shop bought!

When I was growing up the only cooking I was allowed to do was making cakes, mostly sponge cakes. I was very upset when I discovered my recipes didn't work in the US!

>>we always had to eat bread in some way before we were allowed tinned fruit or cake.<<

Or just "bread and butter before bread and jam"

>>Real cream was hard to get in the 50s, so we had a machine which made cream from milk and unsalted butter.<<

So did we. Well, actually, it lived in the cupboard and was looked at from time to time. Hence the evap milk. Or just "top of the milk".

In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

A cup o' cold tea.

Without milk or sugar.

Or tea.

In a cracked cup, an' all.

Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

Oh, I see the prawn sarnie brigade is posting.

We were so poor we could only afford tea in paper cups from Little Chef and would stare longingly at the fancy goods vehicle from Harrods racing off to South Kensington.

Thin

Racing? Have you ever seen a Harrods van on its perambulations?

Well, guv, it is difficult to see when you've lost your spectacles in a chimney sweep accident at Mrs. Jellyby's old manse.

Thin

Gala pie was unknown. Some relatives supplied shop bought cakes, but my mother baked her own in industrial quantities.>>

gala pie? thou were lucky! we 'ad to mek do wi' bread un drippin', an' sumtimes it were just drippin'!

seriously, my mum taught me how to bake a victoria sponge and fruit cake, [skills that I seem to have passed onto my son but not my daughter] but the height of sophistication in our house was the visit to the Leamington Fancy Bakery where my grandfather loved to buy their almond boats, battenburg slices and chocolate box cakes. I can't see a battenburg now without thinking of those Sunday afternoon teas at my grandparents' house. Before the cakes we would have tinned salmon and salad, all washed down with tea of course.

We just called our evening meal "tea". not afternoon tea or high tea, just tea. Dinner was what you ate in the middle of the day. I didn't start eating dinner at night until I was about 25.

About 25, huh? We still have supper at night unless we are going out and I want to impress someone by calling it "out to dinner."

I had high tea (called such) once—at a hotel in Ayrshire. I had tea for the evening meal (with both mince <b>and</b> haggis) in a proper Grampian Scots home on the same trip.

Where I grew up, we took our tea with ice and lots of sugar (and certainly no dairy products therein).

I do like me some scones, though. (And how else would one pronounce them, if not rhyming with <i>cones</i> and <i>bones</i>? Even I know that!)

Some people pronounce scone the same as you you' would gone!

>>The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.<<

A piece of damp cloth? Luxury! We had to lick our tea off the sidewalk.

But we were happy...

Lee Ann

The only dog I have in this fight is an American breed but whipped cream seems like it would make the scone a little too mushy.

Clotted cream is delicious and it holds up well.


Then again, I like tea any way it comes, including airy fairy herbals and yogic teas.

A good strong tea with a cream and a scone is heavenly.

FWIW, I concur that the accompanying cream should be clotted, not whipped, and the accompanying jam should be raspberry, not strawberry.


<i>Some people pronounce scone the same as you would gone!</i>

Smeagol, does that make <i>scone</i> rhyme with <i>prawn</i>? (That's asked in all seriousness—would it be <b>scon</b> or <b>scawn</b>?)

Not at all sure what "clotted cream" is. I know whipped cream. And I have seen - to my horror - the pouring of regular cream (like for coffee) over desserts for some incomprehensible reason.

Is it something like sour cream? If not - how does it get "clotted"?

My mother said scone rhymes with John.


But, it is the Stone of Skoooon.

Thin

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clotted_cream

No it's not sour cream it's more spreadable and a bit like dry cream cheese. The consistency is in between say, farmer's cheese and feta.

But that doesn't really cover it either. It's really good.

If I ordered a pudding to be accompanied by cream, I'd expect double cream poured over it. I beware menus which specify whipped cream as it's likely to be that true horror, aerated puff out of a can which melts into nothing.

In my world, scone rhymes with con. But it's a perennial debate up and down the land over which is correct.

The crust puts me off clotted cream. Like it's been left too long out of the fridge and just at the point of going off.