Boards, snacks and starters
Ploughman's lunch
An English pub plate of bread, a wedge of cheese, pickle, pickled onions and apple, eaten cold.
A ploughman's lunch is a cold plate served in English pubs: crusty bread and butter, a generous piece of cheese, a sweet brown pickle or chutney, pickled onions, and often apple, salad leaves, a boiled egg or ham. The cheese is usually Cheddar, Stilton or another British cheese. It is eaten with a pint at lunchtime.
What goes in
- Cheddar526%, A thick wedge.
- Crusty bread and butter632%, Often a farmhouse loaf.
- Brown pickle or chutney211%, Sweet and sour.
- Pickled onions211%, Sharp.
- Apple and celery211%, Fresh crunch.
- Ham or boiled egg211%, Optional.
Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each ingredient's share of the dish.
Made step by step
Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house; this is one traditional way, in outline.
Step 1: Layer Cut the cheese into a thick wedge or two different pieces. Step 2: Layer Slice the bread and set it beside a pat of butter. Step 3: Layer Add a spoonful of pickle, a few pickled onions and sliced apple. Step 4: Rest Let the cheese come to room temperature before serving. Step 5: Serve Serve cold, with salad leaves if you like. Finished Ploughman's lunch, by share.
An old meal, a newer name
Farm workers have eaten bread and cheese in the fields for centuries. The phrase ploughman's lunch, however, became common only in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Cheese Bureau and the Milk Marketing Board promoted it to encourage pubs to sell cheese. An earlier use of the phrase appears in the nineteenth century, but the pub dish as known today is a post-war idea.
Building the plate
There is no fixed rule. A good plate pairs one or two cheeses with bread that has a proper crust, plus something sharp and something sweet to cut through the fat. Pickled onions, apple and celery are traditional. Regional versions favour local cheeses, such as Wensleydale in Yorkshire or Cheshire in the north-west.
Where it is used
The cheeses in it
Also part of it, and being written: Cheddar cheese (The most common choice.), Stilton cheese (A blue alternative.).
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Sources and further reading
Original text and drawings by the EveryCheese desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and kitchen makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Cheshire: The original uploader was Y6y6y6 at English Wikipedia . Later versions, Public domain, source
- Wensleydale: Jon Sullivan, Public domain, source