Wales brith (fruit bread); cawl (a lamb stew); cawl cennin (leek soup); Welsh cakes; and Welsh lamb. Cockles are sometimes served as a traditional breakfast with bacon and laverbread. Although Wales has its own traditional food and has absorbed much of the cuisine of England, Welsh diets now owe more to the countries of India, China and the United States. Chicken tikka masala is the country's favourite dish while hamburgers and Chinese food outsell fish and chips as a takeaway. Wales is often referred to as "the land of song", and is notable for its harpists, male choirs, and solo artists.
Stew are recipes for lamb stews and fish stews in the Roman cookery book "Apicius", believed to date from the 4th century AD. "Le Viandier", one of the oldest cookbooks in French, written in the early 14th century by the French chef known as Taillevent, has ragouts or stews of various types in it. The first written reference to 'Irish stew' is in Byron's "The Devil's Drive" (1814): "The Devil ... dined on ... a rebel or so in an Irish stew." In meat-based stews, white stews, also known as "blanquettes" or "fricassées", are made with lamb or veal that is