Passing secrets in class

[muckefuck]

This opinion piece by fellow alum John Scalzi is sparking some interesting online discussions, particularly on the role of class. (Here's a thoughtful response from nihilistic_kid highlighting the importance of that factor.) One of these was in the Facebook feed of a friend, and a friend of hers made this interesting observation:

Upper class kids, especially those from academic families, view knowledge as something to be shared, and it is not just right but proper to defer to superior expertise. I think one of the most telling markers of class, honestly, is family recipes. If you ask someone from a lower class background about the recipe for some particular dish, nine times out of ten you'll get some waffle about my/mother's/grandmother's "secret recipe," with all the song and dance that sounds like something between the trade secrets of the medieval guilds and some occult mystery tradition. If you ask someone from an upper class background, this is invariably taken as an invitation to talk about themselves, their ancestry, or their travels, giving the provenance of the recipe, mentioning personal variations, and more often than not referring to "tricks" rather than "secrets," as the assumption is shared common knowledge rather than secrecy, and mentioning "tricks" is just a way to gauge a person's expertise. With that sort of worldview, it's not surprising that upper class kids have a leg up in academia because it comes out of the later tradition.

I'm interested in hearing how this does or doesn't jibe with the experiences of others here. My family background is pretty firmly middle class (though Dad's family was on the borderline, his father being a workman-cum-farmer) and the description of "upper class" behaviour sounds about right for us and our milieu. But I don't really have enough experience trading recipes with members of the "lower class" to speak to that part of it. Most of the working-class people I've chatted with about food have been recent immigrants and I think that skews the sample.

Comments

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

Alas, I can't contribute much data for you about the lower middle class. My mother hates cooking and hasn't passed on any recipes. Her mother was an excellent cook, but the kind that does a handful of this, pinch of that type cooking. We have identified the cookbook she mostly used, but haven't really been able to reproduce anything due to the fudge factor.

I saw the thread you are quoting from here, and wondered if the class divide weren't really about foodies vs. non-foodies rather than a sense of secrecy per se. If you ask me or my sister for a recipe, we'll write it up and turn it over with no fanfare, whereas my hubby the chef likes to discuss provenance and mods, etc., at length. (And yes, he is from a higher socio-economic class than I am.)