Trophy Cabinets (Kitchens #1)
Aspirational kitchens are an integral part of our food media, but where did they come from? And what does it mean for those who can never attain a beautiful, cookbook-worth kitchen? Design historian Professor Deborah Sugg Ryan explores what came before the fitted kitchen, and how the room itself has shape-shifted drastically over the 20th century. And food writer and author Ruby Tandoh considers the aspirational kitchen in food writing.
Episode 1 of Kitchens, a podcast series by Lecker about the most important room in the home.
Credits
Lecker is written and produced by Lucy Dearlove.
Thanks to the contributors on this episode, Professor Deborah Sugg Ryan and Ruby Tandoh.
There’s also a print zine featuring original essays and illustrations about kitchens released alongside this audio series. Buy a copy now at leckerpodcast.com
Original music was composed for the series by Jeremy Warmsley, with additional music also by Jeremy, and by Blue Dot Sessions.
Research and production assistance from Nadia Mehdi.
Additional guest research by Sarah Woolley.
If you’ve enjoyed what you heard on this episode, or generally on Lecker, please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening, and telling a friend about it!
And if you’ve really enjoyed listening to this episode, or are a big fan of the podcast in general already, please consider becoming a patron of the podcast at patreon.com/leckerpodcast
FULL TRANSCRIPT (edited by Nadia Medhi)
[0.00]: [Sound of gas hob clicking, then bursting into flame]
Wall mounted cabinets, wipe clean work surface, fridge, oven, hob, sink.
[More hob clicking and a shuffling beat plays underneath Lucy’s voice, the door to a kitchen cabinet is shut rhythmically].
Maybe a table, often not. Somehow we’ve ended up with this unspoken agreement that a kitchen isn’t a kitchen unless it looks like this.
I’ve been thinking a lot about kitchens over the past four years. Since I started Lecker in 2016, I’ve spent a lot more time than I did previously in other people’s kitchens. Before then it had never really occurred to me how similar they all are.
We have different lives; different tastes; different needs. We cook different foods. Why don’t we have different kitchens?
[Hob clicks and bursts into flame again, the noises of the kitchen intensify; cupboard doors are shut, cutlery is rattled, pots are clashed, a collage of voices talking about kitchens begins to speak over jaunty lounge music. Each speaker is separated by a dash].
You go in the back door - It’s a really small kitchen, it’s tiny - It’s like a tiny little box - Gas hob - So you have the stove - Worktop - Counter - Sink - A small fridge - Underneath the draining board was the gas fridge - If more than one person’s in there, everyone starts to get a bit flustered. That’s the general vibe.
This is Kitchens, a podcast series by Lecker, about the most important room in the home. I’m Lucy Dearlove.
They left out any element of human emotion and emotional intelligence in what people needed from kitchens. - This kitchen is not, it’s not suitable for me, it doesn’t enable me to cook. - Kitchens are more clones of each other than living rooms or bedrooms are. Why? Why is that?
**********************
Episode 1 - Trophy Cabinets
[Opening music ends].
The 20th century was a period where the kitchen went through an unprecedented amount of accelerated dramatic change. Which makes sense, because it was a period of accelerated dramatic change for housing in general.
Deborah Sugg Ryan [DSR]: I, um, bought a house in 1995. That was a time capsule, a house built in 1934….never changed.
[Tuba music begins to play underneath DSR]
This is Professor Deborah Sugg Ryan. Deborah’s a design historian and she’s particularly interested in the history of the home – and especially the kitchen.
DSR: What was really interesting about that house is originally it just had two reception rooms and the rear reception room...I mean this is the point where ranges start going out of fashion and so it probably would have had a gas cooker but it had a small kitchen extension that had been built in the 1940s. And when we moved in to the house, all it had in that small kitchen at the back was a big Belfast sink, an enamel-topped table and a space where you could see on the wall - because the wall was filthy - had stood a kitchen cabinet and a small gas cooker. And that is how I lived in that house for a long time.
Even this one very personal example tells us a lot about the changes in 20th century housing.
[Music fades out].
It tells us that even well into the 1930s new homes were being constructed without a purpose-built kitchen - just the two reception rooms as Deborah describes. But it also tells us that it wasn’t long before a separate kitchen felt necessary to the people who lived there, and so that was added on to keep up with the rapid change that was going on. And it also tells us about an extremely popular predecessor to the fitted kitchen that we know so well.
