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Tuesday 2 December 2008

And Another Thing

When gobbling brawn is caviar to the general

I’m not sure that the tinned pineapple chunks we got in wartime from Home & Colonial were not better than the fresh pineapple which eventually arrived in the 1950s. As Charles II said: ‘[Fresh] pineapple is a sad disappointment.’ I also loved tinned fruit salad, especially when garnished with that now vanishing luxury, tinned Carnation Milk. There were those who preferred certain kinds of tinned stuff long after the fresh kind became available. Harold Wilson, for instance, enjoyed tinned salmon, doused with vinegar. ‘I love crunching up those soft bones,’ he said. ‘It gives me a nice feeling of content, like watching George Brown’s face when he realises his gin bottle is empty.’ I don’t despise bottled condiments either. Sydney Smith once complimented a lady at a dinner party for declining gravy: ‘I too, madam, dislike gravy and I compliment you on your taste.’ What kind of gravy was it? Heavy with flour perhaps? Smith preferred to select a relish from the turntable of condiments which garnished the middle of the table, and which you could lean over and spin round to get the jar of your choice, including such rarities as orange angosturas and celery salt. These massive compendiums, some of which incorporated a table-fountain in the middle, were still to be seen when I was a young man in the early 1950s. Hosts were then not ashamed to offer you bottled mayonnaise or even its non-U version, salad cream. Very good it was too. There are now many things I miss, familiar from Lancashire high teas in the old days: boiled ham closely attended by yellow mustard pickles in giant jars; gentlemen’s relish and anchovies served with soft slices of buttered toast (done at the fireside on a fork); really runny custard pies — not for throwing but ingurgitating; spiced-up red gooseberry jam; Battenburgs, goosenah biscuits, Eccles cakes and cherry slab-cake. As they said in Preston: ‘Tha never knows what’ll turn up at ’igh tea.’

Jane Austen, to judge by the food served in the tales and playlets classified as her juvenilia, had similar demotic tastes at one time. We hear of cowsheel and onion, tripe and red herrings being gobbled up with relish. As a mature woman she was never greedy, and never ‘stuffed’ (to use a term which occurs in Sense and Sensibility), but was ‘most particular’ about what she ate. So am I. But I am not proud. I note in the diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles, George VI’s secretary, that he was fond of that nursery dish, hot bread-and-milk, liberally sweetened. I was given it, as a small boy, when I was ‘poorly’ and ‘not up to proper food’. Indeed, even now, if off-colour, it is the only thing to eat. Of course, in smiling times I like Beluga caviar as much as anyone. But as Aristotle Onassis used to say, ‘Caviar is no good unless you can have as much of it as you want to eat.’

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