I’m probably in the minority among my peers in the sense that television and cinema register very little impact in my life.
It wasn’t always this way, and the obvious purpose of today’s post is to cite an exception pertaining only tenuously to food, but it remains that in the main you’ll find me reading books and listening to music rather than ingesting TV shows and movies (as for the latter, they’re usually documentaries).
This being said, those periodic exceptions have been known to hit me brutally hard, like the British series Endeavour, a prequel to Inspector Morse. Tonight the final episode airs on American public TV; it ran in Great Britain earlier this year, and thus far I’ve managed to avoid spoilers.
There has been a markedly elegiac quality to the 12-year run of Endeavour, which has paralleled a period of great change in my personal world. Because Endeavour is a prequel, we know the title character cannot die — at least not yet; his demise will come later, in the final episode of Inspector Morse. This evening the final dots between the two productions will be connected, and I’ll keep the Kleenex handy, just in case my self-control falters.
A subplot during the course of Endeavour has been Detective Inspector and World War II veteran Fred Thursday’s home life. His wife Win customarily sends Fred off to work with homemade sandwiches for lunch.
The contents of these sandwiches (cheese and tomato? Corned beef?) prompted an entry at the Morse, Lewis and Endeavour blog: Endeavour: DI Fred Thursday’s Sandwiches, by Chris Sullivan.
Here are those fillings with the episode details on when we first learn of the contents in Fred Thursday’s sandwiches.
The comments that follow are worth viewing, as blog readers enjoy a spirited debate as to the relative merits of post-war British sandwich fillings, including peanut butter (a substance generally dismissed as an American usurper).
I wonder if Potted Meat or Haslet might make an appearance? Or were they a “northern* thing, and as such, not a staple with refined palates in Oxford … Also do you think Win will go with fish paste again after the near miss with the Bloater Paste in ep2?
“Potted meat” simply means canned meat, while “haslet” is an herbed pork meatloaf. Fish paste and bloater paste are different manifestations of the same impulse to preserve seafood.
Fish paste is fish which has been chemically broken down by a fermentation process until it reaches the consistency of a soft creamy purée or paste. Alternatively it refers to cooked fish which has been physically broken down by pounding, grinding, pressing, mincing, blending, and/or sieving, until it reaches the consistency of paste.
Bloater paste is a sidebar to kippers.
Bloater Paste is a fish spread made from salted, smoked herrings called “bloaters”, which are smoked whole with the insides still in them. A bloater has a more gamey flavour than cleaned herrings. It is sold in small jars. Once opened, refrigerate and use within 3 days
And the Endeavour series references aside, sandwich memories aren’t always reliable even if they’re still possible to relive.
Of course you probably won’t be aware of meat paste. It lives on the granny shelves of your supermarket. Right down there at the bottom, just before the catfood, along with the tinned mince, the Camp coffee and the last bottle of gravy browning. You won’t see it unless you’re moving very slowly, dragging a trolley, bent double with arthritis and trying to work out how to live on the last 8p of your pension. If you’re a straight-backed shopper of average height, your eyeline will be occupied by overpackaged premium mueslis – you’re not meant to notice the soul-sapping depressiveness of the knee-height shelves.
As for Marmite, well, we’ve been there before.
Edibles & Potables: Marmite and the unanticipated persistence of umami
If you’re a fan of the Endeavor Morse television character, as inspired by Colin Dexter’s novels, enjoy the finale later today. He’s been a part of my life for something like 35 years, and with the end of the current series, it might be time at long last to actually read the books.
