Cupboard Love

Every good cook needs a well-stocked larder and the list of essential kitchen-cabinet ingredients has an increasingly international flavour, says Tom Parker Bowles

- Tom Parker Bowles

POOR old Mother Hubbard. What with her bare cupboard and its distinct lack of bones, or anything else at all. I feel for that pipe-smoking, jig-dancing, goat-riding dog, really I do, because a well-stocked pantry, larder or store cupboard is the backbone of any self-respecting home, a place from which great feasts are lovingly conjured and succour is mixed with the salt.

As a child, the larder was always a place of cool contemplation, dimly lit and faintly scented with spice and damp old stone. I remember tins of Texan fruit cake (from a friend in the Lone Star State); endless bags of sugar and flour; neat boxes of Rowntree’s jelly; Frank Cooper’s Original Oxford Marmalade (my mother was devoted to the stuff); a few ancient tins of sardines (and a few battered cans of lord only knows what); bottles of Worcestershire Sauce and Tabasco; Carr’s Table Water Biscuits; Gentleman’s Relish; Twinings English Breakfast tea; anchovy essence; local honey; Marmite; Baxters Beef Consommé; Heinz Baked Beans; vomit-scented, pre-grated ‘Parmesan’; and Rose’s Lime Juice Cordial (a back-up for the drinks-table supply).

There were also fresh eggs, collected from the chickens, in a pretty, day-demarcated box; leaves of gelatine; Sarson’s vinegar; Sainsbury’s spaghetti; a jar of faded herbs (probably mint, but no one could be quite sure); antediluvian cake decorations; Sugar Puffs; Shreddies; porridge oats; and a few sticky jars of homemade jam.

The only hint of the exotic was a plastic pot of Sharwood’s curry powder, for the ghastly and ubiquitous Coronation chicken.