This article is taken from the May 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Get five issues for just £5.
Current anti-Americanism recalls my childhood. “Why do people hate Americans?” I asked my mother after listening to an uncle´s diatribe, in which “the Americans” bore the blame for General Eisenhower´s excesses. She looked distracted whilst seeking an answer without reference to sex, religion or politics.
“They can be so peculiar,” she replied after a whilst. “They eat kippers with marmalade.” The answer distracted me. It was an aspersion: the combination of flavours was, I now think, neither peculiarly American nor particularly peculiar. It ill behoves the British, who offset lamb with redcurrant preserve or roast pork or goose with sugary apple sauce or lavender jelly, to complain about sweet-toothed experiments.
Kippers are fatty and salty. An astringent yet slightly sweet accompaniment can complement them. If the fish is grilled, I like an acrid dusting of herbs, with some green tomatoes for juiciness, texture and colour contrast; but a glaze of very bitter marmalade, diluted with a little balsamic vinegar, works admirably. (Poached kippers, with attenuated adiposity and leeched salt, need nothing but buttered toast.)
American cooks do sometimes favour strange pairings. It makes no culinary or gustatory sense, for instance, to heap prawns on steaks. Chilli — which is earthy, starchy and scorching — does not go with spaghetti.
Cranberries are far too sour to match roast turkey, which is neither sweet nor fatty: only seasonal availability justifies their abuse at Thanksgiving and Christmas. A Reuben sandwich — which adds pickled cabbage to pickled beef — is irrationally heavy on the picklings.
Some hamburger garnishes I have seen are fearsomely weird: pineapple, kimchi, nacho cheese with grape jelly, lime pickle, mole poblano — stiff with chocolate and dried fruit — or pungent salsa puttanesca. If you like beef, there is no call to occlude it with such unsympathetic smotherings.
Perhaps the freak burgers are excusable: sandwiches of other kinds seem to attract similarly unwarrantable fillings.
Untempting contrivances have glared from recent menus
Who could ever have thought of a chip buttie? Or a guacamole and cream cheese wrap? Or chicken tikka masala on brown bread? Or peanut butter and onion? Or blue cheese and white chocolate, which I have seen recommended with apparent solemnity? Except as cravings in pregnancy — which are exempt from rational criticism — it is hard to imagine how such combinations could ever have occurred.
Some traditional twosomes have little more appeal. I have never understood why anyone would want to stick a lemon inside a chicken: the meat needs no added acidity. Cherries and oranges are ruinous to roast duck. Unlikely combinations have become tedious features of pretentious menus, fusionist dogma or curses of AI-generated recipes formerly denounced in this column. Untempting contrivances have glared at me from recent menus: roast cod with jackfruit, pork loin with blackcurrants.
Home cooks, however, should not be deterred. There is no inventiveness in cookery without serendipity and risk. Most effects are predictable, but some escapades work out surprisingly well. My wife finds my own favourites baffling. No eater except me seems to favour mango chutney with cold roast beef or a glass of amontillado with the hot version.
I know no one else who likes to munch on a sliver of dark, naturally fruity chocolate, sandwiched between thin slices of comté or who maintains that anchovy toast is ideal with black coffee. I can think of no white or river fish that does not benefit from grilling with a handful of lardons, which also work wonders on sautéed pulses, artichoke hearts or hearts of palm.
Best prospects for successful new combinations, I think, are to be sought amongst rarely mingled green vegetables, nuts and dried fruits. The British eat brussels sprouts with no relish, but they could enhance them with a dusting of ground, roasted almonds and cinnamon.
Anything eaten because it is “good for you” is probably too medicinal to be pleasant: the high iron taste of spinach, for instance, is improved by stirring in pine nuts and plump raisins, after the manner of a Catalan classic.
A coating of crushed nuts — pecans and hazelnuts work well — gives cauliflower crunch and depth of flavour. It´s pleasing to eye and palate to stud red cabbage with currants and green beans with chopped black figs. Pistachios and broad beans combine without sacrifice of subtlety.
I suppose that whoever first combined bacon with eggs or fish with chips was an adventurer at risk of derision from peers. Cole Porter was right:
The future can offer you infinite joy
And merriment.
Experiment!
And you’ll see.
