Condiment Cement

For me, Xmas dinner this year was a fairly sloppy affair. Although the turkey was done to a T and the pigs were cosily snuggled inside their blankets, something went a little awry on the vegetable front. The timing was a little off, and we ended up with sludgy sprouts, calcified carrots, and broccoli that had had the very bejesus boiled out of it.

The end result was that it was very difficult to get a satisfyingly mixed combination of tastes on a single fork. While the turkey and other meats could be easily speared, the slippery vegetables didn’t have quite enough substance to them, and would just dissolve into a compost-like green gunk under my repeated stabbings.

Fortunately, Christmas is almost unique in the wide range of condiments which find themselves suddenly mutually acceptable at the same festive table. There were a spectacular range of mustards within arm’s reach, cranberry sauce (which at any other time of the year would be a jam), bread sauce, and a schooner of gravy that I’m pretty sure was just a whole cow my mother had melted down.

The point is – these various condiments, with their varying viscosities and adhesive properties, proved to be just the ticket in slowly and craftily building up a truly festive forkful of flavour, despite the recalcitrance of the soggy sprouts and the rest of their vegetative ilk.

So here’s what I’m proposing: make a range of mustards and other condiments that retain their taste properties but harden like superglue, either after a few seconds exposure to the air, or after they’ve been mixed with another, similar condiment.

Imagine the delicately-balanced constructions that master chefs would make – simple ice-sculptures and chocolate fountains would be thing of the past as true culinary geniuses constructed intricate Eiffel towers of taste that would be as pleasing to the eye as to the palate. And for the rest of us – playing with your food takes on a whole new Lego-like meaning.

At the very least, sandwiches would be a lot less messy.