This is not just mince on toast – it’s modern Britain on a plate | Jack Bernhardt | Opinion
There are many things that make me proud to be British. The ability to spot when a union jack is the wrong way up from a distance of 500 metres, tutting, the song Tubthumping by Chumbawamba, and the way that everyone in Britain hates the song Tubthumping by Chumbawamba but also knows all the words.
This week, however, I was not proud: I was ashamed. I saw a nastiness and self-defeating arrogance that made me sick to my stomach. It was an incident that I fear will come to define Britain in 2017, an illustration of just how far we’ve fallen as a nation. I am talking about, of course, Mince-on-Toastgate.
It all started when the American food website Eater published a recipe for good old-fashioned mince on toast, claiming it was a quintessentially British comfort food. Oh, how we crowed. We piled on to the account like a delicious mince ragu piles on to a slice of confused bread. “What are you on?!†howled food critic Jay Rayner, as if mince on toast were an affront to everything he stood for as a British foodie, along with farmers’ market stalls that look as though they sell cheese but actually sell candles, Ottolenghi being out of baklava, and Freddos.
Mince on toast became the symbol for American misunderstandings about British culture. It was the food equivalent of calling Scotland part of England, or thinking that Theresa May was just the British Hillary Clinton, or pronouncing Leicester with a dozen extra vowels and “cessesâ€.
In the week when Donald Trump’s son was accused of actual treason, and a Tory MP was caught saying the N-word during a speech, mince on toast was Public Enemy No 1. Sure, Anne Marie Morris may have been suspended for her casual racism, but had she gotten out a fork and started shovelling mince on toast into her face during that speech, she would have been sacked faster than you could say, “It’s a perfectly common dish where I’m from.â€
I admit, the name doesn’t help. It sounds as if a recipe-maker has just mashed two random foodstuffs together, looked at it and said, “Yeah, that sounds like something they’d eat in the UK.†You could do the same with any British ingredients: Spam on suet, Wotsits on Bovril, Bisto on sticky toffee pudding.
If we were to rename it something fancy like “mince rarebit†or a “croque minceurâ€, you can bet Jay Rayner would order it at a restaurant â€" and he’d probably like the fact that it was served on a tiny triangle of bread with a teaspoon dollop of mince, and that it cost £17.95.
It’s all about perception. Mince on toast sounds disturbing, but what is a lasagne, if not mince-on-pasta toast? What is a shepherd’s pie, if not mince-on-potato toast? What, for God’s sake, man, is a hamburger, if not compacted mince on toast? Who among us has never run out of spaghetti midway through a bolognese? Who among us has not looked at the bread bin in that hour of need, shrugged and said, “It’s all carbs, isn’t it?†Who among us has not dipped a single piece of crusty bread into a mince sauce and thought, “That’s not half bad� You’re either lying or you’re a fool if you cannot see the hypocrisy of our mince-toast denial.
And so it took a friend, an ally, to stand up for the maligned, forgotten mince on toast. New Zealand, land of lamb mince and friendly Hobbit-sized bakers, laid claim to the dish on Wednesday. With tears in their eyes, bursting with national pride, Aucklanders and Wellingtoners posted pictures of their many mince-on-toast meals: breakfast mince on toast with egg; chilli mince on toast for the experimental; venison mince on focaccia for the New Zealand version of Jay Rayner.
Such ingenuity, such vision, put us sneering Brits to shame. How dare we turn our noses up at mince on toast? We eat beans on toast, cheese on toast, deep-fried Mars Bars, spaghetti hoops and turkey drumsticks. We were told Findus lasagnes had horse in them in 2013, and we still eat them.
When I was seven, I invented a meal called “ham and jamâ€. It was just ham and jam. I ate it three times a day for a week. Any country that has made something as disgusting as that, as disgusting as me, has no right to be food snobs.
The greatest insult to mince on toast, though, was still to come. Helen Leach, a history professor from the University of Otago in New Zealand, revealed that Eater was right all along: mince on toast was invented here, on these shores, discovered in cookbooks in 1865. Mince on toast was our baby. Unloved, unwanted, we turned it away, palmed it off to a friend like a sordid little secret. For shame, Britain.
This undignified episode demonstrates everything that is wrong with this nation. Once we were a country without pretension, that took in different cuisines and cultures and accepted them for what they were. We mashed ingredients together and asked “Is that a meal?†We made some mistakes along the way â€" I was off school for a few days with ham-and-jam-related illnesses â€" but we also made new flavours, new curries, new concepts. We were open, we were accepting, we were not afraid to fail.
Now, we’ve become a country obsessed with its own traditions, dismissive of innovation, denying ourselves delights out of social awkwardness and customs. We’re not too good for mince on toast; mince on toast is too good for us. Enjoy your non-mince-on-toast meals, Britain. I for one hope you choke.
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