Every few months, someone on social media proclaims a rule about how an ingredient or dish should be cooked or eaten, as if it were gospel. The only way to cook X is … You should never eat X … X is a cursed dish … The only acceptable time to eat X is when … In response other users erupt in anger, upset and excitement, and declare a plethora of ways in which they reject the rule. The rule is stupid! Out with the rule! The rule misunderstands everything about cooking!
Personally, I eat up culinary beef – as a spectator, at least. The latest row revolved around a question: is a tomato sandwich a real sandwich? A few weeks ago, the American writer Geraldine DeRuiter inflamed opinion with a single tweet (since deleted). “I’m sorry, food Twitter but a ‘tomato sandwich’ is not a sandwich, you just don’t have the ingredients to make a BLT.”
