Which comes first?
On a scone: cream or jam?
In a cup: tea or milk?
In a shandy: beer or lemonade?
On a scone: cream or jam?
If you like cream on top then this means that you follow the Cornish method of topping your scone; and if you put jam uppermost then you are Devonian in your tastes. The folk of Devon and Cornwall both believe their way of dressing scones is correct and best. Cornish folk say it’s because their clotted cream is by far the tastiest and Devonian people have to disguise the horrid taste of theirs with the jam. I’m sure that Devonian people say the same about the Cornish and their jam making skills. When we gave our French ex-collegue a cream tea celebration/commiseration for his leaving do – he said the scones would be better with Nutella. Ah the French.
In a cup: tea or milk?George Orwell published an article called A Nice Cup of Tea in the Evening Standard in 1946. In it he wrote:“By putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk, wheras one is likely to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round.” But scientists now say that it should definitely be milk first“If milk is poured into hot tea, individual drops separate from the bulk of the milk, and come into contact with the high temperatures of the tea for enough time for significant denaturation - degradation - to occur. This is much less likely to happen if hot water is added to the milk.”
In a shandy: beer or lemonade?I haven’t found any expert opinion on this one. But I think if it’s lemonade then beer, it’s shandy and if it’s beer then lemonade it’s lager top. Quick ex bar-staff write in quick. I used to work in a real ale pub – shandy was a rude word. Has anyone ever had turbo-shandy – whoof! And what about Turbo Andy!! Yup. Gold star (and liver failure) to anyone who can tell me what that is. Your opinions on the above matters would be most appreciated…
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14 Responses to “Which comes first and we ain’t talking chicken and eggs”
Posted: Jul 26th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Turbo Andy = lager, alcopop and a shot of vodka. Lethal, but highly effective and usually popular among students!
Posted: Jul 26th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Not being a tea drinker I’ve found that there is a definite order to the instant hot chocolate procedure. I always lob in some milk or cream to make it taste, well, nice. If you put the powder in first, then the milk/cream, you can stir this together into a nice mush while the water boils. The mush mixes with the water much better than powder so you get less stirring, and now I learn that it means the dairy doesn’t suffer either… perfect!
Washing up needs military precision: glasses, cutlery, plates, pots. Nothing worse than somebody coming along with an extra glass midway through the wash!
This morning I struggled with the order of pants and trousers, but that’s a story for another camp fire…
Posted: Jul 26th, 2007 at 11:24 am
I’m sure I heard somewhere the Queen has the milk added afterwards to her tea, and she can’t be wrong. It’s something about keeping the temperature higher.
How can cream go under jam? How do you spread the jam onto the cream? It just doesn’t make sense and I’m getting a mild case of food rage thinking about it.
Posted: Jul 26th, 2007 at 11:33 am
SHANDY
Always lemonade first, about half of the glass to be correct, but at this point it doesn’t matter, whatever sir would like kind of thing. Real Ale shandy is a bitch to pour, but if done with a little care and attention, you wont lose half the glass. I’ve seen bartenders exchanging the lemonade from one glass to another to take some fizz out of it, frustratingly stupid and unnecessary.
LAGER TOP
Anything from a fifth of the pint to a conscience-appeasing splash/afterthought. Always last, always on top, hence the name.
Any other bar queries, i am so your irish barman
Posted: Jul 26th, 2007 at 11:38 am
I’ve seen people beat the lemonade with a spoon too. It is a pain trying to pull a pint, the lemonade all froths up.
What designs can you do on a guiness top? or is that so English. Pour guiness to three quarters, leave for one minutes - then push back the pump for less fizz?
What is your expert opinion?
Posted: Jul 26th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Guinness
45 degree angle, hold the glass at the base, so as not to warm it unnecessarily. The stream should roll down the glass, no bloody bubbles anywhere. fill to about the guinness mark, or about just over 2 thirds.
Turn the tap off and do everything really, like you actually care, that really makes a difference. Let it settle until it is completely black, not just a little cos you cant be arsed to wait and the cutomer keeps staring you down.
