Who wouldn’t be guilty of it? We love telling tourists to experience Cambridge by biting into Chelsea buns at Fitzbillies, or spending their travel savings on a slab of fudge from King’s Parade. Yet, as calorifically scrumptious these may be, they aren’t actually authentic Cambridge. I used to have a sepia-tinted image in my mind of a Cambridge student cycling along with satchel in one hand and Chelsea bun in other (somehow managing superhuman steering skills at the same time), until I discovered that Chelsea buns were, perhaps not so surprisingly, not a Fitzbillies invention but the intellectual property of Bun Shop in Chelsea. My love for the Fudge Kitchen took a similar hit when I unsuspectingly walked into a copy of the Cambridge branch in Windsor; so much for the Cambridge fudge being made from the milk of the cows in King’s Backs. You might think you’re doing the Cambridge thing, just as the Mathematical Bridge is allegedly still in place without a single screw, but the thing is, most of the time you just aren’t.

All hope is not lost, though. Cambridge does have some claims to authentic culinary fame – they just happen to be off the beaten tourist track. A while back, I had a bizarre experience reading a formal menu: most of the menu was, as usual, ineligible, being about 80 percent in French. However, the dessert was spelled out in the bluntest possible English: Cambridge Burnt Cream. Now a healthy dose of burnt cream is just what I want to finish my evening off with.

Having recovered from my initial shock and regained some of the language skills I’m supposed to harness as a linguistics student, I made the very clever observation that ‘burnt cream’ is exactly what the supposedly classier French ‘crème brûlée’ translates into. More often than not, using a foreign language in menus and the like is just a case of going for the fancy factor; think of all the poor souls tattooing ‘sweet and sour chicken’ in Chinese characters on their bums just because it looks nice, or Japanese shops advertising items as literally ‘ridiculously overpriced’ because of the coolness of English words.

However, burnt cream goes beyond this, carrying an actual historical Cambridge connection. Crème brûlée was introduced in Trinity in 1879, when the hall served a cream dessert with the college arms impressed onto it with a branding iron. The story goes that a Trinity undergrad sampled the delicacy at an Aberdeenshire country house. He then offered the recipe to the college cook, who refused to make it (to be fair, I wouldn’t be the first one to jump at the opportunity to serve burnt cream). But true to social hierarchy, the success of the dessert was guaranteed when the undergrad rose through the college ranks, becoming a fellow and getting his way with his culinary desires.Even with some backstory, though, ‘burnt cream’ doesn’t sound like the yummiest option; then again, you can’t really when complain when your traditional British alternatives include spotted dick…

It’s not all about what you eat, though: how you consume your sustenance is of equal importance. After a year of drinking and dining in ancient halls, I thought I had most dining etiquettes securely figured out. My imagined etiquette prowess was shattered, however, when at a college feast at Corpus a drinking horn was presented and passed along with an elaborate ritual of bowing, standing up, sitting down, and turning your back to your neighbour at the right time. What the students were happily sipping their bright orange punch out of was nothing less than a six and a half centuries old drinking cup. This piece of not-quite-your-standard kitchenware was presumably presented to the college on its foundation in 1352, and it is believed to come from an aurochs, a now extinct ancestor of modern domestic cattle. My sincere apologies for sending any readers working in conservation and heritage into cardiac arrest.

To go authentic in the Cambridge culinary scene, you have to up your ante from queuing for free samples from the Fudge Kitchen to swanning around high table at John’s. That said, my favourite foodie traditions are more mundane and probably even less Cambridgey than Fitzbillies’ finest afternoon tea: I think it’s time I snuggled into my own culinary corner with a portion of cheesy chips from the Van of Life.