DSR: There are some real differences with what happens in the UK with the development of kitchens in the 20th century to the rest of Europe, and other countries like the United States in particular. And the main difference in the UK is that the fitted kitchen is adopted much much later than it is in other European countries and in the USA. What we have instead in Britain is the adoption of what was usually called the kitchen cabinet, which had its origins in the American Hoosier cabinet. And fitted kitchens don't really become commonplace until the 1960s. in Britain. They're available from the 1930s. But they just don't take off in the same way that they do in other countries.
[Tuba music begins again].
Kitchen Cabinets were made in various materials.
DSR: So they were usually made up of very nice wood, you could get oak ones and they would have lots of very nice enamelling on them as well.
There was a familiarity about them that reminded people of kitchen furniture they were used to.
DSR: So if you think of a traditional kitchen dresser [5.00], it's a bit like the kitchen dresser but without open shelves, so you’ll have cupboards at the bottom.
But they were technologically advanced for the era.
[Trumpet melody begins to play above tuba].
DSR: And typically one of the cupboards will be a meat-safe; will be lined with tin or lead to keep the meat cool.
And they incorporated aspects of the fitted kitchen that we really take for granted today, but in very compact early form.
DSR: And you will have a work surface that you can pull out and that is normally enamel.
But they also had features that haven’t really lasted the duration, sadly.
DSR: What you’ll have on the shelves are labelled storage jars for things like sugar, the amazing flour hopper, this funnel-shaped thing that you put your flour in and it can dispense flour into your mixing bowl because this is the era where people are baking, baking their own bread often.
[Music fades out].
The kitchen cabinet really takes hold after the First World War. It’s available in Britain from 1919 developed by G.E.W. Crowe, who was a Canadian servicemen who came over to Britain in the First World War. And he starts importing these Hoozier type cabinets from Canada and then develops his own business called Easiwork, manufacturing them in the UK, and they soon become available in lots of kitchen companies. And names actually we're really familiar with now, like Hygena, started off developing kitchen cabinets and they just take hold!
Lucy: So why were they so popular?
DSR: Well, I think one of the things that we have to remember is that housing conditions were often pretty cramped. So if you think of an ordinary working person and the kinds of choices they had available; if you were living in a house of multiple occupation, where you had to have a kind of makeshift kitchen in a room and you're not necessarily going to put in plumbing in that room, then a kitchen cabinet is like a whole kitchen in a cupboard.
[Intrigue-building glockenspiel music plays].
Described in adverts as ‘being designed to lighten the housewife’s burden’ and even ‘the housewife’s mecca’, the kitchen cabinet was an early response in Britain to some of the conversations going on at the time about efficiency in the home. And it had the advantage that it fitted into all different types of housing. And during the interwar period, the “cramped” homes Deborah mentioned were targeted in a programme of slum clearance, and there was a huge nationwide house building effort.
“This was the period during which the idea of Britain as a nation of homeowners became established.” writes Deborah in her book Ideal Homes: Uncovering the history and design of the interwar house. Almost 3 million homes were built for private sale during this time.
And this was also the beginning of what John Boughton, author of Municipal Dreams, has called ‘the first great age of council house building.’ Although this had begun in the previous century, it hadn’t been done on anything like this scale before - construction of over one million so-called ‘homes fit for heroes’ was underway.
DSR: So when you start getting the development of social housing, and that starts setting out specifications for the house, and again, it's usually the kitchen cabinet that is in that social housing, not the fitted kitchen.
The term kitchen actually is really interesting...there's a fantastic mass observation report done during the second world war, an inquiry into people's homes. And one of the things they discuss is the way that the word kitchen means different things [to different people]. So often what people will have is a small room at the back of the house with a sink, where they're doing all the dirty work of the kitchen; where they're preparing vegetables, where they are doing the washing up afterwards, and if they're doing their laundry at home they’re doing their laundry in there. And they are living and cooking in a room that they probably call the living room.
[Music ends].
