Forget crisp salad and a chilled glass of rosé. Despite the heat, Britons appear more inclined to crave hearty cottage pie and full-bodied red wine during heatwaves. In a trend described as “reverse comfort eating,” Waitrose sales of cottage pie jumped 110% over the past month, while sales of South African red wine rose 68% compared with the same period last year.

The unexpected rise in demand for winter comfort food also includes retro chicken, bacon and leek pie, up 41%; chicken korma, up 67%; and chicken and ham gratin, up 68%.

Home cooks also seem happy to stay by the stove despite the sweltering weather. Searches on the supermarket chain’s recipe website rose 67% for toad-in-the-hole, 91% for spaghetti bolognese and 57% for macaroni cheese with rarebit.

Trifle, another dish associated with the 1950s alongside cottage pie and toad-in-the-hole, is also high on shopping lists. Waitrose recorded a 100% year-on-year increase in sales of its strawberry version.

Food historian and author Seren Charrington-Hollis recently catered a VIP event at the Llangollen Eisteddfod music festival, where her cottage pies and lamb stews proved exceptionally popular. She said this came as a great surprise because the weather was “unbearably hot.”