The student cookbook across generations

By Chloe Goodwin

Cookbooks, while a different form of literature, still tell a story. In this case, the story is simple: what does a student eat? Food and drink have always formed part of the legacy of student culture, but that legacy is constantly being rewritten. So how has the student cookbook changed across generations? From sustenance to self-expression, family recipes to TikTok, frying pans to air fryers, much has changed – yet its basic rules remain remarkably intact: make it cheap, make it filling and, with any luck, make it tasty.

One former student, who graduated in 1980, remembers that ‘food was primarily for sustenance rather than anything else.’ While student meals are still simple, and food’s most basic purpose is still to feed us, its role in student life has definitely expanded. It has become entertainment, creativity and social currency. Students bake together, host dinner parties, send each other short-form food content, queue for cafes – Flat White, I’m looking at you – review restaurants, and even let the camera eat first! The fact that you are reading this in an entire Food & Drink section perhaps tells you something about just how far student food culture has travelled. 

For all that change, some things must remain – one being the student staple, in all its forms. In 1980, a pretty standard choice, capable of stretching across a couple of meals, was the good old spaghetti bolognese, or ‘spag bol’. It remains firmly in the student repertoire today, although perhaps partly reincarnated as Gigi Hadid’s viral vodka pasta. Students, after all, have a legacy to not only uphold, but improve upon: why separate food and drink when you can start pre’s early within dinner?

Much has changed – yet its basic rules remain remarkably intact: make it cheap, make it filling and, with any luck, make it tasty

Then there is the student staple’s uglier sibling: the struggle meal. Both generations have a sizeable section devoted to this in their cookbooks. The ‘spam fritter’ or ‘rice thrown together with tinned tomatoes’ feels like an ancestor of today’s instant noodles, or that soggy plate of beans on toast you insist you’re eating to hit your fibre goal. The ingredients may change, but the principle does not: make it cheap, filling and ask as little of the student-cook as possible. 

Some parts of the student experience have changed rather more dramatically. A pint, as he remembers, came in at around 20p. Compare that with a round at the Half Moon Inn today, or even the Swan, and it quickly becomes clear that not every university legacy improves with age. 

What does seem to endure is the negotiation between the kitchen budget and the social one. Neither generation appears to have abandoned food entirely in favour of a night out, but both know the occasional sacrifice when a bigger social event is looming on the horizon. The difference now is that the social budget no longer means drinking alone. Takeaway nights, cafe trips and Durham’s ever-growing brunch legacy have all become part of how students socialise. Where a pint might once have been the obvious social expense, today it could just as easily be coffee and cake at Chapters or dinner with friends at Spag’s. Perhaps that is one student legacy changing for the better, if we ignore what it is doing to the bank account that is…

The biggest difference in student food culture is where we source our recipes. For my interviewee, the biggest influence was ‘basically what was made at home’. If the family repertoire failed you, however, your options were fairly limited. The cookbooks he remembers were less student meals in twenty minutes and more what to serve when your businessman husband unexpectedly brings home six clients. Not especially useful when your student kitchen contains neither fresh Scottish salmon nor, as he puts it, ‘a conveniently placed bain-marie’. Four hours into preparing one of these supposedly standard dinners, fitting in the required reading would probably have become tomorrow’s problem. Thankfully, unlike the 20p pint, some legacies are best left behind. 

So, the question remains: are today’s students genuinely better cooks, or do we simply have better access to cooking?

Present-day students are considerably luckier: the cookbook now sits in our pockets. TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube and websites such as BBC Good Food offer an almost endless stream of recipes, techniques and inspiration. So, the question remains: are today’s students genuinely better cooks, or do we simply have better access to cooking? 

Accessibility extends beyond recipes too. Asked about the essential kitchen gadget of 1980, my interviewee replies, ‘what self-respecting student didn’t have one?’ He was not referring to the air fryer making student life almost suspiciously easy today, but the humble frying pan. ‘The can opener would probably be our most advanced item,’ he adds. Every generation, apparently, discovers a kitchen device capable of revolutionising student dinner. His was the frying pan. Ours is the considerably more likely to have a digital display, and a devoted corner of TikTok. The student cookbook keeps changing, but its oldest rules remain: make it cheap, make it filling and, hopefully, make it yours. 

Image Credit: Round Icons via Unsplash