We were enjoying our treat of scones with jam and cream at the nursery cafe. Just to paint the picture accurately, this was a plant nursery, not a child nursery or an artificial intelligence startup nursery.
So there we were, surrounded by attractive camellias, petunias, pansies and persecuted minority plants such as the unfairly named ‘Scabiosa’, a name derived from the Latin meaning “mangy, rough and itchy”①.
In a fit of botanical whimsy, the staff had placed a purple pansy flower on the plate of scones, jam and cream . This culinary delight is also known as a Devonshire Tea throughout Australia. Rumour has it that it was named after Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who was famous for her rakish hats and bouffant hairdos which often disintegrated without warning – which is very relevant as you will see. ②
Now preparing the scones, jam and cream for a Devonshire Tea is a dainty art similar to creating a successful strawberry souffle or a Scottish fried Mars bar.
The handmade scones must be carefully cut in half to provide a firm foundation. Lumpy but runny strawberry jam and fluffy whipped cream are then delicately daubed onto the scone, creating a mouth watering trio of taste, texture and artistic expression.
I did all this, and then carelessly conveyed this culinary delight to my drooling mouth, looking forward to the taste sensation and – disaster! – the scone collapsed due to structural failure and half of it plopped into the mug of coffee.
What could I do? The coffee had been ruined and was now full of dissolved dough plus a few lumps floating on top like icebergs.
The delicious taste of scone, jam and cream – Devonshire Tea – had been snatched away from me as effectively as if it had been stolen by a shifty seagull.
I skimmed off some of the lumpy bits in the coffee and then decided to add some sugar to distract my tastebuds. So I ripped open the top of the biodegradable sugar sachet, poured it in and – disaster! – the top of the sugar sachet also fell into the coffee. Worse still I panicked and grabbed the teaspoon from the side of the jam dish and – disaster! – the purple pansy flower had stuck to the bottom of the spoon and it too went into the soup of coffee, scone, jam, cream, paper and now pansy.
It looked awful, tasted terrible and stained my lips a purple blue pansy colour. A concerned staff member came by, saw my blue lips, thought I was choking or having a heart attack and offered to call an ambulance.
The occasion had turned into the Great Devonshire Tea Disaster of 2023.
Before this event I had not realised just how dangerous scones could be, especially warm crumbly ones with jam and cream.
I raised the issue at the Grumpy Old Men’s Club the next day.
“Funny you should mention that” said Pete, a retired café cook. “We had a kitchen hand once who was addicted to SJ & C, as we call it in the trade. He was always eating them. Open the back door and there would be Jammy Jim tucking into a scone, jam and cream on his tea break or lunch time or anytime. He felt a bit guilty about his addiction, so when he heard someone coming he would try to hide it. He’d stuff the whole thing into his pocket, leaving a mess all over his trousers, or else he would try to jam the jammy, creamy thing into his mouth and swallow it whole. It made him look like a cat who had eaten a large, angry red and white bird. We eventually had to sack him for accidentally dropping pieces of SJ & C into the green salads and then covering it up with mayonnaise. The things that happen in cafe kitchens ……. I could go on and on …”
“Well” said Rupert, a retired academic, in his peculiarly ponderous way “You may not have heard of the impact of dropped scones, jam and cream in the world of historical literature, but it’s quite scandalous.
You see with Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’ from the late 1300s we don’t have any of Chaucer’s original manuscripts but we do have some copies made soon after Chaucer wrote.
One of them is nicknamed the ‘Wellsmeared’ manuscript. ③ In ‘The Squire’s Tale’ about a mechanical horse, and a mirror that can discern dishonesty, almost every fourth page is smeared with greasy red stains. Using advanced spectroscopic testing we have confirmed that the smears and smudges are definitely caused by scones, jam and cream, made worse by the copyist’s attempts to remove them. Shocking desecration.④
Also, for years it was thought the red blotches on the manuscript of ‘The Knight’s Tale’ were a crude attempt to add blood stains to the part where the two knights fought a duel over who would marry the beautiful Emily. But it’s actually scones, jam and cream from the clumsy copyist.
Then there’s ‘The Cook’s Tale’. It’s only a fragment without an ending, but x-rays have shown the end of the tale is still there, covered up by big stains from wheat, fruit and dairy food.
Some of Chaucer’s greatest work has been lost forever, all due to some blundering oaf with a taste for scones, jam and cream”.
He stared at me accusingly.
“Never eat them myself, too dangerous”.
++++
Ⓒ Geoff Milton 2023
① Wikipedia “Scabiosa – etymology”
② Wikipedia “Portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire” – by the English painter Thomas Gainsborough approx.1785
③ Wikipedia “Ellesmere Chaucer”
④ See also Chaucer’s own disparaging assessment of the copyist Adam Pinkhurst in Chaucer’s poem “Chaucer’s Words Unto Adam His Own Scrivener”
“So oft a day I [must] thy werke renewe
It to correct, and [also] to rubbe and scrape,
And all is (through) thy negligence and rape [haste]”.
(The Guardian UK “The scrivener’s tale: how Chaucer’s sloppy copyist was unmasked after 600 years”)
Illustration: Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain) and Bing Image Creator