It was an influential government report composed by the Tudor Walters Committee, published in 1918, that initially set standards for social housing in the following Housing Acts. Tudor Walters was a Liberal MP who was heavily influenced by the Garden City Movement and was a strong believer in spacious, low density housing developments. The report was a reaction to how poor housing in cities at the time was affecting people’s health; [10.00] it stipulated three rooms up and downstairs, and “a larder and bathroom were essential”. The report also made specific recommendations about where the cooking would be done in different styles of new homes. There were various blueprints for this depending on the type of housing, but generally this specified a scullery separate to the living room for cooking and washing up - the dirty work that Deborah mentions.
DSR: So there are some real changes into this kind of shift into the kitchen as the place where you *just* cook where it's more compact where you don't sit and eat - because this sort of kitchen living arrangement that of course is so desirable now with open plan was actually seen as a much more working class thing, so you start getting that separation of cooking and dining. It's really interesting. So the kitchen cabinet you can see is quite a flexible bit of furniture, because it can sit in this living room with the range, with an armchair with the kitchen table. Or as you start moving into a smaller, more dedicated kitchen space, it can move in there.
[Soft piano music begins].
Before 1900 in Britain, Mrs Beeton was one of the mostly highly regarded authorities on domestic matters. Her Book Of Household Management was published in 1861 and sold 60,000 copies in its first year. In it, she made references to the desired ‘sufficient remoteness’ of the kitchen from the rest of the house so that members of the family, visitors or guests of the family may not perceive the ‘odour incidental to cooking’, or ‘hear the noise of culinary operations.’
So it’s hardly surprising that, as the country became more prosperous and home ownership started to go up, there was a push for lower income households to leave behind their shared kitchen and living spaces, and shut the smells and sounds of cooking away in its own separate room.
The early 20th century marked the first time in Britain’s history that owner occupation was both aspirational and actually attainable. And so there was a related rise in interest in household consumer goods, and whole industries rose up around this.
DSR: The thing that really got me into design in the kitchen was I catalogued photo albums documenting the Ideal Home Exhibition.
[Music fades].
As suggested from its title Deborah’s book, Ideal Homes, takes as its starting point The Ideal Home Exhibition, which was founded in 1908, originally as a marketing event for the Daily Mail, and is still going today (though was cancelled for the past couple of years due to the pandemic). In the tradition of events like the Great Exhibition of the Victorian era, it was this huge showcase of the latest innovations, products and future ideas for the home, and it came at a really crucial time for this shift in identity from a nation of renters to a nation of home-owners. In 1914 there was 10% owner occupation, but by 1938 this had risen to 32%.
DSR: One of the kind of iconic things at the exhibition are the show homes and people queue to go around the show homes. And of course the room they’re usually the most interested in is the kitchen.
[Piano music with gentle drumbeat underneath begins].
DSR: A kitchen is a space in a house that changes a lot. It’s also the place as well where people experience new technologies and a kind of sense of modernity. We sometimes get a very false view of how people live and the history of design in particular through television dramas, they usually have fitted kitchens far too quickly. What the Ideal Home Exhibition does is gives you a kind of window into popular taste...into how people actually lived but also about their aspirations as well.
[Music fades]
When we consider the history of the kitchen, and its design and architecture, it’s also important to look at what people were cooking – and what their aspirations around cooking were at the time. And where better to look than cookbooks?
The academic Nicola Humble, who wrote a history of cookbooks in Britain called Culinary Pleasures, draws attention to the national relief at the end of the First World War, leading to what was essentially a prioritising of pleasure, and a resulting interest in the domestic and cooking especially. She describes a “veritable barrage” of domestic literature addressed to middle class women published in the interwar period. [15.00] One of the writers who emerged around this time, Ambrose Heath – who wrote over 70 books about food from the 1930s to the 1960s – identified a new young suburban class who were looking for guidance on how to live their ‘new lifestyle’. They were first generation homeowners and were likely never to have lived anywhere with ‘gleaming bathrooms and kitchens’, so they turned to cookbooks, as well as the growing mass media and events like the Ideal Home Exhibition, for guidance.
