Cheesy nostalgia

This afternoon I felt the urge for cheese scones. Initially watered down to cheese on toast, but after a close victory over BH at Scrabble - largely the fluky result of making both double letter and double word with the 'Q' - I was game for scones again.

Nostalgia in various ways. From time to time, I used to make cheese sconces as a child. Part of the quite elaborate teas we took around 17:00.

The cake rack probably dates from the same time and more often serves as a bread rack now. Our three inch cookie cutter, part of a three piece set, probably also dates from that same time, but which I forgot to include in the snap. Now weathered to a shiny dark grey.

The butter paper, under the glass right, reminded me of the habit of both my parents and my in-laws of keeping used butter papers, a habit possibly born of war-time thrift. We used to use the paper both for greasing baking tins and for covering white fish - almost invariably cod fillet from Mac Fisheries - while it was baked, in our case in a white enamel pie dish. Smaller versions of which quite often pop up in foodie pubs these days.

The fish slice left was bought with coupons - probably cut out of newspapers and magazines - and not very much money before we were married. It started off as six pieces and we still have three of them.

The cookbook we used was the Whitworth's 'Spice of Life Cookery Book', fourth edition, price 3/-, sometimes available on eBay. A pink covered paperback, now rather battered, quite possibly of the same age as the fish slice. Its recipe for cheese scones starts with 4oz of plain flour. We always make a triple quantity, which gives twelve scones, and it is rare that there are as many as two left for breakfast. So why would one want to make just four scones? Perhaps that thinking comes from that same war-time thrift.

Two scones left at present, this despite the agreed view that they were slightly undercooked.

[A Middle East Soldier Revisits Britain- Life in Wartime Exeter, Devon, England, UK, October 1943. A busy everyday scene inside the Higher Market in Exeter. The original caption states that the larger firms have joined the smaller shopkeepers' stalls in the market, which, before the war, along with neighbouring Goldsmith Street, was earmarked for demolition. A new Civic Centre was to be built on the site. Clearly visible is 'MacFisheries'. Many women can be seen with their shopping baskets]

[The 9th Lancers at the grand banquet in the [higher] market-hall, 1859]

PS: Exeter nostalgia from Wikipedia. I shall have to consult BH about it. Later: now consulted, and I now know something about the Higher and Lower Markets. The former still has a pillared entrance in Queen Street, an exterior matching the interior second above. And I might well have been to the odd dance in the Civic Hall, carved out of the market in 1920 or so. A venue which was closed in 1970. See reference 2. The latter was destroyed in the second world war and was replaced by the Corn Exchange, the ground floor of which was still an indoor market when I first knew Exeter.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Fisheries. I had not realised that Mac Fisheries was part of the Lever family of companies, that is to say the sunlight soap people. I had thought that it was a company from the US and it had never occurred to me that it was named for Scottish fishermen.

Reference 2: https://exetermemories.co.uk/em/_buildings/higher_market.php. I have taken the liberty of using two of the snaps to be found here, with thanks to David Cornforth, who owns the copyright.