Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain

by Pen Vogler

Avocado or beans on toast? Gin or claret? Nut roast or game pie? Milk in first or milk in last? And do you have tea, dinner or supper in the evening?

In this fascinating social history of food in Britain, Pen Vogler examines the origins of our eating habits and reveals how they are loaded with centuries of class prejudice. Covering such topics as fish and chips, roast beef, avocados, tripe, fish knives and the surprising origins of breakfast, Scoff reveals how in Britain we have become experts at using eating habits to make judgements about social background.

Bringing together evidence from cookbooks, literature, artworks and social records from 1066 to the present, Vogler traces the changing fortunes of the food we encounter today, and unpicks the aspirations and prejudices of the people who have shaped our cuisine for better or worse.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Food, Sociology, Food and Drink, Audiobook, Historical

470 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2021

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review This book will delight foreigners, especially Americans with all the quirky, class-based rules that govern our choice of food. They will then be qualified to go to Waitrose (our version of WholeFoods) to select the appropriate upper middle class brand of whatever it is they want be it jam, cheese, or bread etc. And they will pay for it! For the British, it is a good way of learning to up your game as you up your accent and lose the regional phrasing that immediately identifies what class you are from. Don't be put off by the author's implied sneering at the upper classes and their food habits, that's called reverse snobbery.

I once had tea with a Lord on the tiny island of Carriacou which he had invited me to visit. We sat on the terrace of his villa on the lovely pink-sand beach of Hillsborough with three of his women friends. I had scarcely begun to drink my tea when I saw a look pass between the women. What had I done? I saw the sneer. I hadn't crooked my little finger, I hadn't stirred my tea so that it slopped over the side. I couldn't think. But I could see them looking down their noses at me. They'd marked me out. I was only middle class. But how? I have the right kind of accent (also a Welsh one for street cred and a sort of Caribbean one that doesn't impress West Indians). I pondered over it for days.

I had put Milk in First. OMG. Such a social sin. I was never invited back.
__________

Reading notes In the North of England, meals are breakfast, dinner and tea. In the South they are breakfast, lunch and dinner. Helen Fielding during her first week in Oxford was invited by her tutor for dinner and turned up in the middle of the day. Her tutor, astonished, explained how things worked in the more sophisticated world she was moving into!

The book is good, enjoyable and full of little put-downs of the smart set who think they have one up on the rest of us, unlike Nicholas Coleridge in his unbearably smug book The Glossy Years: Magazines, Museums and Selective Memoirs where he not very subtly shows how little regard he has for anyone not as upper class as he is. I bet he puts Milk in Last (I do now too, it tastes better).

[Maru Kun · Rating 4 out of 5]

One day in the supermarket my wife picked up a pack of sliced cheese.

I suggested that a triangle of aged Brie de Meux would be better, but sliced cheese was easier to use when she made my sandwiches. I had no choice but to explain the real motivation behind my cheese preferences; sliced cheese was “working class” and it was my opinion that, as a family, we should pay greater regard to our lower-upper-middle-class social standing when selecting dairy comestibles.

My wife, who is Japanese, told me that she had never heard anything as stupid as cheese based class differentiation and, somewhat to my embarrassment, has repeated this Anecdote of the Working Class Cheese to her Japanese friends, giving rise to no small degree of amusement on their part and resentment at their lack of sensitivity to British culture on mine.

Fortunately I was able to hide the sliced cheese under a pack of air dried Italian Bresaola bought so our friends - who included lawyers, actuaries and other professional classes - did not have to be offended at the sight of sliced cheese in our fridge.

Well now I have had the last laugh because, as this book shows, my instincts were entirely correct. There is such a thing as working class cheese, middle class marmalade and a whole host of other class based foods preferences. I learned, to my horror, that my beloved Golden Shred is lower-middle-class while Oxford Cut (I should have known from the name, what an idiot I am) is upper-middle-class and even appropriate for minor members of the aristocracy who do not have their own orangery.

