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I'm from Portugal, who together with Spain started the so-called "Age Of Discovery" back in the late 14th century and for a long time had sugar plantations in Brasil.
Not only does the local culinary have an insane variety of cakes and sweets (I suspect that, whilst monks in convents in other countries were finding new ways to brew beer, the ones in Portugal were just inventing new desserts) but most traditional culinary dishes use one more spices that do not grow locally or at least did not originate locally (you also see a similar effect when it comes to other ingredients: for example the frequent use of tomato that originate from the Americas or Oranges that originate from China)
I also lived in both England and The Netherlands, both countries which were much more successful at trade with and conquest of the "discovered" lands than Portugal, and the local culinary tradition in both is way smaller and blander.
The problem with food traditions in the UK is that fuck all grows there due to climate. And all the cool imported stuff was traditionally very expensive, thus only accessible to the rich. Portugal has a much better climate for growing food, so back in the days you could import some seeds, plant them locally and exotic stuff became cheap and available to everyone. Brits couldn't do that really, so exotic stuff was rare and mere mortals didn't know about it.