Welsh cuisine encompasses the cooking traditions and practices of the country of Wales and the Welsh people. Whilst there are a large number of dishes that can be considered Welsh due to their ingredients and/or history, dishes such as cawl, Welsh rarebit, laverbread, Welsh cakes, bara brith and the Glamorgan sausage have all been regarded as symbols of Welsh food. There is some variation in dishes around Wales, but the most pronounced difference is in the Gower Peninsula, an isolated rural area which was heavily influenced by Somerset and Devon. There the dishes created included whitepot and often incorporated pumpkin.

While Wales has imported throughout the centuries some culinary practices and dishes from its British neighbors, uniquely Welsh cuisine grew largely from the lives of the Welsh working folk, such as farmers, shepherds, and peasants, as these Welsh working people tended to be more isolated from outside culinary influences. Welsh common folk were instead influenced by the food that they could produce based on what little ingredients they could produce or afford, all while having little or no contact with neighboring English cuisine and English society. Welsh Celts and their more recent Welsh descendants originally practiced transhumance, moving their cattle to higher elevations in the summer and back to their home base in the winter. Once they settled to homesteads, a family would have generally eaten meat from a pig primarily, keeping a cow for dairy products. Vegetables beyond cabbages and leeks were rare.

In Wales, beef and dairy cattle are raised widely. Sheep farming, however, is extensive in the country, and lamb is the meat traditionally associated with Wales. Other important produce includes seafood—especially close to the coast, where fishing culture is strong and fisheries are common. This is exemplified by the use of cockles and laverbread in Welsh cuisine. The leek, the country's national vegetable, is also used frequently in Welsh cuisine. Since the 1970s, the rise of the gastropub and high-end restaurants has given Wales five Michelin-starred restaurants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_cuisine