My wife has to understand that our class system, which is the envy of the world, has been carefully built up by centuries of petty resentments, sly antagonisms and cleverly targeted nose-down-looking and I am not prepared to sacrifice my cultural inheritance, nay my very identity, simply for a pot of thinly sliced marmalade or a pack of processed cheese. I will make sure she reads this book, pronto.

[K.J. Charles]

Interesting if somewhat bitty look at the intersection of food and class in Britain (the nifty title being both how we eat and how we sneer at others' eating). In the shape of essays about various foods, etiquette, practices. Lots of useful history and I particularly liked the call-out of the absurd modern snobbery about 'proper' approved versions of foods like Cornish pasties and Irish stew that were basically poverty meals, not sodding AOC patented unalterable recipes.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I tried to give this 4 stars but, in the end, it wasn’t good enough.
This book is a hotch-potch (see Stews: a hotch-potch of names P175) of facts, a real assorted picnic (see Picnics: wandering lonely as a cloud ... or being sociable? P383) where you have to forage (see Foraging: the knowledge economy P391) through all the links to other sections and chapters to find any nuggets, when the parentheses would have been better served as footnotes.
Perhaps the last paragraph in a chapter could be set up to have a spurious link to the next one? So I’ll tell you that I’m about to start reading ‘Spoon-Fed: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told about Food is Wrong’ by Tim Spector.

Enough parody. Why didn’t she discuss Marmite?

[Ruth This one · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did not finish. More a miscellany of English food than any sort of social anthropological review. Get the feeling that Vogler is very pleased with all her Dickens and Austen references.

I didn't hate it though, it just gets a bit boring. I may well return to the occasional chapter when I need to distract and sedate my mind from more traumatic reading material.

[Akvile · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am yet to finish this book, but so far, I am thoroughly loving this on many levels: as a foreigner who made UK my home and who often has to navigate the often culturally and socially loaded meanings surrounding food; as a book worm because it is beautifully written; and as someone who loves to eat - I also look forward to trying out some of the recipes offered in the book.

Both curious Brits and immigrants like me will enjoy this - it is written with great gusto and it is a sort of book you can come back to multiple times if and when you get curious why a certain meal or different words used to describe same thing came about.

[Stephen Goldenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

It does what it says on the cover- a comprehensive history of food in Britain and its close and enduring links to social class. Full of fascinating historical details and a fair number of ancient recipes, it’s an entertaining read that is bound to stir up nostalgic food memories in readers.
The sad thing is that it should be a testament to our ever improving diets, especially those of the working class and the poor. Sadly, with the huge growth in food banks and the controversies over free school meals during the pandemic, we seem to be going backwards.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the whole an informing and entertaining read. However, what on earth possessed the author/editor/publisher to agree to the inclusion of constant references back and to in the body of the narrative? (See Small Plates, Page 232), (See Gravy Wars, Page 129) etc. These parentheses appear on nearly every page, and sometimes more than once on a page! It’s incredibly distracting from the flow of the book? And surely wholly unnecessary? It’s a generalist’s read, not an academic text. It sounds like a minor quibble – but very distracting.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 4 out of 5]

i remember experimenting with when to add milk first or last, and that was a very easy decision for which tasted better, adding the milk first...

I'm still unsure if it should be milk, or cream, or half and half....

And yes something like macaroni and cheese goes back a long way

[Lisa San Martín · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reads like a collection of unrelated Wikipedia articles.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Food historian Pen Vogler’s detailed and all-encompassing look at the history of food and class in Britain is a fascinating tour of an overlooked area of our past. It’s packed with surprising nuggets of information and stories gleaned from extensive research (as a lover of bibliographies, Stuffed delivers the goods, with twenty-two pages worth of further reading). Covering topics as diverse as the etiquette of dining, the rise and fall up and down the social ladder of various foodstuffs over the centuries, land ownership and access to protein, lost and rediscovered food and drink, and the surprising stories behind many of our favourite foods, Stuffed sheds a light on an area of our social history that many of us take for granted,

