Relying on tradition

In the kitchen she followed the ritual of fifty years. "You'd burn watter makin' tea," her mother had once scolded her. Even now she had to admit to the memory of her mum, who sat judging her in her head, that she'd never made a cup that hadn't tasted a bit funny.

Perhaps, she had once reasoned, if she used the fancy tea that was meant to taste of smoke, then its flavour would mask whatever it was that she managed to do with it. But that hadn't worked: it had started tasting like the milk was off instead. Cheaters never prosper, she had concluded—that was her mother again, or the shadow she cast—and switched to jars of instant tea, that she kept on the counter so as to be scrupulously honest. The openness paid off, as her tea finally tasted merely as bad as expected.

Such a lack of skill, however cheerily presented, soon palls and eventually irritates. It certainly didn't help when she had to start cooking whole dinners for a whole family. Every extra stage in the complex process of a meal was an opportunity to under- or over-cook; to under- or over-spice; to blacken, curdle or otherwise ruin a key ingredient.

Over a lifetime it had been possible for her to perfect just the one meal, and that was enough. Ideal, really: these were the days before Delia Smith; her formative ones were, anyway, with Homepride sauces a revolution still over the culinary horizon. Every night for the first year, the measured together (with affection) how long the vegetables had taken, or how much butter had been added to how many potatoes—of what variety—before being mashed for how long. Each chop was weighed and then cooked according to variations on the recommended timescale. Every meal was summarized at the end in notes, with asterisks for exceptional results. At the end of this tortuous process, and then for decades afterwards, she was able to cook a version of meat, two greens and mash that—however unexciting—was perfectly, perfectedly edible. With a pudding from the fridge, that was unwrapped immediately before eating.

But now, after all those years, it was like she had lost the recipe, and every meal was wrong again. As she straightened from leaning over the colander and wiped a little steam off her glasses, she paused to wonder what might be the problem. Not for long, though: falling foul of her own timetable would hardly help the dinner turn out well this time. She moved onto the potatoes, then checked the pork, which sizzled at just the right volume. So what could be the problem?

It was only when the food was assembled on the plates, and the plates on the table, that she realized once again what was wrong and why. She sat down and picked up a serving spoon, and looked round from dish to dish. Everything was on her half of the table: the potatoes (25 min), carrots (20 min), peas (5 min, with mint), chops (18-25 min) and gravy (2 min; Oxo, of course); both serving spoons and even the salt and pepper. Nothing was so far away that she would have to ask for it, but of everything there was twice too much.

She stared without seeing for some minutes, as all the food cooled down. Then she bit her lip and stood up again, the scrape of her chair echoing around the room. She took each dish in turn and carried it over to the bin. Then, carefully, she pushed exactly just over half of the dish's contents into the black bag with a serving spoon, and returned what was left to the table. The gravy she poured down the sink: just over half of it, as with everything else.

She sat back down and looked ahead, over the half-empty plates on a half-empty table, at a completely empty chair. She made a mental note to change the recipe that they'd both used for years. She'd cross out all the numbers and write new ones in their place. Tomorrow.