Historically, Australian cuisine was based on traditional British cooking brought to the country by the first settlers. This generally consisted of pies, roasted cuts of meat, grilled steak and chops, and other forms of meat generally accompanied by vegetables (the combination known colloquially as 'meat and three veg').
These origins have been mostly overtaken by the growing multicultural emphasis of Australian culture over the last forty to fifty years, with Australian cuisine now influenced by a variety of Mediterranean and Asian foods originally introduced by immigrants. Indeed, restaurants whose cuisine tends to demonstrate contemporary adaptations, interpretations or fusions of these multicultural culinary influences are frequently labeled with the umbrella term 'Modern Australian The discovery of the spice-like qualities of many native Australian plant ingredients formed the basis of a gourmet cuisine.