[Kitty · Rating 5 out of 5]

ikkagi jah pigem klassisüsteemist jutustas see raamat mulle, toit oli lihtsalt... huvitav vaatenurk sellele lähenemiseks. (pealkiri "Scoff" on päris hea sõnamäng, sest see sõna tähendab inglise keeles nii õgimist kui halvustamist. ja täpselt sellest raamat ongi. kuidas ühed söövad ja teised kritiseerivad, tihti ise samal ajal sama asja süües.)

selgemaks sai mingite sõnakasutuste ajalooline taust - eelkõige siis see mõistatus, et miks ikkagi mõned inimesed ütlevad "dinner" lõunasöögi ja mõned õhtusöögi kohta, mida mõeldakse "tea" all, kuidas mahub pilti "supper". lühidalt - vanasti söödi varem. mida kõrgem klass, seda hilisemaks söömine ajapikku nihkus, kuni tuli hakata uusi söögikordi juurde leiutama, sest põhitoidukord ("dinner") oli alles hilja õhtul ja enne jõudis kõht mitu korda tühjaks minna. madalamad klassid tulid jõudumööda järele; töölisklass ja lapsed söövad siiamaani dinnerit keset päeva (muide: tasuta koolitoit on "school dinner", aga need lapsed, kes oma toidu ise kaasa võtavad, neil on "packed lunch" - ikka sama implikatsioon, vaestele üks ja rikastele teine nimi sama söögikorra jaoks).

aga põhiliselt ikkagi oli huvitav leida läbi ajaloo ja igasuguste toitude juures seda suhtumist, mis siiamaani kuhugi kadunud pole - kõrgemad klassid ja rikkamad inimesed kirjutavad vaestele suure hoolega ette, mida need süüa (ja kust seda hankida) tohiksid ja mis neile kindlasti hea ei ole. muster ikka sama - aristokraadid leiavad mingi uue toidu, keskklass võtab selle üle, aga selleks ajaks, kui töölisklass kohale jõuab ja ka tahaks, leiavad eelmised, et tegu on ikkagi ebatervisliku toiduga, mida vaene inimene endale küll lubada ei tohiks.

näiteks 18. sajandil, kui valge nisuleib muutus kättesaadavaks ka töölistele ja talurahvale:
"White bread had become an obsessional mark of identity for families who felt their kind had been denied it for centuries. Disapproval of it became an opposing obsession for the gentry whose forebears had considered it their birthright. One after another, commentators, doctors, self-appointed medical experts and disgusted correspondents published pamphlets, tracts, arguments and letters to the press to disabuse ‘persons in the lower class of life’ of their misapprehensions. Every published argument marshalled empirical and anecdotal ‘proof’, involving stories of dogs in scientific trials, mariners, or other nationalities who thrived on wheatmeal bread or languished on white. It was clear to many self-appointed advisors that bread, along with salty foods such as bacon and cheese, was driving labourers to the inns – another scourge of their class. Although their advice might be couched in compassionate terms, it generally rested upon the conviction that it was up to the poor to manage themselves better. If only they could learn to eat more vegetables and less bread, their troubles would be over. The poor, when they had the chance, replied that their troubles would be over if their employers paid a living wage which bought adequate food, clothes and shelter for them and their families."

aastal 2020 avaldatakse briti lehtedes "iasoovijatest" keskklassitädide nõuandeid, kuidas inimesed, kes on koroona tõttu töö kaotanud ja koolivaheajal oma lastele süüa ei suuda osta (kooliajal aitab tasuta koolilõuna natukegi), peaksid neile keetma tervislikku putru, ainult 13 penni portsjon - tõsi, moosi ega võid selle raha eest sinna peale ei saa, aga kui inimene ei ole osanud nii elada, et tööd ja raha oleks, siis ta ei peagi end ja oma lapsi hellitama ei moosiga ega ka mingite peenemate (liha)toitudega. plus ca change.

