Hungry by Grace Dent and Scoff by Pen Vogler

Hungry by Grace Dent shares many thematic similarities with A Half-Baked Concept by Olivia Potts in that they’re each memoirs in regards to the joys of meals, beginning out in aggressive careers in London and troublesome household circumstances. Whereas Potts’ memoir detailed her enrolment on the Cordon Bleu culinary faculty patisserie course after deciding to not pursue a profession as a barrister following her mom’s sudden loss of life, Dent’s is in regards to the childhood nostalgia of low-cost beige consolation meals within the Nineteen Eighties, discovering her ft as a journalist in her 2os and her father’s well being issues together with vascular dementia.

Dent might be finest recognized within the UK at this time as a choose on the BBC sequence MasterChef. Since writing her first common restaurant column lower than a decade in the past, she has made a reputation for herself as the perfect form of critic – a completely unpretentious one: “When Heston Blumenthal exhibits up making a risotto utilizing a Dyson Airblade and a conical flask of formaldehyde, I nonetheless assume: Use a pan, mate. Cease dicking about.” Unsurprisingly, Dent’s observational humour is constantly good, whether or not it’s about her childhood in Cumbria the place the arrival of the large Asda in Carlisle was the occasion of the last decade if not the century, writing for the scholar newspaper on the College of Stirling or the folks she labored with within the places of work of trend magazines “with names like Taffeta Flinty-Wimslow”. She additionally writes movingly about her household – as a young person, she found she has half-siblings on her dad’s aspect and when his well being begins to say no, she spends increasingly time again in Cumbria, and again in Toby Carvery of all locations. ‘Hungry’ is a nostalgic, poignant and really humorous memoir.

The twin which means of the title of Scoff by Pen Vogler makes it a very apt one for a guide with the subtitle ‘A Historical past of Meals and Class in Britain’. It gallops by means of the historical past of conventional British delicacies (together with roast beef, Cornish pasties and Christmas pudding), adopted nationwide dishes (turkey, curry and ice cream amongst many others) and the meals which have been topic to fads and fashions (gin and avocados inevitably function right here) with examples spanning from the medieval interval all the way in which as much as final yr’s lockdown stockpiling of pasta.

Vogler exhibits how most elements of the tradition of meals in Britain are carefully related to every kind of social class points. The whole lot from how folks use cutlery, to the time of day they eat, to the vocabulary they use to explain meals, to the place they purchase meals and which eating places they frequent can usually reveal quite a bit about an individual’s aspirations and prejudices. The straightforward act of sharing a meal with somebody will due to this fact see us subconsciously make lightning-fast judgements about their social class. British delicacies has by no means had a superb fame overseas, but it surely’s clear that as a nation we’re fairly obsessive about consuming, at the least when it comes to what it reveals about social standing if not the meals itself essentially. It’s no surprise that the nationwide debate on how the phrase “scone” must be pronounced and whether or not milk ought to go in first or final will proceed to be argued over for a while to return.

This is a wonderful social historical past of Britain, entertaining and informative in equal measure. I’ve shunned utilizing food-related puns on this weblog publish till now, however please enable me to say that I devoured each of those books and so they had been scrumptious and undoubtedly not bland. Extra, please.