I have a vivid memory of arriving at university at the back end of the 1980s and telling someone I needed to buy a bread cake, at which point I remembered (too late!) that most people call the round baked item in question a bap or a roll. The term bread cake – no, it has nothing whatsoever to do with cake – is highly regional: a South Yorkshire and, at a push, East Midlands thing. If I’d been wearing a Tracey Emin-style neon sign on my head that said, “I am from elsewhere, possibly another planet”, I couldn’t have announced myself more clearly. Not that I was embarrassed – and in any case, old habits die hard. On Sunday mornings, when I make bacon sandwiches, the floury baps that I like to use, soft as pillows, are still bread cakes to me. They always will be.
The experience I describe was, however, a long time ago and, today, as I think about making pease pudding for dinner (I’m joking; of course we’re having pasta), I find myself wondering about regional differences when it comes to food. Do they belong, now, to the past? Admittedly, it’s still hard to lay your hands on parkin in London: Gail’s Bakery looks to Europe, not Leeds, its nose in the air and a silk scarf tied firmly around its neck. But Eccles cakes and Cornish pasties are ubiquitous now, and I’ve seen haslet with my own eyes at the Islington branch of Tesco (a herby meat loaf, haslet is very good in bread cakes, so long as they’re thickly buttered). Neal’s Yard Dairy, the fine cheesemonger, sells Staffordshire oatcakes. Leave the capital, meanwhile, and you will find that a sourdough-and-rocket-inflected monotony is spreading ever outwards from the M25.