või kuidas oleks näiteks maiustega? "Chocolate has always had a double career: healthful for the deserving (ourselves) and a sure road to ruin for the uneducated or morally idiotic (others)."

alkohol? "Gin had the terrible and, mostly, deserved reputation for being the inner-city hell-raiser of the English drinks family, before it met tonic, moved out to the suburbs and settled down."

muidu need toidulood on muidugi ise ka huvitavad ja toredad. retsepte on ka, igast nii ajalooline kui tänapäevastatud versioon. ma isegi tegin nii indiapärast kedgereed hommikusöögiks (mõnus, aga argipäevahommikuks natuke liiga palju sahmimist) ja 18. sajandi parti hernestega (ei näinud väga atraktiivne välja, aga maitsev sai küll) ja ausalt öeldes keskaegse retsepti järgi makarone ja viktoriaanlikku leivajäätist tahaks ka kindlasti proovida veel, nii et veel mõneks ajaks jätkub selle raamatuga tegemist.

[Madhulika Liddle · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title says it all: this book is about how class works its way (and has worked its way, over many centuries) into what the British eat, how they eat, where they eat, when, and so on. Pen Vogler examines many, many aspects of food, cooking and eating in Britain across the ages, from ingredients (chocolate, potato, tomato, avocado and much more) to dishes (pork pies, scones, fish and chips, etc), to picnics, carving meat at tables, the use of forks, napkins, and so on. She culls information from old cookbooks, from letters and diaries, from every conceivable source of writing across the ages, including dozens of novels. I found a lot of old favourites here: PG Wodehouse (Aunt Dahlia’s prized chef Anatole!), Jane Austen, Dickens, Three Men in a Boat, Lark Rise to Candleford, The Wind in the Willows, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory among them.

I found this book vastly informative and interesting. It’s an eye-opener, revealing how diverse influences – religion, politics, economics, social conditioning, ideas about hygiene and health – have affected how people eat. Interestingly, what comes through again and again is the way perceptions seem to take complete 180-degree turns: white bread once was the domain of the elite, brown bread fit only for peasants; today, only the poorest would buy unhealthy, over-processed white bread, while brown bread spells posh.

This isn’t just a history of food in Britain (though it is that, too); it’s a history of how perceptions of food in Britain are connected to class. How this food at this time is for the poor and ignorant while that food is for the wealthy, the educated, the privileged – and how the situation might change over the years for the very same food.

Pen Vogler’s writing is easy reading. There are tons of good examples, some interesting recipes, and the balance between explanation and brevity is well-maintained. If there’s one thing I would have wished for, it was images: reproductions of paintings, photos etc that are either referenced in the text or could help add a visual note to a fact might have been useful.

Very enjoyable reading, and I’ve marked some of the recipes to be tried out, sometime soon.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 1/2 - lots of fun little titbits but it doesn't really hang together very well. In the conclusion she states that there were 3 throughlines to the stories and I think she would have been better off structuring it around those throughlines instead of bouncing from food item to food item.

Obviously you can't include everything that's interesting but there were some omissions that I thought were a bit odd. How did Levantine sahlep become saloop, the comfort of Victorian chimneysweeps? A handwavy reference to "hunting it down in the markets of Istanbul" makes it sound like some quaint remnant rather than a popular hot drink that you can buy instant in packets in my local Turkish grocer, while the orchids it is made from have become endangered from unsustainable extraction. Talking about the decline of eating rabbit after WWII without mentioning myxomatosis also seemed weird. And some things I just didn't understand - "quantities of maidenhair fern were imported from Ireland when it became the chia seed of Victorian dining" - does that mean it was believed to be a superfood? that it was ubiquitous? that it made an unsatisfactory substitute for jam? Or that you could sprout it easily as a windowsill decoration?

So, nice bitesize chunks of interesting information - along with some very nice-looking recipes - but not the investigation of food and class in Britain that I was hoping for.