This was a complicated situation which I’m not going to unpack fully here, but what’s widely known as the ‘servant problem’ was really impactful too. For various reasons over the beginning of the early 20th century, households who had previously been able to employ a full staff were no longer able to do so. And so there’s definitely an element of middle class women being quite sensitively addressed in this new wave of cookbooks as well. Books like Catherine Ives’s ‘When The Cook Is Away’, published in 1928, allowed a household’s staff situation to remain ambiguous, but also provided a useful resource for middle and upper class women who had never had to cook extensively for their families before. And there was definitely a framing of food planning and preparation as – as Nicola Humble puts it – “a mode of self-display and self-improvement far too interesting to be left to servants, even if there were any to be had.”
[Piano and drum music begins, the sound of kitchen noises plays alongside this].
The rapid change of the early 20th century in and around the cooking and living situation in Britain slowed to a halt around the Second World War. There was a shortage of both material and labour for construction, and rationing meant that there was very little opportunity for aspirational cooking.
Post war, house building took on even greater urgency. On top of the country’s previous housing concerns, 475,000 homes had been destroyed in the Blitz.
[Music fades]
And rationing continued into the 1950s, so it was in the 60s and 70s when things really started to change for aspiration in the kitchen.
And there’s a number of factors in this that we can definitely count. One was the Parker Morris Report, which was released in 1961. The minimum space standards for housing laid out in the report became mandatory for all new town housing in 1967 and all council housing in 1969, and they stayed so until 1980.
The room under the greatest scrutiny in the report was undoubtedly the kitchen. It noted that, in preparing food, most moves took place between sink and cooker and work surface and cooker, rather than between food stores and work surface, so a kitchen should be arranged accordingly to make sense of that work pattern. It also stated a preference for L shaped, U shaped or straight line galley kitchens, and it noted that only 5% of homes they’d studied for the report already had an arrangement like this. I’m going to go into more detail about this in the next episode, but many specifics in this section of the report made direct reference to the work done in various parts of the world from the mid 19th to the mid 20th century on design of the labour saving kitchen, which had a lasting influence on the fitted kitchen as we know it today. It had become a real priority to reduce the drudgery of household labour for women.
But there were many other factors too. There were shifts in manufacturing and retailing that contributed to this growth being possible: a history of the furniture company MFI – which was established in 1963 – describes how the company’s early suppliers were largely located outside of the UK. Importing the goods that they sold allowed them to meet demand and keep prices low as Britain did not produce enough beech (the wood used for inexpensive timber) on its own. And this effort to keep prices low meant that people who never would have been able to afford bespoke craftsman-made cabinetry could buy the mass produced furniture at prices that worked for them.
[Music begins].
At some point over the mid to late 20th century, [20.00] aspirations shifted from efficiency and function to style and aesthetics. I know I said at the start that many of our kitchens look the same, and that’s true, in function and concept. But it’s also true that not all fitted kitchens are created equal.
In an essay called ‘Not Just for Cooking Any More’, Emily Contois, a professor at the University of Tulsa, writes: “Once a space for cooking alone, the trophy kitchen now takes on a new meaning that is often disassociated from cooking and food preparation. As function has become secondary, status has become primary and the kitchen has emerged as a potent status symbol among both middle and upper class demographics.”
Emily credits the idea of a Trophy Kitchen in the specific way we understand it to MTV Cribs in the 90s…think 50 Cent in his mansion with six kitchens, most of them unused. And the director Nancy Meyers, with the big beautiful bright kitchens in her films like Something’s Gotta Give. I’ve been thinking about it though, and I think in the UK when it comes to trophy kitchens, I think the lineage can be traced to a generation of cooks who emerged on our screens and on our kitchen bookshelves in the 90s: particularly Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson.
[Music ends].
The approach of these cooks and food writers was in many ways to democratise and demystify home cooking, with the intention to make it both attainable and pleasurable. And their early TV series served to emphasise their relatability; the first ever episode of How To Eat showed Nigella dropping off her son late to nursery, then some casual behind the scenes of her getting her makeup done. But her kitchen is much less down to earth: spacious, furnished with a kitchen island and professional grade equipment hanging from the ceiling.
Another interesting addition to the burgeoning ‘TV chef’ category of this time was Nigel Slater.
