Just because Britain is no longer a gastronomic wasteland doesn’t mean its old eccentricity should be abandoned
September 23, 2024 10:00 am
“Who remembers” – a classic Facebook meme might read – “salad cream.” Pictured are two forlorn-looking boomers as children, dressing lettuce in a Formica kitchen.
There has been talk in recent years of the decline of salad cream, one of Britain’s most famous condiments, and as good an example as any as “wartime nostalgia”. Take my nanna, an evacuee during the Blitz: she once described the sauce as being her hummus.
Yet in the early 2000s, salad cream was at risk of being discontinued by Heinz. Sales were down as younger shoppers turned to newer products. Today it is hard to move for Sriracha mayo.
“If we don’t do something, salad cream may become extinct,” said a Heinz spokesman during those troubling times. Today the Heinz team looks back mournfully to a time when customers saw mayonnaise as “more sophisticated”. Anyone from my parents’ generation to have contributed to such sentiments, I roundly deplore.
Then came the headlines, long recurrent, and targeting those under the age of 40: “Now millennials are ruining salad cream, too!” was one; “Heinz turns to AI to help Gen Z after they’re left baffled by salad cream” another. And it isn’t uncommon to hear older people wonder whether the condiment is doomed, a forgotten mainstay of dining-room tables never to lubricate ham sandwiches again.
I have news for you: salad cream is going absolutely nowhere. It’s as among the vibes as ever, and frankly, thank God. Because it is a tremendous condiment and one that deserves to be celebrated.
Never mind its yellowish hue or the fact it was invented during the First World War as a “deliciously zingy” enlivener for loaves of sorry bread and the odd morsel of rationed cheese.
In fact, its history is proving to be beneficial in the resurgence. This year, salad cream is celebrating its 110th anniversary and there’s even a menu dedicated to it at a popular, if poorly critiqued London restaurant: Grasso, an American-Italian joint on Dean Street in Soho, is serving it with mozzarella sticks and on a “ploughman’s pizza”.
I’m pleased to see TikTok erupt with intrigue. Gen Z appears not to be denouncing an egg-based oddity but embracing it, paying tribute to one of the earliest flavour bombs to grace British cuisine. Mustard and vinegar slay, after all.
Also, let me talk you through some numbers. Recent figures sent to me by a consumer PR firm show salad cream remains Britain’s fifth most popular condiment and shoppers buy as much as 190,000 tons a year.
Apparently a third of households have a bottle in the cupboard or fridge (let’s not start that debate) and sales still top £30m annually. Only ketchup, brown sauce, vinegar and mayonnaise outsell it.
“The love for it remains constant despite evolving British palates,” Thiago Rapp from Heinz said recently.
And that’s just it. Just because Britain is no longer a gastronomic wasteland doesn’t mean its old eccentricity ought to be abandoned. Salad cream, like the NHS and Dr Martens, is part of what makes this country worth saving.
I will not hear another bad word said about it, nor will I sit back and allow the media to paint a sad tale: salad cream is here, strong as ever, and rightly so.
And a word to the wise: it is sublime as a dip for boiled eggs. Eat that, and leave no crumbs.