[Owen McArdle · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no reason why this book should not have been very much up my street, being about food and social history as it is. It's not laid out in a particularly structured way – chapters about particular foodstuffs sit alongside ones about meals or eating implements – but all of them broadly tell the history of that thing, and the best bit of the book lies in the small anecdotes there. For example, I will never now forget that the first English recipe for lasagne dates from the 14th century!

[Jake Goretzki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable march through the dimensions of food, diet and etiquette across British eating of the past few hundred years, through the lens of a burgeoning array of example foods, fruit and veg and objects (think forks, serviettes, etc).

It helps explain my own muddled language for meals, being born of a part Northern, part RP lower-middle-middle class background that instinctively calls the midday / early afternoon meal 'dinner' (lunch still feels a bit twee and pin-striped to me, and what were 'dinner ladies' and 'school dinners', if not for 'dinner'?), but also calls the evening meal 'dinner' (as I cannot stand the slurpy, onomatopaeic, hyper-middle class word 'supper').

For all its rich history of foods, I find that sort of cultural material much more interesting (tea sounds common; napkin sounds ridiculous).

The double standard and hypocrisy of the British conversation about food never goes away (witness during lockdown when a parade of Guardian readers condemned 'Eat Out to Help Out' as something that would only encourage the lower orders to splash their cash on obesity-bulking burgers, all the while chins a-dripping with goose fat and bits of smoked animal). Orwell is always reliable on these matters, actually - having a superb nose for middle class snobbery and paternalism.

One insight really resonated with me: that middle class people spend much more time over food and eating than others - which rang a thousand bells for me, as someone who gets twitchy having to sit at a table for longer than 15 minutes and is massively bored by organised meals. I like the observation that the working class parent, knackered from work, gets a quieter life and is spared policing by allowing people to eat at whatever pace or place they desire. 'Family meals' are in fact a bit like 'Kids must love reading' - assumed to be essential experiences to avoid turning your kids into monosyllabic serial killers, but in actual fact, massively mis-sold. I come from a perfectly gregarious family. We had family meals - but it's not as if anyone was talking about Descartes at them, learning how to crack jokes or how to handle a fork better than anyone else. There's so much daft conventional wisdom around child-rearing, and that's another classic example.

Jay Rayner in his review described the book as something like 'swashbuckling' or 'thundering', which I took to mean 'a little bit relentless' and 'oh god what's next? Egg? Okay, it's eggs. No: pastry' - given its throughness. But it's enjoyable, and the tie-up at the end was welcome. Good fun, but no massive revelations.

[Andy P · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt I should have enjoyed this more- history, food and class, and humour. What's not to like?
A cascade of facts which can be overwhelming, so much information packed as tiny morsels somehow doesn't quite satisfy. Almost too much information. The amount and range of research is quite awe inspiring, but it ends up being a little too academic. The cross-referencing is irritating, and some of the language (for me) difficult, eg "the meal's northern and demotic roots". But the wealth of knowledge is so impressive, I'm glad I managed it.

[Virginprune · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting topic, highly readable, thoroughly worthwhile read!
The reason why the book didn't score higher for me was perhaps due to a misapprehension on my part, perhaps due to unfamiliarity with an author who may be speaking to an audience already familiar with her style and content.
The book's sub-title "A History of Food and Class in Britain" had me expecting a much more methodical, academic approach. An economic historian's approach. Instead, we have a more human, more personal and less dry approach. Lots of references to Austen and Dickens and Pepys. Family anecdotes.

When I think about what I enjoy about this book, and how I could imagine it being packaged for my taste, I picture sitting at a kitchen table with the author, sharing a glass of two of wine (or gin and tonic!, see page 290) looking around at various nearby items, which then prompt another "did I tell you about..." outburst on her part. And she really is a thoroughly enjoyable raconteur and fount of fascinating, wide-ranging and obscure information.

