Crumpet News

Which crumpets are the best?

Marcel Proust writes:

For a long time I would get up early and eat Saino's crumpets, the bog-standard kind. I lived in a simple world, in which choice was the preserve of the rich, and ordinary folk were happy with what they got.

Then Sainsbury's introduced their "Taste The Difference" range, and these crumpets were fat and moist, with a taste reminiscent of the home-made kind. The ordinary crumpets now seemed dry and thin, with an unpleasant texture. I even started to believe that Sainsbury's had deliberately made them worse.

So when the "Taste the Difference" shelf was empty, I started to look elsewhere for my crumpets, and tried the Warburton's. Revelation! Not only better than bog-standard, these were actually better than the "Taste The Difference", which now - obviously - tasted like they had too much bicarb in them.

So now: what do you do when the Warburton's aren't available? I tried the Kingsmill. They come in a good pack that protects them and keeps them slightly fresher, once opened. But they go too far. They're too fat, tending to get trapped in the toaster, and while they look like they ought to be good, they're bland and stodgy.

Warburton's win, then. Incidentally, in our toaster, you have to cook the crumpets twice - on the highest setting - to toast them adequately. Shouldn't toaster makers have a Crumpet setting? After all, crumpets pre-date toast by a couple of centuries.*


*Made up fact.