Returning to Cambridge a decade after his student years, Samuel Pepys remarked on his “very handsome supper at Mr Hill’s chambers”. I’m glad he was happy.

I would not call my own suppers handsome. They are unexciting, simple, and repetitive. Most of the blame can be laid upon myself: I lack culinary ambition and pretend that pasta in a different sauce is not the same pasta as yesterday. However, at least a little of the blame is in a wider issue with Cambridge’s kitchens.

The trouble is that a lot of students are discouraged from using their college kitchens, by the fact that many are under-supplied and undersized. Very few students, particularly in first year, have ovens and freezers. Some don’t even have hobs or kettles. Their kitchens can be shared by roughly 8-12 people, often in rooms the size of large cupboards. As I told my friends at other universities about this (most of whom have regular kitchens), the reaction was one of surprise. Cambridge is home to the richest college in the UK, after all.

Certainly, the grandeur of the kitchen varies by college. I have had the pleasure of visiting Murray Edwards, for example, where even first year students have a communal dining table, surrounded by all the facilities you would expect from a functional kitchen. However, they are in the minority. At Trinity Hall, I visited a kitchen where only one person can fit inside. At Churchill, their replacement for a hob was, I think, a portable hot plate, which I could prod around, like a bored cat.

"At Trinity Hall, I visited a kitchen where only one person can fit inside"

Students should have access to adequately sized kitchens. Most people tend to eat their meals at similar times. If students are expected to attend supervisions at 6pm and 7pm like many professors require, they should not also be in a situation where they have to sit and wait for the previous kitchen user to leave before they can have their meal.

A bigger, more practical space is also of social importance. If you’re going to be living with the same ten people for a year, it helps to get to know them. Most of the people I know don’t bother going in when they can hear someone else in the kitchen; even for the most extreme extroverts, making conversation with your shoulders touching is just a bit too intimate.

Plus, it can form a vital space to socialise with friends as well as flatmates. Making someone a birthday cake might bring them joy, but you can’t bake it in a pan. Cooking meals together is enjoyable, but you need to fit inside the kitchen. Every December, social media reminds me of the students at other universities coming together in their shared kitchens to make a roast dinner. At Cambridge, those armed only with microwaves and hobs must instead pay for the Christmas formal. The formal is lovely, but establishing a monopoly on roast potatoes should not be the way to encourage us into it.

“Making someone a birthday cake might bring them joy, but you can’t bake it in a pan”

Encouraging people towards the cafeteria is also complicated, because not everyone is well-placed to eat most of their meals in halls. As my college cafeteria staff impressed on me on my first day, no food or drink of your own can be brought in. Some people need foods that fit religious requirements, vegetarian diets, or allergies. Some people feel uncomfortable eating with others, particularly in fancy halls, boarding school style. Some people simply can't afford it. I, for one, have a humorously irritating condition where my jaw can’t take harder foods. The creation of a soft food option just for me in the canteen would be silly. But if I had the means to cook my own pizza, I could make it much less crispy.

The ideal solution – making every kitchen bigger and better – is, needless to say, absurd. As much as I lament my lack of oven chips, my sorrow does not justify such extravagant spending. More than a few centuries-old colleges would struggle architecturally. In fact, it’s also a little haughty of me to assume the moral high ground, because colleges do need to keep somewhat stable numbers of students in their cafeterias. It would otherwise be a waste of money.

Instead, I would suggest that colleges do their best to provide for the students who have still not been discouraged away from their kitchens. They evidently don’t want cafeteria food, and that should be okay. No grand feats of engineering are needed. It could be a few large kitchens which people or groups can book. It could be more feedback into what college cafeterias serve. It could simply be more regularly updating their existing kitchens.

In a dingy room with a rusty hob and 700W microwave, it’s far less practical, sociable, and enjoyable than it could be to cook dinner, let alone a “very handsome supper”.