American/British Food Terms

American and British food terms are often quite different. In certain cases the same word can have different meanings. Here is a list with the American word on the left and the British on the right:

all-purpose flour plain flour
beet beetroot
corn maize
cornstarch corn flour
cupcake fairycake
dessert pudding
eggplant aubergine
fish sticks fish fingers
golden raisin sultana
ground minced (ground beef/minced beef)
heavy cream double cream
jello jelly
light cream single cream
molasses treacle
powdered sugar icing sugar
self-raising flour self-rising flour
popsicle ice lolly
skim milk skimmed milk
wholewheat wholemeal
zucchini courgette

The word pudding refers not only to a type of dessert but also to dessert in British English. The words aubergine and courgette are from French. As the list illustrates, American English and British English have many different words for food.