Pickled fish. Lemon tea. Cucumber. Doner kebab. Stewed beef noodles. Salted egg. Soft shell crab. Coney island mustard. Smoked gouda. Hamburger seasoning. Honey butter. Roasted garlic oyster. Spicy crayfish. Finger-licking braised pork. Sesame sauce hotpot. Rose petal. Numb and spicy hotpot. Roasted fish. Blueberry.
The world of crisps has changed almost unrecognisably since the snack was first commercially produced in the early 20th century. Now the possibilities are enough to make the head spin. In Crunch, Natalie Whittle takes us on a whistlestop tour of the flavours we can now find across the world. The mind-boggling list gives an idea of the scope of this seemingly simple snack that goes far beyond the humble cheese and onion.
Whittle, a writer and editor at the Financial Times, whose previous book examined the idea of the 15-minute city, has chosen a subject that may initially seem unworthy. But by giving this ‘supremely ordinary’ snack space and attention, she reveals as much about us as crisp-eaters as about the product itself. The book, she explains is
an attempt to understand what I was oblivious to as a child: that crisps are a complicated novelty. And I am interested in the way crisps are an activated product – that they need crisp-eaters to create the crunch, otherwise they would not be crisp at all: they would be unheard, uncrunched.
Her personality suffuses Crunch, as she draws on her memories and formative experiences in truly charming vignettes.
She is an aficionado in the true sense, and it is her passion for crisps that provides the book’s energy. She readily and unapologetically admits to being obsessed, and her descriptions of sensory pleasures are deliciously moreish. Indeed her enthusiasm is so infectious that it feels like heresy to read the book without a bag of your own crisps handy (I found myself hoping she’d approve of my choice of roast beef Monster Munch).
It’s hard now to imagine a world of basic crisp flavours, but cheese and onion, we learn, was once considered positively avant garde. Its introduction heralded the ‘beginning of a new era. It brought the world of matches and marriages and duets and cognitive dissonance into the realm of crisps, where previously salt had held sole sway’. On top of that, cheese and onion was about more than the individual flavour combination, opening up a new world for crisps, and flavour itself: ‘The universal tension that comes from putting two quantities at work together and testing their joint strengths and weaknesses plays into a human curiosity about the consequences of fusion in all senses.’ Of course it helps that ‘cheese and onion simply tastes good’. That’s the charm of Crunch. It balances the highbrow and low: philosophy, history and behavioural psychology with the simple experience of the crisp-lover.
For all their worldwide success and many geospecific flavours, crisps have a ‘strange connective force’ in British life, says Whittle, and her examination of the place they occupy is fascinating. She takes us from the unlikely beginnings of Walkers and Golden Wonder to the role of crisps in pub culture, their frequent mentions in parliament and their immortalising of prawn cocktail. They seem to appeal to the British sense of humour, and echo the nation’s obsession with nostalgia. The old-fashioned food we simultaneously revere and mock is repeatedly reflected in the flavours. Whittle remarks on
the comparative silliness of British crisps; an allegiance to a quality that demanded unthinking acceptance that potato snacks could imitate limitless flavours for fun, or wear their extruded shapes as humans do Halloween costumes, to produce a salt and vinegar flying saucer, for example, or a pickled onion monster foot.
Crunch is an affectionate look at why crisps inspire the fandom that they do and an intelligent and entertaining examination of the part they have played in shaping our national identity.
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