Up until recently, we thought scones were relatively harmless baked goods – fluffy, white, high-tea staples topped with sweat cream and strawberry jam. Yummy, quaint and entirely British, but hardly worth starting an Internet war over, right?
How wrong we were.
In a Facebook advertisement for a Mother’s Day afternoon tea, Cornish National Trust property Lanhydrock House and Garden accidentally sent the Internet into a meltdown by posting a picture of a scone topped with cream and then jam (not the other way around).
This seemingly innocuous act is actually the modern-day British ‘shot heard around the world’, re-igniting a long-standing debate (read: fight) between two English counties, Cornwall and Devon, over how scones should be consumed.
“Come on Lanhydrock, this will never do…😳being in Cornwall you should know that the jam ALWAYS goes first and clotted cream ON TOP....... seriously!!!” One Facebook use said.
“I am a Dutch woman who loves Cornwall and EVEN I know that JAM on top is "not done" in Corwall. This must be a Joke from Lanhydrock,” said another.
Someone even went so far as to call it “cultural vandalism,” which, while we’d never try to downplay the significance of scones for the Brits, seems a bit extreme.
A user by the name of Justin Parkhouse seems to think it’s okay, though. “There are some pathetic people on here, cream first is the proper way and well done national trust for showing these people the correct way, I can only commend you for trying to teach them right from wrong,” he says.
The debate has raged on Twitter (yes, the trending hashtag is #sconegate), to no real end other than to leave everyone who’s not from the UK wondering what all the fuss is about.
This guy reckons Jam Firsters should go straight to the slammer. The jury’s still out on whether he’s joking or not.
Of course, Australian’s might draw paralleles between #sconegate and the jam-or-no-jam lamington debate that’s been raging for decades now. While traditional laminations may have been all sans-jam, some modern lamington lovers prefer to add a layer of jam in between two slabs of the trademark sponge cake. The debate has inspired enough controversy for an entire book on the subject: The Lamington Enigma, A survey of the Evidence by Maurice French.
Amidst the uproar, Lanhydrock apologised for the oversight and any offence caused.
Thank goodness for that.