In Culinary Pleasures, Nicola Humble talks about Nigel Slater being the successor to Ambrose Heath – in recognising a new young generation of people who had experienced a shift in identity quite rapidly and were living away from home for the first time, without certain basic culinary skills that previous generations had taken for granted. Real Fast Food, for example, is a key example of a shift away from the glamour and excess of the restaurant-led nouvelle cuisine cookbooks in the 1980s. Nigel even writes in it: “I have a small kitchen. It has probably less room than most larders. Cupboard space is at a premium and large bottles of olive and vinegar tend to migrate to the already cluttered work surfaces. Rolling out pastry, or making bread demands that everything be relocated to the floor. This is not my dream kitchen.”
I find it really interesting to reflect on this idea, 20, 25 years later, when for me now Nigel Slater represents an unattainable aspiration in terms of food and kitchens. For me, as much as his name conjures simple, delicious wholesome recipes, it also conjures images of Japanese ceramics racked up tastefully in his stunning multi-million pound London townhouse. Like, of course Nigel Slater would write an accessible recipe book, when his own kitchen left much to be desired. But contrast what he wrote in Real Fast Food with the introduction to the first Kitchen Diaries book, published in 2005, where he acknowledges his much improved kitchen:
[Smooth music begins to play].
“My kitchen is not large, but a trio of skylights and the fact that the doors open up to the garden make it a hugely pleasurable place in which to cook. It has no fancy cookers, no battery of expensive equipment, yet it has been thoughtfully and intelligently designed. The space works perfectly. Good kitchens are not about size, they are about ergonomics and light.”
Financially, socially, professionally, he’s clearly in a very different place so it makes sense that his writing would shift accordingly. He’s experienced a change in his personal circumstances. But I just think this is really interesting in terms of a writer who was originally positioned as very relatable. And this change in personal circumstances can completely change how they’re perceived by the reader.
[Music ends].
Ruby Tandoh (RT): Like, cause I grew up reading Nigel Slater and Nigella Lawson. And they were my kind of reference points, and that's what I thought food writing was. And that's not to have a go at them, because I think they inhabit these specific bubbles that they do and I still really, really enjoy their recipes and their writing. But I thought that's all that there was, I thought that was the only option for how a cookbook could look, and how it would function. And I thought that that presented a kind of vision of normality that I should be aspiring to as well, even though it wasn't my normal at all.
[25.00] Ruby Tandoh is a food writer; she’s the author of four books, including ‘Eat Up’, and the forthcoming Cook As You Are. She’s one of my very favourite food writers, and one of the things I love most about her work is her inclusive and non aspirational approach to recipes and food, which has been strongly influenced by her personal experiences of cooking – and of kitchens.
RT: There were definitely examples of other food writers that I grew up with. I think my mum used to cook loads from the Moosewood Cookbook, you know the illustrated ones? They're very cute. And like Rose Elliot’s vegetarian cookbooks and stuff, you know, the paperbacks that you used to be able to get for a couple of quid and they'd like really ratty and yellow but so functional. And because they're not presenting a specific vision of how the dishes will look, or what kind of kitchen they're made in, or what dishes they’re served on, or anything like that, it actually really opens you up to, I don't know, to the possibility of….what might this look like when I make it? What might this look like for me? And how might this fit into my kitchen?
[Music begins].
For me, there’s a few things that make a cookbook aspirational. It could be the writing itself - talking of popping down to the farmers market for fresh figs on a weekday morning, or the assumption that a reader has endless space and an arsenal of expensive kitchen gadgets to work with. Often though, it’s the visual aspects to a cookbook that make it more aspirational. Even when the text assures readers that they don’t need a Thermomix or an ice cream maker, the photos tell a very different story.
And this kitchen often goes unacknowledged in recipe books. I mean credit to Nigel Slater for talking about his own kitchens so openly, and y’know, explicitly. It’s often purely a stage, a set. But, unspoken, it creates this assumption on some level that the reader, too, has a life where a beautiful kitchen like this is attainable. And even Ruby herself, a couple of cookbooks into her career, found herself in this situation.
[Music ends].
RT: Then the second one was filmed in a home, sorry photographed, rather, in a home. And it was a beautiful home. It wasn't my home, though. And it does change the way that you see your recipes, like I really, really enjoyed seeing my recipes in such a beautiful setting. It’s so minimalist, that home. And there was just so much light and stuff like that. But then I found that when I was trying to do Instagram posts or whatever to promote the book, I couldn't recreate anything like those photos, anything like that aesthetic in the kitchens I was in, because there's just not the light, and there's not the space and stuff like that. And you kind of realize there's a bit of dissonance between the message that the book is sending out and the realities of how it was made – and how it will probably look like for readers as well.
