Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain

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For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. 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. 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 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.

Always entertaining... Scoff shows how British people developed a very convoluted relationship to food.' -Sheila Dillon, Mail on Sunday 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)." 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. Sharp, rich and superbly readable... Vogler is sensitive to language, and she wields it brilliantly herself. Bons mot jostle with the kind of truth-skewering opinions that win reputations for restaurant critics... Ultimately, Vogler reveals why we eat what we do today - and it is fascinating.' - Sunday Times

Her writing style is easy to read, but she sprinkles a chapter on the Roast Beef of Old England with words like "bullish" and "beef up". Oh, ha ha. Scoff is entertaining and thought provoking in equal measure - a thoroughly engaging read... It certainly made me reassess how I have viewed certain foods in the past.' -Sam Bilton 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! 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." For all its rich history of foods, I find that sort of cultural material much more interesting (tea sounds common; napkin sounds ridiculous).

Excellent... A fun read... with some fabulous facts, tied together in an engaging and thought-provoking way.' -BBC History

Scoff

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 The entertaining story of British cuisine and the hidden role it plays in our political, social and cultural lives. 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? It 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. Pen Vogler provides a fascinating social history of British food through the centuries and throws in a selection of enticing recipes from the past for good measure.' -History Books of the Year, Daily Mail