Fascinating... This is a pleasurable compilation, scholarly but not dry, with sharp imagery, quiet wit and lively personal stories.' -Clarissa Hyman, TLS Utterly delicious... I can't remember the last time I read a food book so interesting and so lively... The range of Vogler's reading is extraordinary... She has cooked up a banquet, and everything on the table is worth tasting at least once.' - The Observer

So utterly fascinating that I read it in great greedy gulps, like a novel. Vogler is incredibly good company as she dismantles pretty much every assumption we make about how we, and other people, eat.' -India Knigh, Sunday Times 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." What was the semiology of garlic cheesecake in the 80s? I don't think Pen Vogler is going to tell us. The entertaining story of British cuisine and the hidden role it plays in our political, social and cultural lives.

Customer reviews

The book is more historical than I expected. Vogler has done a lot of reading, including secondary sources. The famous cookbooks by Hannah Glass, "Meg Dods" and Mrs Cromwell are easily available. She doesn't draw any startling conclusions, and falls for some clichés. The book must have been written at the time of the Cameron "supper" flap. She shows that the word has been around since medieval times, and that supper was a more relaxed and informal version of dinner, eaten either long after dinner or instead of it. So why did everyone get their undergarments in a twist over Rebekah Brook's mention of a "country supper"? Or was it a kitchen supper? A superbly researched romp through food, cooking and class in Britain, looking at everything from brown bread versus white to the dangers of the dinner party. Full of history, Scoff is never heavy, thanks to Vogler's writing style and wit.' -Best Food Books of 2020, The Independent 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.

It is rare that the social journeying of a particular foodstuff can be mapped so clearly. More often there is so much overlap and muddle that even the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, whom Vogler invokes briefly, would have had trouble identifying just where “cultural capital” resides at any particular moment. A snaggy example concerns Cereal Killer, the cafe that opened in London’s East End in 2014 serving branded breakfast cereals to hipsters. Channel 4 did a news piece – a scoffing one, naturally – that attracted the organisation known as Class War, which had a high old time throwing paint and cereal at the cafe and shouting about gentrification. 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. Pen Vogler's history of food in Britain is a feast of little dishes, all of them delicious... She has wise things to say about nation, health and, especially, class, and she even finds room for one or two recipes.' -Dominic Sandbrook, History Books of the Year, Sunday Times 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. Vogler is highly attentive to the linguistics of food and class too. Not just the whiskery stuff about Nancy Mitford being condescending about people who say “serviette” instead of “napkin”, or John Betjeman relegating the fish knife to the lower middle class. She is particularly good on how the upper middle class have stopped giving dinner parties and instead now invite people round to supper. “Supper” sounds cosy and informal and implies that you don’t need to try too hard. It also suggests that you live in the kind of house where the kitchen is not obliged to double up as a home office.

Scoff

Lively and detailed... Scoff is a pacy social history, exploring how foods have fallen in and out of favour and eating habits have moved between classes over centuries.' - New Statesman Taste in food, as Pen Vogler shows in this erudite yet lively compendium, is not just about preferred flavour, but what items in your shopping basket say about who you are or, more precisely, who you aspire to be... Scoff is full of such fascinating, intelligent dissections of familiar foods and culinary practices... Superb.' -Book of the Week' - The Times 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)." With commendable appetite and immense attention to detail Pen Vogler skewers the enduring relationship between class and food in Britain. A brilliant romp of a book that gets to the very heart of who we think we are, one delicious dish at a time.' -Jay Rayner

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. 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. Oh and they charged us the same price for a Virgin Mary as a Bloody Mary which feels outrageous for a glass of spicy tomato juice. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. Gary and Alan (left) Keery, owners of the Cereal Killer Cafe, London, 2015. Photograph: David Levene/The GuardianReading 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! A rich, persuasive diet of social friction, anecdotes and witty observation... It's a book to make the reader both think and salivate.' - Financial Times

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? For all its rich history of foods, I find that sort of cultural material much more interesting (tea sounds common; napkin sounds ridiculous). 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." Has much to say about centuries of Britain's past and its place in the world, and the fact that it's peppered with historical recipes makes it all the more appealing.' - History RevealedIt is a rare moment to catch Vogler scoffing. Mostly she circumvents any suggestion of being a latter-day Mrs Manners by making it clear that what concerns her is less about what to say when invited round to supper in Chipping Norton, and more about what the majority of Britons get to eat on a daily basis. She blames centuries of food snobbery for the fact that we have ended up in the topsy-turvy situation where words such as “fresh”, “local”, “home-made” and “healthy” signify the diet of the wealthy few, while everyone else gets to eat cake – shop-bought and ultra-processed and quite likely to kill you, in one way or another. We had such a mixed experience at Scoff & Banter. The service was friendly and welcoming but slow and awkward - drinks came in drips and drabs, waiter said one thing but then did something else.