But I was hoping for some thematic order. Yes, the text is divided into thematic chapters (and sub-chapters). Yes, there are frequent cross-references between them. But the organisation (and the sub-title) feel like a structure which was added on late; to me, the text has no clear logical backbone. The "Conclusion" chapter does actually provide some insight here - and I think much of this text would be better placed as a foreword - but even so, what I miss is a steady consistent evaluation of how the food/class relationships in Britain evolved over time. In fact, I'd actually appreciate a better understanding of who is in which class at what time, etc. I'd be fine with a bunch of disclaimers pointing out the difficulties involved in this, but as it stands too much of the evidence is anecdotal or unqualified (the author does make several astute observations at certain points about the quality of sources, so I know it can be done!) The text could do with a brushing-up in any case, due to minor errors, loosely-phrased and confusing text, and the introduction of (new to me) concepts which are only explained much later in the text. Which collectively imply a book cobbled together in a bit of a hurry.

A book to enjoy and not stress too much about!

[Neil Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

The verb to scoff in English is very much used as a double entendre in food historian Penn Vogler’s entertaining romp through the history of food and class in Britain. Scoff is the slang verb for the act of eating, but it also means to jeer, belittle or deride. For hers is an account of how food and all aspects of food - what, when, where and how you eat - have been inexorably linked to class throughout history. You are what you eat (or don’t eat, as the case may be), and eat what you are, and are very much defined by this.

Vogler draws on sources from literature, journals, old cookbooks and historical references to food, with quotes not only from the likes of Sir Walter Scott, Chaucer, Austen and Dickens, but also from 18th and 19th Century homemaker’s cookbooks by Hannah Glasse and Eliza Acton respectively. She surmises that food is a particular idiosyncrasy of the British class system, much as the idea of the gentleman itself is - she amusingly recounts the delightfully reprehensible expression of snobbery from Bertrand Russel that the concept of the gentleman was invented by the aristocracy to keep the middle classes in order.

And so on to the What’s, when’s, where’s and how’s of food as a demarcation of class and social status she unfolds in bite-sized chapters. First, WHAT you eat -> at various times in history, meat and chicken have been indicators of socioeconomic status and aspirations. Other foods such as oysters or the ubiquitous British pork pie have shifted over time from being poor man’s food to a luxury. She explores the class origins of the concept of breakfast and sandwiches; the ultimate ‘middle class injury’ is defined as the ‘avocado hand’ (no further explanation needed !!)

Vogler’s analysis becomes more subtle and nuanced when she explores the WHEN you eat; today, southerners and well-heeled northerners eat dinner at, well, dinner time, whilst common northerners vulgarly eat dinner at, erm, lunchtime. Vulgar or ‘common’ northerners betray their class origins by having their main meal in the early evening and calling it ‘tea’. This is a state of affairs which evolved over time whereby dinner began to be eaten later and later and came to be seen as a factor differentiating the affluent upper classes from the working masses. And god forbid if you drink tea with dinner - then you’re most definitely working class. A whole chapter in itself is devoted to the role of tea and class distinction.

WHERE you eat looks at the etiquette of table placing, the evolution of the restaurant, and even a history of outdoor eating and picnics where the gentrified pursuits of the Victorians with their picnic etiquette is far removed from the peasant farm worker eating his bread and cheese out in the fields, the original alfresco dining.

The ultimate, most obvious distinction of class where food is concerned though is the HOW you eat - etiquette and table manners. The knowledge of and the ability to use cutlery demarcates the educated from the uneducated, the lower from the upper classes. The middle and upper classes place their napkins or serviettes discreetly on their laps, whilst the working classes functionally tuck them into their collars to protect their clothing from their uncouth slopping.

