. Plus a splash of All Purpose sauce is great, especially with pork.”
What makes that less legitimate than bread sauce with chicken, mint sauce with lamb or horseradish with beef? Mostly time. We become remarkably defensive of weird food combinations only once our grandparents have been doing them long enough.
Britain itself is also a different place from the one in which many of those rules hardened. The proportion of people in England and Wales born outside the UK rose from 8.9 per cent in 2001 to 16.8 per cent in 2021. It would be peculiar if the roast abandoned none of the flavours now eaten around British tables.
Restaurants already prove the point. At Buster Mantis in Deptford, Sunday lunch borrows from Jamaican and British traditions: meat still arrives with Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and gravy, but rice and peas are there too, with mac and cheese and plantain alongside.
Farzi in Haymarket has launched a Sunday Roast Thali, pairing roast meat with refillable Indian curries and chaat.
Fusion, in other words, isn’t just a 22-year-old attacking Mum’s chicken with sriracha.
Chef Sally Abé, who worked with Lightspeed on the research, said: “Younger diners in particular have grown up with a wider range of global flavours, so experimenting with traditional dishes doesn’t necessarily feel unusual to them.”
Not every “new” tradition should be defined as a permanent generational trait, then. Perhaps the Gen Z roast is partly just the young-person roast: quicker when necessary, assembled according to whatever is available and less concerned with the rules inherited from someone else’s Sunday table.
Younger diners in particular have grown up with a wider range of global flavours, so experimenting with traditional dishes doesn’t necessarily feel unusual to them
Chef Sally Abé
Duncan Robertson of Korean Bristol restaurant Dongnae admits he “cheats” at home with a one-tray roast chicken and vegetables hack that’s done in an hour.
But, he adds: “To be honest, if I go to my mum’s, I expect more (roast potatoes, bread sauce, etc), but mine only takes an hour max from start to finish.”
That may be the whole generational story in miniature. The roast you make for yourself and the roast you expect at your mum’s are allowed to be two different things.
Even supposed crimes can turn out to be inherited traditions. Jen Bray, 32, traces her mayonnaise habit not to social media but to her grandmother. “Every single meal at my grandma’s house growing up would have the table set with condiments of all varieties. Mayo was a constant go-to.” She still puts it on her roast potatoes.
Perhaps this is why the roast produces such spectacular arguments. We aren’t really defending an authorised recipe. We are defending the version that tells us what Sunday lunch is supposed to feel like.
For one person that means beef, Yorkshire pudding and horseradish and heaven help whoever reaches for the ketchup. For another it’s chicken and bread sauce. For someone else, it’s rice soaking up the gravy because that’s what their Filipino mother always did.
There must be a limit somewhere. The latest survey suggests we might have found it. You can reconsider the meat, reject the gravy, put sriracha on the crackling and introduce kimchi to the carrots.
Just don’t touch the roasties. Unless, of course, you’d rather have thousand-layer potatoes.
Sharing Sunday roast by Sally Abé
Roast chicken, Yorkshire pudding, crispy roast potatoes, seasonal greens, proper gravy and roast tomato ketchup.
Serves: 4
Prep time: 30 minutes | Cook time: 75 minutes
Ingredients:
For the roast chicken:
1 whole free-range chicken, approx 1.6-1.8kg
1 lemon, halved
1 small bunch thyme
1 garlic bulb, halved
2 tbsp rapeseed oil
Sea salt and black pepper
For the roast potatoes:
1kg floury potatoes, peeled and cut into large pieces
3 tbsp beef dripping or rapeseed oil
Sea salt
For the seasonal greens:
400g seasonal green vegetables, eg spring greens, cabbage, broccoli or green beans
25g butter
1 lemon
Sea salt and black pepper
For the gravy:
Chicken roasting juices
1 tbsp plain flour
500ml good chicken stock
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
For the Yorkshire pudding:
140g plain flour
4 large eggs
200ml whole milk
Pinch of salt
2 tbsp beef dripping or vegetable oil
For the roast tomato ketchup:
500g ripe tomatoes, halved
1 small onion, sliced
2 garlic cloves
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
50ml cider vinegar
35g soft brown sugar
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp English mustard
Pinch of ground allspice
Sea salt
Method:
1. Heat the oven to 200C fan. Take the chicken out of the fridge 30 minutes before cooking. Put the lemon, thyme and garlic inside the cavity, rub the skin with oil and season generously.
2. Roast for around 60-75 minutes, depending on size, until the juices run clear and the thickest part of the thigh reaches 75C. Rest for at least 20 minutes before carving.
3. For the ketchup, put the tomatoes, onion and garlic on a roasting tray, toss with the oil and roast for 30-40 minutes until soft and beginning to caramelise. Transfer to a saucepan with the vinegar, sugar, Worcestershire sauce, mustard and allspice. Simmer for 15 minutes, blend until smooth and season. Pass through a sieve for a finer finish if you like.
4. Parboil the potatoes in well-salted water for 8-10 minutes. Drain, leave to steam-dry, then shake them in the colander to roughen the edges. Heat the dripping or oil in a roasting tin, add the potatoes and roast for 45-55 minutes, turning occasionally, until deeply golden and crisp.
5. For the Yorkshire pudding, whisk the flour, eggs, milk and salt until smooth and leave the batter to rest for at least 30 minutes. Turn the oven up to 220C fan. Heat the fat in a muffin tin until smoking hot, pour in the batter and bake for 20-25 minutes without opening the oven door.
6. Cook the greens until just tender, then toss with butter, lemon zest, a squeeze of juice and seasoning.
7. For the gravy, spoon off excess fat from the chicken roasting tin, leaving the roasting juices behind. Stir in the flour, cook for a minute, then gradually whisk in the stock. Add Worcestershire sauce and simmer until glossy and lightly thickened. Season to taste.
8. Carve the chicken and arrange it on a large platter with the roast potatoes and greens. Serve the giant Yorkshire pudding alongside for everyone to tear and share, with plenty of gravy and the roast tomato ketchup.
Read the full Lightspeed research on how British dining habits are changing here
