"Blessed be he that invented the pudding," wrote the French writer Francois-Maximilien Misson when he came to Britain in the late 17th century. "To come in pudding time is to come to the most lucky moment in the world."

Yet, though an English establishment - Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck, in Bray, Berkshire - has recently been voted the best restaurant in the world, it is unlikely that we would [...]