Remember then, dear reader, that etiquette is everything, perhaps the sharpest division of class, pedigree and upbringing. I couldn’t help think of this when reflecting on some common cultural stereotypes you see when it comes to etiquette- Belgians with their knives in their mouths, Chinese burping and farting in appreciation of a good meal , Americans slouched over the table in ‘the position’ - shoveling the food into their mouths with only the fork having cut it up into child-sized bits beforehand whilst propping up their upper bodies with their free arm. So regardless of whether you’re an aspiring social climber, businessperson dining with prospective clients or just meeting your potential future parents-in-law for a first nervous dinner with your partner’s family , read this one and be warned that in class-conscious Britain food tells a lot about not just where you’re coming from but where you’re going to. And above all, if you’ve an aspiring politician, don’t make the mistake that Peter Mandelson did whist on the campaign trail visiting a fish-and-chip shop in a working class neighborhood when spying the mushy peas and declaring ‘’can I have some of that avocado mousse on the side please ?’

[Violet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did you know that tomatoes, introduced to Europe from the New World, took longer to become popular than potatoes? Or that when forks were introduced, from Italy, they did not immediately become popular as they were seen to be too "effeminate"? Do you want to see the first (and not very good) curry recipes adopted by middle-class housekeepers?

This is a great book to learn all these fun facts - and more - covering the history of food and food practices in Britain, from the Middle Ages to nowadays. The chapter on trends was fascinating - it covered almond milk, and details how Dame Alice, living in 1392, would order 18kg of almonds yearly to make the drink, which was drunk during Lent; the chapter on vegetarians explains how the Church rules on Lent and fast days allowed for food and calves to grow; the chapter on foraging was really interesting too. It was engaging, well-researched and accessible.

[Melissa Surgey · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up. This was a fun and interesting book to dip into, with lots of short chapters covering all manner of foods and customs and social norms associated with eating in Britain. Lots of interesting titbits with either new information or challenging misconceptions. I struggled a little with the structure - whilst I liked the idea of each chapter being about a different food/custom, it meant quite a few parts of history were regularly repeated which grew tiresome towards the end. I also felt the periods of history covered focused quite heavily on the Victorian era and before, with 20th century history brushed over or added as an afterthought. I would have liked to have seen more recent history and pop culture explored in more detail.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was so excited about this book I think my expectations were probably too high! It’s full of interesting information relating to our relationships and history of food in the UK. As a northerner I particularly loved the chapter on gravy. The references back to where food has featured in literature through the ages were great.

I think I might have loved it more if it was structured in a timeline rather than taking each foodstuff chapter by chapter.

[Andrew Brassington · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a much bigger deep dive into the intersections of class and cuisine than I anticipated! From fish and chips to fish knives, cornish pasties to cakes, and even doilies (yes, doilies!) no stone is left unturned. This does present the problem of the book feeling a bit overly long at times, but I very much agree with the binding sentiment of the book, being that the layers of exclusion bound within cuisine are preposterous and that everyone should have access to high quality food.

[Liv Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was excellent! So much food history crammed into one read. Beautifully read (apart from her mispronunciation of Guiseley but I grew up there so would say that 😂) and relaxing to listen to when cooking. Can’t wait to read the other one and find out more. I bloody love food history and find it fascinating 🍔

[Emily Weston · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really interesting and informative. I found it was written in an accessible way which made me want to continually read on and find out more, as well as try out some of the food and recipes mentioned.

[Nicolette Varley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A funny and interestingly written book about food. Who wouldn’t enjoy that? Informative and revealing.

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great book - very funny and informative, but I can’t help feeling like I struggled to read some parts of it and I’m not really sure why?!

[Lucy Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a well-researched and reasonably interesting book, but in my opinion the structure - and over-reliance on literary references - let it down.

[Krystyna Knight · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and extremely detailed social history of food and eating habits in Britain, featuring chapters on subjects such as “Tripe: a social outcast”, “Tea: a now universal magic” and “Doilies, napkins and tablecloths”. Very dense and wordy so, much like a rich desert, best enjoyed in small portions!

[Jasmine Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really interesting read, covering a range of food topics and linking them through history and their origins in Britain. This book is filled with facts and information on all areas of food from ice cream to pork pies. A great read if you enjoy food history.