Back-tap it if you can as it is a little slower and less abrupt , a lot of taps you can’t do that now, so just top it up the rest of the way. I cant stress enough that you need to be holding the glass, it’s not a bucket you’re filling with piss, it’s a pint, unlike any other, treat it with a little respect. When you get near the top of the glass, try and almost over fill it, it’s thick and heavy enough to sit out of the glass a fraction, it looks so much better.
Ideally the barman/person/whatever should serve guinness ready to drink, which means watching over them til they’re ready to leave the nest, quite a nice thought i think. But all of this is for nothing, cos most english/everyone-but-the-irish grab the pint at any stage and guzzle it whiolst its settling, like idiots.
The reality of the bartender too, it breaks my heart, i die a little inside i s’pose, you ask for a guinness, they shove a filthy glass underneath an un washed, dirty-line tap, about 18 inches away from the nozzle, walk off to mess up some other poor beverage. Meanwhile the glass fills up with what looks like a liquid aero / 100yr-old coca-cola. If they remember to stop it anywhere near the right mark, the back splash, something like a humpback whale surfacing, creates another big plop, and usually one huge bubble. They don’t really wait either, it’s just an affectation because even a crap bartender knows that guinness is black, so they try to do a few “guinnessy” things. They top up the rest from the same height, overpour, spill it down the side, then they try to clean it off with a cloth that you know should be blue, but is grey, end up spilling more of it then charge you £3.50 and ask you if you would like fries with that.
had to get that off my chest.
you must have less to do than i do
Posted: Jul 26th, 2007 at 11:42 am
No no - Laundry day is busy day - but we love chatting to our customers, it’s all part of the Laundry love.
plus I’m a very fast typer:
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Posted: Jul 26th, 2007 at 11:59 am
all that time, and no, “wow, he knows his stuff” on my barskills????
i look forward to the emails, though.
i too am essentially a demon of typing, or, as the french say, “un demone de teeping”
so exotic
paddy
ps you’re not busy at all, emails dont count
Posted: Jul 26th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
A lager top only has 2 fingers of lemonade at the top, whereas for shandy you need 4 fingers (but you’re right that for a shandy the lemonade has to go in first). The beer would froth over if you tried to put that much lemonade on top.
Thanks for keeping us amused
Cheryl
Ps how do you spread jam on top of cream?? It’s all wrong.
Posted: Jul 26th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Tea and Milk
I heard that in the olden days, poor people had cheap mugs that cracked if too hot a liquid was put in…. therefore they put in milk first - then the tea. The proper china cups that posh people used could withstand a higher temperature therefore tea and then milk.
Posted: Jul 27th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Patrick, you really know your stuff. Shame it still tastes like tar. Or what I imagine tar to taste like.
Posted: Jul 28th, 2007 at 9:18 am
Patrick sorry to be dead pernickity (spelling isn’t my thing) but the taking the fizz out of a bitter shandy is important, mainly because bitters aren’t fizzy so why would you put fizzy lemonade in them? why would you put lemonade in any way we all cry, but each to their own.
Posted: Jul 31st, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Mmm, scones and cream… ooo, you’re making me hungry now…
I seem to have accidentally fallen into the Devon way of it but only because I’ve developed a habit of having either scones or clotted cream in the house but never both! I usually end up with whipped cream and spoon the jam on top, that way the weight of the jam holds the cream on the scone and there’s less chance I’ll end up wearing it (I’m what you might call a messy eater!).
One thing I have noticed when making instant coffee, if you add the water first the coffee-taste is slightly stronger than if you add the milk first, when it will have more of a, well, milky-taste… or is that just me?!
Kat
Posted: Aug 2nd, 2007 at 9:00 am
Kat, your point about the jam weighing down the cream is an interesting one.
I was once speaking with an elderly uncle at a wedding. A dollop from his cream horn landed on my foot and an awkward silence followed. Has he seen it? Can I bend in this dress? Would this have happened if jam was holding it in? I feel a weekend trial coming on.
P.S At the same wedding my father swung a woman around on the dancefloor. She bashed into another woman (who’d just had heart surgery) who in turn took out one of the bands drums. And no one got it on camera!