Common: non-U food

How could some foods be 'common' and others 'posh'? Just as with clothing, houses and cars, anything that smacks of trying too hard will compromise status. These are symptoms of insecurity or of trying to cover something up. In chicken nuggets, for example, we are spared the reality of the chicken's carcass. This is dishonest and therefore common.

As is:

Anything on an oval plate

Anything where the cook seems to have tried too hard or with too many ingredients or stacking

Any dish made easy to 'feed' from rather than eat from, ie without cutlery while watching television

Anything not in season

Anything microwaved

Quartered tomatoes, particularly serrated and particularly not in salad

Onion rings

All potatoes in non-recognisable shapes such as croquette, oven chips and above all Smash

Minted lamb

The word 'cereal'. It should be 'cornflakes' whether they are or not

Farmed fish (particularly salmon)

All fish not in recognisable fish shapes (however, posh children eat fish fingers every day)

Trout with almonds

Lemon wedges (the word) not the actual lemon quarter

Crisps

Sprigs of parsley as a garnish (either use a lot of flat-leafed parsley in the dish itself or none at all). Ditto paper hats on rack of lamb or radishes in the shape of flowers

Salad cream

The word 'meal'

Cheesecake and other mucked-about food such as apple strudel

Home-made cappuccino with non-dairy aerosol 'cream'

Sweetcorn off the cob

White pepper unless with cockles

Philadelphia with breadsticks

Meat stuffed and tied up with string

Thick marmalade, particularly if not home-made

Lobster thermidor

Fresh meat bought for curry (leftover meat should always be used)

The word 'nibbles'

Posh: U food

Very grand food is not only food that is difficult to come by (home-grown vegetables or fruit and hand-bagged game ) but also anything difficult to cook and that would make a non-U person shudder, eg sweetbreads or oxtail, such as:

All fruits and vegetables in season, ideally home-grown

Cold pea soup/nettle soup/gazpacho

Game in season, particularly grouse at beginning of season

Partridge is the top game bird/ptarmigan/ortolan

Your own free-range chickens

Venison

Sweetbreads

Pig's trotters

Brains

Oxtail

Hare (German recipe)

Properly mature mutton

Fry-ups (because honest)

Gulls' eggs with celery salt

Oysters

Any fish with head on which has been gutted by person cooking it

Wild salmon (telltale colour is grey rather than farmed-salmon pink)

Whitebait

Potted shrimps

Crab

Lobster with fresh mayonnaise

Sea bass

Halibut

Turnips, swedes, parsnips

Sweetcorn on the cob

Beetroot

Riced potato

Baked pears

Home-made custard

Baked bananas

Eton Mess (meringue, double cream, raspberries or strawberries)

Bread-and-butter pudding

Rice pudding

Junket

Black chocolate

Local cheddar

Oatcakes

Sage-and-anchovy canapés

Tinned food. Most tinned food is common but some exceptions include: rice pudding, pineapple chunks, corned-beef hash

Home-made mayonnaise

Mustard made from Colman's powder, never ready-mixed