Scones! Don’t Get Me Started! Part I

As I write this, I am bobbing around somewhere in a very turbulent Atlantic on a lovely ocean liner that has a proud British pedigree. It is especially well known for serving “tea” every afternoon. Besides tea sandwiches – rectangular pieces of bread with a variety of fillings – small rolls with other fillings and pastries, they offer “cream tea.” The term “cream tea” specifically refers to a warm scone served with clotted cream and jam.

I may be a little girl from Brooklyn, but I have known all about scones since I was about eight years old. My mother, a wonderful cook, and an even better baker, was also a hardcore Anglophile. Although she was the daughter of Russian immigrants, somewhere, somehow, she learned how to bake scones. I remember one specific incident when mother had gotten a call from a friend. It was the middle of the afternoon. After hanging up the phone, she turned to me and said, “We’re going to have some company very soon. You can help me make scones.”

I was in awe of her. I didn’t know a scone from a Mallomar, a seasonal cookie beloved by my father. However, the idea that one could just “whip up” some exotic treat because company was coming excited and inspired me. It was probably one of the early experiences that inspired my love of working with food. The memory of it still makes me smile. Since then, I have eaten many scones, but none have been more delicious than the ones my mother and I baked that day so long ago.
My first day at sea, I was so happy when teatime came! There was a lovely assortment of sandwiches and pastries, but I only had eyes for the scones. I put one on a small plate and picked up a small dish with a serving of clotted cream and chose a small, individual jar of raspberry jam.

I took it to a table, placed it before me and then stared at it, bemused. Scone, cream and jam. How did one assemble a proper scone? Did one cut the scone horizontally in half, apply the jam and then top it with cream? Or did one apply the cream and then heap on the jam? And did one put the “top” of the scone back on and eat it like a sandwich? As a guest on this very proper British Ocean liner, the last thing I wanted was to be judged an “ignorant yank” or a “provincial” because I didn’t know the proper way to eat a scone!
My husband was sharing this treat with me. I saw that he had cut the scone horizontally and had put the cream on the bottom layer and had then topped it with jam. He was eating it “open face” without any concern about the judgment of British passengers who might notice a scone faux pas. Because my husband did not grow up with my mother, it has never occurred to him to be concerned about what anyone British might think of him. I sometimes envy him this carefree attitude.

I was still fretting about what Debrett’s, that great British institution dedicated to manners and society, would advise. I was frozen. What would you have done?