At last. A fight that's worth fighting. A dispute that won't end in shabby compromise or fudgey coalition; a battle I can get behind - one on which there are clearly defined sides: the right side ... and the wrong.
The long-running rivalry between Devon and Cornwall over cream teas has been reignited with news that a Devon dairy has launched a campaign to apply for Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) for the name "Devon cream tea". Cornwall, of course, already has PDO for its clotted cream, but a few years ago, historians piecing together fragments of manuscripts in Tavistock (Devon) found evidence that the cream tea originated there 1,000 years ago, after Tavistock's Benedictine Abbey monks fed workers with bread, clotted cream and strawberry preserves. The combination, unsurprisingly, was a hit with passing travellers.
Cream teas are pretty much ubiquitous in villages the country over, being a massive draw for the coachloads of tourists after a quintessentially English experience (with good reason). Being something of an addict, I've had what masquerades as a cream tea in many a far-flung corner of England, Wales and Scotland. Naturally, these have been of of varying quality, and this is one of the bugbears of those behind the campaign: "I have seen Devon cream teas with cream from a can in the Lake District," Paul Winterton, general manager at the Devon farm, warned today. "The scone was like a cake," he added, darkly.
If Mr Winterton is trying to push the old terroir button here, he might want to start by doing something about those a bit closer to home. I can attest to immeasurable disappointment caused by a cream tea in a seaside cafe in Devon, when shivering from immersion in the freezing cold sea I was confronted with my reward - a decent towering scone, slathered with jam but heartbreakingly topped with plasticky scooshy aerosol cream. The horror.
We've ummed and aahhed over the delights of scones on WoM in the past when Felicity Cloake sought out the perfect recipe to make the little golden treasures, but apart from touching briefly on the assembly of the cream tea we didn't really give the subject the consideration it deserves. (This is possibly because Felicity, who we now realise is some sort of heathen weirdo, eschews the delights of silky yellow-crusted clotted cream on her scones, or possibly because we got distracted with the other great scone debate - the pronunciation "skoan" (wrong), or "skon" as all right minded people know.)
I can understand the desire of those in Devon to safeguard this most appealing of treats and make it irrevocably their own, but for their part people we spoke to at cornishcream.com this morning were equally quick to cast aspersions on the quality of the clotted cream from the neighbouring county, some 50 miles away: "The Devon stuff's a bit gritty and we've got better cows."
I'm not convinced that, even if Defra back the Devon bid, there's much chance of a DOP being awarded for an assembled assortment of ingredients rather than a single product, but you've got to love a trier. Even more pleasing is the fact that people are fighting over the individual components of a cream tea and even more crucially, their final assembly. Traditionally, in the Duchy of Cornwall, to apply cream to the scone first is nigh on sacrilege - the crazy fools stick the jam on followed by the cream ON TOP - just so wrong. In Devon it's cream first (this is an essential part of the PDO application), which is plainly correct. It spreads more easily, it looks better, it's just ... right.
Vote using the buttons below and tell us why you're right in the comments. We'll be conducting a taste test tomorrow based on the results so with any luck we'll be able to answer this delicious, er, difficult question once and for all. Opinion is divided but I know which side I'm on. Who's with me?