Yeah, so even you can't live up to your own, like, aspirational image.
RT: That's it. [Laughs]
It’s really striking to me how Ruby’s writing consciously makes room for all kinds of kitchens. She actively addresses that her readers may not have sole claim to their own pristine, perfectly configured kitchens. “Shove your flatmate’s dirty dishes to the corner of the kitchen so that you can sit and enjoy your spaghetti hoops in blissful, uncluttered calm,” she writes in Eat Up. And it’s clear she’s writing from personal experience.
RT: I mean to be honest, I went on Bake Off like many years ago now, and I was doing all the prep for that in in like my bedroom. In this....in honestly the most disgusting kind of rented room in Kilburn in North London. And honestly, it was disgusting. And the kitchen was like tiny and there were so many mice, so I would do all the prep on this table in my bedroom. I'd knead dough and I dunno, I even made filo pastry which was quite extraordinary under the circumstances.
When renting is acknowledged in cookbooks, it’s often portrayed as a temporary situation, like in those many student cookbooks you can get. Something to wait out while you rack up the deposit for your first ‘real’ home. But with so many people now expected to be locked out of home ownership for good – one in three millennials according to a 2018 report by the Resolution Foundation – this seems like an exclusionary approach.
RT: I was always very aware of, like, the limitations of the kitchens that we can end up in, by chance, sometimes by bad luck, as well. So I kind of was very aware of that. And that just naturally, kind of inserted boundaries, onto what kinds of things I could cook, how I could cook them, how easy it was to source things, and to make things work and to store them as well. So I was very aware of those boundaries. And when you have the boundaries, sometimes obviously, that's a nice thing, because you can be creative within them. And it also made me really aware that, you know, if I was making a recipe, say, that required a food processor or something like that, that's not something that I've had for the most of the last, what, 10 years or so, [30.00] because it takes up so much space. So it's definitely something I've always been aware of, I think. Less so at the start and kind of more so as I've grown into my, I guess my style of recipe writing and the interests I have within it.
I think there’s an added importance in Ruby writing like this given that...her readership is really young. And obviously people can get all sorts out of and enjoy food writing that doesn’t relate to their personal circumstances, but it seems surprising that there isn’t more food writing that actively acknowledges the living situations of younger generations in rented homes.
RT: It’s funny you mention that as that’s something that I only realized, literally last week, because I was having to have some meetings with people. And they were like, who do you think reads your books? And I was like, you know, actually, it's people younger than me. And it's the first time I'd ever realized that it was completely new to me.
Lucy: That’s so funny! What was it that made it click for you?
RT: It was just being asked! It was just being asked in that really straightforward way and something clicked and it was really actually lovely, because I always carry around this real embarrassment like: Oh, my writing’s not very, it's not very clever. And the recipes aren't very, you know, innovative, and they're not like proper foodie recipes and stuff like that. And I always feel a bit embarrassed about that. And then I remember, oh, wait a minute. I'm not meant to be writing those things. That's not who I'm writing for. It's actually fine. So that was actually a relief. I'm pleased to say
Lucy: Wow, yeah. That’s quite a weight to carry around. What do you think makes you feel like that?
RT: To be honest, I think it's kind of situational. You know, as, as a food writer, you know, the people that I follow online and I respect the work of and engage with are people who are really, really into food. So, you know, the recipes that they talk about, and that they try from cookbooks are going to be the clever ones. and the more involved ones. And, you know, that's great, but I kind of need to remember that I'm not really writing for other food writers, I'm writing for people who might be less confident in the kitchen. And yeah, I think realizing that that's actually what I'm trying to do has just made everything make so much more sense. Yeah.
I should stress that it’s completely wild to me, and it feels really sad that Ruby feels embarrassed at times about her writing. But, maybe it’s not that surprising given the class demographics of British food writing as a whole. I can’t help feeling that Ruby’s self-conscious about writing in this younger, more inclusive way because it really stands out in the food world, which tends to centre the white middle class experience as normative. And there’s also this sense of the ideal nuclear family – and that’s so present in the kitchen. So, sharing kitchens is not something considered aspirational or part of the ‘trophy kitchen’ dream, but it really is a reality for so many people renting their homes with all kinds of different outcomes – and is something that Ruby often confronts in her work.
