There’s no logical reason really why finding out that Patum Peperium (“The Gentleman’s Relish”) now comes out of a plastic container — rather than the little earthenware jar I remember it previously in — should make me more than a little sad.
Except it does.
I hadn’t actually bought a jar in years mind, so it’s not even as though this was a life-long regular habit into which had been thrown a sudden, discordant, jarring note signalling the intrusion of that horrific “modern age”. And yet, somehow still it just seems plain wrong.
I’m left to wonder if the current makers, a conglomerate called AB Word Foods who long ago gobbled up the original relish makers — Elsenham Quality Foods — along with other original one-man operations like Patak’s, Blue Dragon, Levi Roots, Al’Fez and TABASCO® to produce some hybrid chimera that stumbles along, still selling millions of pounds worth of these various items, yet have, like Dorian Gray’s picture, long ago surrendered any soul or passion to the God Mammon, somehow still think of this as merely the latest impressive, innovative, step along an historical path that started in 1828?
The company history describes John Osborn, an English provision merchant, living in Paris, coming up with a recipe that involved taking Spanish anchovy fillets, packing them for 18 months into barrels of salt to mature, then brine rinsing them and cooking at a simmer before cooled them down and blending them all together with butter and rusk, finally adding his “secret blend” of herbs & spices.
Why he chose to come up with this concoction is never stated…
Again, company legend has it that to attempt to tempt his fashion-conscious French customers into buying it — when launching it at two Paris Food Shows — he created a (fictitious but grand sounding) name from a melding of Latin and Greek, implying “pepper paste”. It won him awards, apparently though.
It only took on the class-ridden additional “Gentleman’s Relish” after his son moved the business across the Channel to London and chose to add this description, as the company history apocryphally has it as it was being…
“…used extensively on and in savouries in gentlemen’s clubs but considered ‘too strong’ for ladies, and ‘too refined’ for the plebs.”
A long, long, long time ago, when the world (and I) was a lot younger, I’d spend time with my Granddad, who lived in the commuter — and retirement — suburbs of leafy Bucks. He’d retired from his job at Morris Motors by the time I came along, so was willing to assist in making his house a regular holiday stop-off destination
He adored this paste on his morning toast.
I’d make sure to get up extra early and help him clean out the fire-grate from the night before and then start breakfast for us and the rest of the family.
Always first, grapefruit, sliced into segments along the membrane walls and released from the base of the grapefruit half, little jewel like grains of brown sugar scattered on top. Then the eggs and bacon, maybe with the addition of a sausage, some button mushrooms cooked in butter, a couple of well grilled –almost blackened — falling apart tomato halves.
And alongside, the toast. In a rack. With butter from a dish. And Gentleman’s Relish on his slices. It took me a while to actually like this stuff. The first time I suggested I try it, he’d warned me of having it layered too thickly, but of course, I didn’t listen. That first, dense, flavour-intense mouthful was a bit too much newness for this country lad. I think I spat it out, to much parental disgust. But I persevered and it became a regular — by now enjoyable — ritual when visiting Pop and Dot.
That delight in the taste of anchovy went onto be cemented by my Dad’s use of them stuffed liberally into the lamb roast fat before it went into the oven. At first I thought he was certifiably insane. More fool me.
Then we all got older, time passed and both Grandparents died. The holiday visits had stopped before then as well in the way that they do, the teenager having far, far better things to do with their precious time and preferable people to do it with. So, sorry the both of you for being such a crappy grand-son in the latter years. But I think Pop would take an ironic delight in knowing that Gentlemen’s Relish, spread, sparingly on hot buttered toast, can still bring back those taste memories of sunny summer morning’s at their breakfast table.
All the company now needs to do to make things 100% right, is to bring back the ceramic pots. And end the ongoing plasticisation of my childhood years. Not a lot to ask…