Or: Scones – Cream or Jam First?

The experiment is over.

Scones with jam and cream or scones with cream and jam.

Over the greater period of my life, I was blissfully unaware this could be quite a contentious issue. For this period, I was in the jam on first, cream on second camp. I didn’t even know I was in a camp at that point.

I became aware of this through reading. Books have a lot to answer for and not just because that’s where I was introduced to the cream on first idea.

I tried cream on first before I was ten years old and it was a failure. Now I know why.

It’s been a long experiment…

In my time living in Hong Kong, I met many English people who also talked about cream on first yet there were quite a few others who advocated the jam first approach. I was confused. How could this be? Was it not a cultural phenomenon and something a little more specific?

Over the years I’ve experimented with it both ways and maintained the jam on first was the way to go. Then an English person introduced me to clotted cream (she’s from Cornwall so has a distinct preference for Cornish clotted cream, I didn’t even know there were other kinds). Unlike whipped cream, clotted cream is considerably thicker though maintains somewhat of an airy texture while spreading more like butter. It doesn’t dollop the way whipped cream does. Putting clotted cream on first doesn’t squidgy out everywhere underneath the jam in the way that whipped cream first does.

Now I’m visiting the county of Devon in the English countryside. The home of the Devonshire tea, though it is called, Devon cream tea by the locals. This is where the cultural aspect comes in because the county of Cornwall has Cornish cream tea. Locals from one area are cream first and the other is jam first.

I’m thinking this could be due to the different textures in their respective clotted creams as this does seem to be different depending on where the cream was produced.

In the spirit of my ongoing quest for the correct way to eat scones, I ordered a Devon cream tea after lunch (I’m even talking like a local). I was full as were my two Devon-born and bred hosts so we decided to share. They are in the cream on first camp so this is how I put theirs together while doing mine the opposite way.

The cream spread easily and right to the edges as did the jam. In the other case, with the jam on first, the cream was difficult to spread and so became a cream mountain in the middle of my scone.

What does this all mean for my scone eating future?

I will continue with the half / half approach as this gives me the opportunity to test how thick the cream is first and if it’s thick enough, I can do the other half the same way; if it’s more of the dollop variety, I’ll be able to layer the jam and then add more cream on top and my other half will be made jam first anyway.

Conundrum solved.

* Thanks to Huey Lewis & the News for the title to this post. Enjoyed listening to some old school music while writing this today!