There’s a chapter in her book Eat Up which opens with her making a huge elaborate birthday cake for her university flatmate which is perhaps unwanted, unwelcome, as a reader we’re not quite clear what’s going on here. It’s some sort of power move, but we’re not quite sure who really holds the power here. Over just three pages, Ruby weaves the story of a fraught relationship, in which their shared kitchen forms the stage for the ups and downs. It’s one of the most striking things I’ve ever read about sharing houses. So much food writing assumes the reader has ownership over their own kitchen, and this highlights the exact opposite.
RT: I think what I was trying to get at with that was, that it's so difficult to communicate with people that you live with, unless they're like, well, maybe even especially if they're your family, but you know, ..Especially if the people that you 're sharing with at uni or something like that, or people you've been thrown into on a flat sharing website or whatever, it's difficult. And I think it was about how that communication ends up going around. Like it's never to the point, it’s always like, you're going to communicate through some other means of asserting control or whatever. And I think for me and her, it was a lot about food. And I can see what a pain I was like, from my side of things, like why did I bake her a huge birthday cake that she didn't ask for? And I think maybe she even actively didn't want? In order to try and like force some kind of intimacy, like that was my fucked up behaviour. And then she kind of asserted her own control in different ways as well. But I mean, it just is all about power struggles, isn't it and kind of wanting closeness with people. And also, you know, when you're at such close quarters, wanting to distance yourself from people because it feels so suffocating as well.
[35.00] Lucy: Yeah, completely. I think it really kind of spoke to me, because of the experiences that I've had in flatshares. And like, I've always felt like,I didn't really want to take up space in the kitchen. Like, it's only as I've got older, and I live with my partner now that, like, I, I'm happy to take up that space, because there's like, there isn't that kind of contested space where somebody else might need it, and you have to negotiate like, I'd kind of rather just take myself out of that.
RT: Yeah.
Lucy: And I think that like, that feels amongst like other sort of food people that I know, like, that's quite unusual, like the people that I know, and whose work I admire, like, I feel like they're the kind of people to cook a big meal and take control and be like, yeah, yeah, I'll take care of this, whereas I'm like, I'll just get my yoghurt out the fridge and eat it in my bedroom.
RT: That’s so sad Lucy, the thought of you having a furtive yoghurt is really the saddest thing.
Lucy: Isn't it tragic?
RT: Speaking of the dynamics of kind of taking up space in a kitchen and stuff like that, and how that impacts your cooking….Oh my god, like, since then I feel like I go through ebbs and flows. Like sometimes, I will be the person in a flatshare who is happy to be in there. And I'm like, Oh, I'm cooking something bla bla bla. But actually, a lot of the time I am absolutely infuriatingly passive. Like, I hate myself for it. I think other people hate me for it as well. You know, like, I'll sneak down in the dead of night and get myself like, some dinner that I've actually wanted for like 12 hours now, but I've been too scared to do it. Like I hate it about myself. And I'm determined to change this about myself. Because I think when you give up your your claim to space, you feel like you're doing everyone a favour, but you're really not. It can be such a kind of backwards way of actually making everyone else feel like they're taking up too much space and like they're doing too much.
LD: God, this is so true.
RT: It's fraught, isn't it? It’s too much.
[Music begins].
Whenever I go into a new kind of living setup, I like to just share straight off the bat that I am not as good at cooking as people are gonna think I am. Like I get that out really early. And I make sure I set the bar really low by having like lots of spaghetti hoops on toast and stuff for a while. I absolutely go mad if I feel like people were expecting too much of me in the kitchen, I am not a chef. I am like a home cook. And if anything...my strength is sharing how I cook normal, kind of simple home cooking dishes. I am not going to amaze anyone with like, my Heston style shit. Like I have to get that out right away.
Lucy: What what are the responses to that usually like?
RT: Do you know what? It really infuriates me, and people don't believe it, like people think that I'm doing like a false modesty and I'm absolutely not. It. Oh god, it really winds me up, I just want to be able to...you know what, when I'm cooking for myself day to day, a lot of the time, I'll just roast a load of vegetables and paneer in the oven and make a curry with it. Like that's, that's where my energy levels are at most of the time. And if people expect me to be doing culinary fireworks, they are so mistaken.
