Travel writer and honorary Brit Bill Bryson has many wonderful things to say about our country, but his descriptions of our food count among the more witty and acerbic of his observations.

Recalling a meal at a restaurant in Bournemouth in his 1995 bestseller Notes from a Small Island, Bryson describes how he was presented with "vegetables served with nested spoons and circlets of toughened rawhide parading under the name medallions of pork".

And come dessert time, things did not improve:

"I was left to choose," writes Bryson, "Between a watery dribble of trifle, a meringue confection that I knew would explode like a party popper as soon as I touched a spoon to it, or any of about a dozen modest cuplets of butterscotch pudding, each with a desultory nubbin of crusty yellow cream on top."

In another classic excerpt, he hits the nail on the head when observing how the British favour bland, lesser-flavoured treats:

"The British are so easy to please, " he says. "It is the most extraordinary thing. They actually like their pleasures small. That is why, I suppose, so many of their treats - teacakes, scones, crumpets, rock cakes, Rich Tea biscuits, fruit Shrewsburys - are so cautiously flavourful. They are the only people in the world who think of jam and currants as thrilling constituents of a pudding or cake.

"Offer them something genuinely tempting - a slice of gateau or a choice of chocolates from a box - and they will nearly always hesitate and begin to worry that it's unwarranted and excessive, as if any pleasure beyond a very modest threshold is vaguely unseemly.

'Oh, I shouldn't really,' they say.

'Oh, go on,' you prod encouragingly.

'Well, just a small one then,' they say and dartingly take a small one, and then get a look as if they have just done something terribly devilish. All this is completely alien to the American mind. To an American the whole purpose of living, the one constant confirmation of continued existence, is to cram as much sensual pleasure as possible into one's mouth more or less continuously. Gratification, instant and lavish, is a birthright. You might as well say 'Oh, I shouldn't really' if someone tells you to take a deep breath."

"English food is terrible"

Greasy, stale and watery: what discerning visitors really make of British food