Where do you keep your food?

Either in the fridge or in kitchen cupboards.

I don't think pantry has been in daily use for quite some time but I think of a pantry as more of a small room than a large cupboard.

Isn't a large cupboard for food a larder? Or do I have the two the wrong way round?

I also keep my food in the fridge and kitchen cupboards.

For me 'pantry' and 'larder' are interchangeable and they're definitely still in use in the UK, although I wouldn't say they're very common any more. Unfortunately, I just have a fridge and cupboards.

We have little food which is out of use for a particular period of time. Refrigerator (everyone calls it 'fridge' here, and I think this is universal?) and rest goes in boxes and many boxes (or jars) plus other stuff goes into small cupboards.

I agree with Myanmarbound - for me, a pantry is a room, maybe not just for keeping food, whereas a larder is a food store that isn't necessarily a room. Not that I have ever lived in a house that boasted either.

In the 1940s, my father and grandfather removed a pantry (a small room with one window, just off the kitchen) in order to enlarge a bedroom on the other side of it. That's about how long pantries have been unknown as separate rooms in much of the United States. That room would have been for the storage of canned goods, flour, sugar, pots and pans, baking tins, etc. At the same time, they installed kitchen cabinets. Until then, the kitchen had contained absolutely no storage space; there were only a table and chairs there in addition to the sink, stove, and refrigerator. In fact, now that I think of it, the description of a modern house at the time would have included the words "cabinet kitchen."

Until two years ago, I lived in a large apartment that had a "butler's pantry," a room off the kitchen that had a counter above which there were three double-door cabinets and below which there were a total of nine drawers. To one side of the counter was a floor-to-ceiling storage cabinet with a number of shelves behind its four doors. (The building was constructed in the 1920s, when pantries were still separate from kitchens.)

Now, all of my storage space is in kitchen cabinets.

Edited by NorthAmerican.

I recently bought a house which has a 'glorified cupboard' ( I can't walk into it) but does have an air vent at the back which allows cool/cold air in from outside, making the temperature of the 'pantry' quite a bit lower than the rest of the kitchen. When the metal grille covering the vent falls off, it also allows mice in... Is it a pantry? A larder? Or just a glorified cupboard?

I think you would be within your rights to call it a larder.

"Larder" isn't used in the US, as far as I know. To me a pantry is a small room, as NA describes. In the old days, in a freestanding house it might have had a slate or stone floor and the idea was that you would keep the door to the pantry closed so that it would stay cool even when the stove was heating the kitchen up.

"Cabinet" is more common than "cupboard" in the US, although cupboard would certainly be understood. "Larder" would probably cause some headscratching among USAnians.

In my mind, for a space to be a butler's pantry, it needs a sink.

"Fridge" wasn't used in NYC in the 1950s but began to catch on early in the 60s, if I recall correctly. At first it sounded a bit British and exotic. No longer.