In Culinary Pleasures Nicola Humble writes about the difference between Delia Smith – who she explicitly calls ‘uninspirational’ – and Nigel Slater as one of process vs pleasure. There is little aspiration in process, but pleasure is extremely aspirational. And I love that Ruby’s writing goes out of its way to find pleasure and joy, in moments and situations that perhaps aren’t considered traditionally aspirational.
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RT: I mean, to be honest, if you've always lived in rented kitchens, you end up feeling like if you move the baking ingredients from one cupboard to another, you feel like you've really like changed world order, you know what I mean? Like it doesn't take much to excite you and to feel like, I've really claimed this space, which is nice, you know. You set a low bar for yourself, it means you can only ever be quite chuffed with what you've achieved.
Lucy: What's been your favourite kitchen you've ever had?
RT: I was thinking about this, it's difficult. I think maybe in Sheffield, I was living in this one house. It was like this tiny little terraced house and it had this little kitchen at the back that overlooked a garden. And it had like a really messy lawn with loads of cat poos in the garden. And I could see the washing line when I was doing the washing up and I thought, this is fucking heaven. I really did feel that way. I couldn't believe my luck. So that's maybe the nicest kitchen of recent years.
Lucy: And what was it about it that made it so nice?
RT: I mean, in many ways it was ghastly. like it was really hideous. It hadn’t aged well, like it had like these weird dark wood cabinets – not even like, I've seen you talking [40.00] about the pine as, you know, the aesthetic of the cheap landlord today. This was like the cheap landlord of yesteryear’s kitchen. But it was great. I just loved it. I felt like I was able to make it a space that felt like mine, even though it was rented. So yeah, it just felt like home.
Ruby’s new book, Cook As You Are, comes out in October this year. Its subtitle is Recipes for Real life, Hungry Cooks and Messy Kitchens. And instead of photographs alongside the recipes, it has beautiful illustrations by Sinae Park.
RT: It's about not being aspirational, it’s about kind of accepting the situation that you have. Like, what kind of foods can you afford to eat? What kind of foods do you like to eat? What are you able to prepare? Do you have the ability to stand for a lot of time? Do you have loads of patience? Do you have a kid to look after...all of these things kind of shape the the diet that you're going to end up eating. And one of those things is, is the kitchen and the equipment that you have in that kitchen. So that was central to this. And I had that in mind every step of the way.
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[Credits music begins to play]
Lecker is written and produced by me, Lucy Dearlove.
Thanks to my contributors on this episode, Professor Deborah Sugg Ryan and Ruby Tandoh.
There’s also a print zine featuring original essays and illustrations about kitchens released alongside this audio series. Buy a copy now at leckerpodcast.com
Original music was composed for the series by Jeremy Warmsley, with additional music also by Jeremy, and by Blue Dot Sessions
Research and production assistance from Nadia Mehdi.
Additional guest research by Sarah Woolley.
If you’ve enjoyed what you heard on this episode, or generally on Lecker, please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening, and telling a friend about it!
And if you’ve really enjoyed listening to this episode, or are a big fan of the podcast in general already, please consider becoming a patron of the podcast at patreon.com/leckerpodcast
I don’t want to get too beggy on this but I’ve made this series and funded it myself in my own time, around a full time job and I’m really delighted to be able to do that, and I consider myself very lucky to be in a position to be able to make it like this. But I would love to be able to release episodes more often, and basically for that, I need it to make more money. So, if that is something that you’d be in a position to be able to do, it would be hugely, hugely appreciated.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Kitchens. On the next episode:
you know, someone who doesn't know us very well. If they come into the house, they would make certain assumptions based on the fact that you probably even my neighbors, the fact that they see me in the kitchen with a tea towel over my shoulder, or serving dinner. I'm very aware that they will be making assumptions, probably about what happens in the bedroom, and they're wrong. [Laughs]
I felt, I think what I felt was regret, I felt a deep sense of regret, a deep sense of, you know, I deprived myself of something for so long, because of the connotations or what I thought, like, you know, everybody needs to eat, I think it's important to everybody to learn how to cook.