‘Oh that’s fine sir, no eggs in the sea bream.’
‘No, I’m sure. It’s just that there’s often coleslaw or
somesuch in the salad.’
‘I’ll make absolutely sure they understand, sir.’
‘Thank you. A nice oil dressing is perfectly fine, just
nothing mayonnaise-based.’
‘No problem sir. And may I compliment you on your choice.’
‘You may, thank you. Ooh, free bread.’
I apologized to the rest of the party for my precipitate
diving into the basket of crusty bread by my plate. However, I was quickly able to
observe that there had been egg on the small pillow of bread now residing in
the capacious Wumber belly. After swilling a whole jug of water, the
burning in my mouth, unusually, disappeared and I felt I might have been
mistaken. Fortunately for all present, my subsequent and inevitable gastric
distress only appeared as I completed the main course. A tiny amount of egg
then. Small enough to not be detected so
that I could ingest it all – but sufficient to make me ill – sooner or later;
as always. The evening’s delicious and rather expensive delights were offered
to the god Sewer once we arrived home.
This is not a rare occurrence and I shall be a lot more
careful about eating bread in public from now on. The baiting of bread has become
irritatingly commonplace, second only to the seemingly obligatory
cross-contamination found in Chinese restaurants; I’d say I’ve lost about £100
worth of Chinese in the toilet before it’s even been paid for – I no longer do
them the honour of my business.
I’m quite understanding about the use of egg on the whole,
though I am often bewildered by some instances of its use – and dispirited by
the inconsistency of it. If you were interested enough to check the ingredients
of pork pies and pasties, you would see that some are glazed with egg and some
are not. Moreover, one manufacturer’s small pie might not be glazed, while its
bigger brother is. This minefield is shifted periodically so that I, and the
eternally patient Mrs Wumber, have to read all the ingredients of all products
that could possibly contain egg, all the time.
My main frustration is that the use of egg is clearly
unnecessary in these circumstances. If a pie needn’t be egg-glazed today, it
doesn’t need it tomorrow. Bread hasn’t needed egg-glazes for thousands of
years; why does it now? It smacks of pretentiousness and lack of thought. After
all, a glaze is for the sake of appearance only, supposedly something to make a
thing more attractive – even though it’s probably beneath opaque packaging.
The thoughtlessness is the worst thing. Somebody has to
consider and write the list of allergens for the packaging. Why then, do they
not arrive at the conclusion that the list is there to deter potential
purchasers and the shorter it is, the more purchasers they might have. Some ingredients
are unavoidable, but why use those that are demonstrably not? Egg is one of the
most common food allergies, using more expensive ingredients to repel potential
consumers – or make them ill – seems ridiculous to me. And as for spending
money on eggs to adulterate something you give away – preprandial bread –
bizarre!
I realize this will come across as somewhat self-focussed,
but it isn’t at all. I don’t care what ingredients a restaurant uses, nor do I
wish to be difficult. Just tell me what to avoid and I will do just that. But
if they stopped putting egg on bread, pastries, mashed potato and the like,
then they would improve their profit margin and not make some of us ill, with
nobody being any the wiser.
And while we’re at it, the makers of triangular sandwiches
might stop putting mayonnaise in every single sandwich and thus bring down the nation’s
weight by several tonnes.
