I saw a tin of soup ... or is it can? .... the other day that made me smile.
Beef Consommé.
Handily this iPad has added the correct spelling and the accent over the e. When I was a kid I thought that word, Consomme, was so posh it was almost alien. I had no idea how to say the word especially with the French e. I had even less idea what it was.
Beef I understood but what on Earth was a con sommer? ( as I would have said back then).
I think it was Baxters but could have been Campbell's. It was always on the top shelf in Booths in Preston and the can looked different to the standard fare we were guzzling from the lower shelves like Heinz cream of chicken. It had a picture on the label!
Now this was no ordinary cartoon like image of a cow. It was a tasteful portrait of a fine beef cut rendered in muted colour like a still life. It was fine art!
But Beef Consomme (the iPad had dropped the accents now!) was not alone. There were more canneletos alongside it and the one that I recall the most vividly was Lobster Bisque.
Now consomme I could have a go at saying but bisque was another matter. Biskway? Biskee? You have to remember that I would have been six or seven back then when TV was still monochrome in most houses and I wore shorts for school!
Lobster Bisque was the salty admiral of the top deck and I had no idea what they'd done to that that lobster. Bisked it no doubt whatever that was and more to the point how do you get a whole lobster in a can ... or is it tin
Like the Rubin's beef portrait the lobster was similarly captured in all its oceanic glory by the hand of Poseidon himself. I half expected the soup to come with its own triton!
There were other luxuries on that distant rack high above my common head. These weren't just soup, they were statements like furs and champagne, stuff my folks could only dream of in the mid Sixties. These were soups to be served by a butler from a large terrine, where pleased lips were gently dabbed with starched linen napkins. These were soups to be spooned slowly backwards, to be gently tipped into the mouth like liquid gold. These were special.
To this day I have no idea who ate them in Preston. I imagine the landed gentry driving up to the supermarket in daimlers to stock up on Bisque or better still they just sent the butler. I envisioned cultured children being called in from harpsichord lessons to deftly backspoon a thin pool of hot consommé from a huge deep platter.
Needless to say I never got to try these Lords of the aisles apart from an adult experiment a few years ago.
I bought a can of Lobster Bisque.
To say it was vile doesn't do justice to the wretching that followed. Like Brodie's chumbucket in Jaws. No, like parboiled nappies with plankton. No, like Aquaman's chemical toilet. No, like Moby Dick's ear cheese. I was so disappointed and so sick.
Never again!
Have you purchased from the top shelf of soups readers?
