Yes, Monty Python lampooned it and it smells like cheap cat food... but Mrs T loved it and even my son's a fan! No wonder Spam is back on the menu: TOM PARKER BOWLES
Well, I’ve heard it all now. Spam, that tinned, meaty monolith is, according to Waitrose, officially back in vogue. Sales have soared 48 per cent compared to this time last year, much of it down to the 80th VE Day anniversary.
‘We’re seeing customers connect with the past,’ mused Waitrose archivist Imogen Livesley, ‘by turning to the comforting familiarity of foods popular in wartime Britain.’
Now I’m all for fish and chips, the un-rationed staple that kept bellies full during World War II. And who can resist a proper bread and butter pudding?
But does this mean we’ll see Woolton Pie – pure edible parsimony, filled with glum, overboiled vegetables and topped with a mean, pale and purse-lipped ‘pastry’ lid – back on the menu at The Ritz?
Or Mock Goose, that unholy melange of sage, red lentils and breadcrumbs now playing a starring role at the three-Michelin-starred Core?
How about going the whole hog, with a Rationing Set Menu at the famous Ledbury in Notting Hill, featuring dock pudding (where all sorts of indecent things are done to leeks and oatmeal), mock fish cakes (bloater paste takes the place of haddock) and mock clotted cream: A monstrous mix of margarine, dried milk powder and sugar?
These dishes were, of course, formed by necessity. Rationing lasted more than 15 years, well after the end of World War II. And back then, a tin of Spam – a blend of chopped pork shoulder, ham, potato starch, sugar and salt – was a godsend.
‘To a small boy after the war,’ remembers food writer Matthew Fort, ‘it was the very height of luxury. After a few years of eating scrag end and odd scraps of meat, all that animal fat was seized upon with joy.’
Tom Parker Bowles says Spam is not much to look at with the pale pink pallor of a sickly Victorian stepchild but the taste is remarkably inoffensive
His mother used to braise it in molasses, studded with cloves. ‘Just wonderful,’ he sighs. ‘It also made a fantastic bait for barbel.’
Fort is not alone in his Spam adoration. Lady Thatcher remembered eating the ‘wartime delicacy’ on Boxing Day, 1943, with ‘some lettuce and tomato and beetroot’, a welcome relief from the relentless monotony of rationing.
But as the years passed and fresh meat became available once more, Spam became a byword for the bland and over-processed, a despised school dinner to be avoided rather than embraced.
Monty Python’s famous Spam sketch (‘Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam…’ etc. etc. etc.), which sent up its ubiquity in cafes across the land, was the final nail in its soft, over-salted coffin.
The luncheon meat became the drab porky punchline to a tired culinary joke, and even saw it being adopted, many decades later, as the international term for unsolicited emails. The endless singing of the word ‘spam’ drowns out all other communication.
To me, Spam has always felt essentially English, a plucky, no-nonsense sort of fella with a jolly yellow logo, the edible embodiment of Keep B****ring On.
But it is, of course, an American invention, created in 1937 by Hormel, an American food-processing company, to boost pork shoulder sales. A competition was launched, with a $100 prize, to name this new spiced ham product.
The winner, one Mr Kenneth Daigneau, came up with Spam. Some say it’s a contraction of spiced ham, others it’s an acronym for Shoulder of Pork And Ham.
The only thing we know for certain was that Daigneau was the brother of a Hormel executive. Keep it in the family and all that.
But it was the advent of the war that really transformed Spam from regional nobody to international superstar, as it quickly became the hero of the US army’s C-ration, alongside hardtack biscuits, ground coffee, chewing gum, chocolate, sugar and salt.
As it grew increasingly difficult to get meat to the front lines, Spam came to the rescue (along with corned beef and tinned pork and beans), being virtually indestructible, and lasting for years.
It was also relatively nutritious and delicious. Known affectionately by the GIs as ‘meatloaf that didn’t pass its training’, or ‘ham that didn’t pass its physical’, more than 75,000 tonnes were bought by the US military before the war’s end. And its legacy didn’t end with the defeat of the Axis powers.
Because Spam laid down roots wherever it arrived with the troops. It became the ‘motherhood-and-apple-pie’ of Hawaii, according to food historian Rachel Paudan.
And, with more than 7 million tins sold there every year, Hawaii has the highest per capita consumption in the world. Far from being looked down upon, it’s worshipped and adored, the star of festivals and the main ingredient of musubi, a take on the Japanese onigiri rice ball, one of the state’s national dishes.
Spam also appears in everything from poke bowls and egg and rice to McDonald’s and Burger King specials. Little wonder it’s often known as ‘Hawaiian steak’.
Monty Python’s famous Spam sketch (‘Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam…’), which sent up its ubiquity in cafes across the land, was the final nail in its soft, over-salted coffin
Lady Thatcher remembered eating the ‘wartime delicacy’ on Boxing Day, 1943, with ‘some lettuce and tomato and beetroot’, a welcome relief from the relentless monotony of rationing
Spam advertisement from the 1990s
Paul Theroux, the legendary travel writer, has a theory (albeit not entirely serious), that ‘former cannibals of Oceania now feasted on Spam because Spam came the nearest to approximating the porky taste of human flesh’. A colourful theory, but tenuous at best.
Puerto Rico has a Sandwich de Mezcla, with Spam, American processed cheese and pimientos, while in South Korea, it’s a popular, and assuredly upmarket, Christmas hamper gift – as it is in Thailand and China, too.
Talking of China, you’ll find Spam across the land, in stir-fries, soups, and even dumplings. The recipe is tweaked to make it rather more meaty, but it’s a taste that passes through the generations.
When I told my son I was writing about Spam, he was uncharacteristically impressed. ‘Cool!’ he cried, before making off with a dozen of the tins I’d been sent.
One of his best friends at school is Chinese, and he’s passed on his love of Spam to my son. They slice it up, then stir fry it with eggs and chilli sauce. That soft, slightly slimy texture is also part of its appeal in a country where ‘mouthfeel’ or texture is every bit as important as taste.
As for me? Well, it’s been a while, probably over four decades since I last ate the stuff. As I slip the lump of meat from its metal sheath, I’m struck by the smell, unpleasantly pungent, like cheap cat food.
It’s not much to look at either, with the pale pink pallor of a sickly Victorian stepchild. There’s a slight sheen too, like a thin layer of sweat. The taste though, is remarkably inoffensive, a study in bland saltiness.
There’s no spice to speak of, and the texture is invalid-soft. I suppose that’s all part of its appeal, offering a blank, vaguely carnivorous canvas. I fry it with a little chilli and soy sauce, and the Spam is transformed, becoming altogether more appetising, with a crisp, burnished crust.
I could actually grow to like this. OK, so the pigs used in its manufacture have not had happy free-range lives and are, more likely than not, victims of the horrors of industrial factory farming. Spam is not exactly healthy either, with its high levels of salt and fat.
But despite all this, I can’t help but admire its tenacity. Trends come and go, fortunes rise and fall, but Spam still strolls on, moving from wartime luxury to peacetime essential.
It’s the plucky survivor that’s always being rediscovered by a new generation, a delicacy to many, and a store cupboard saviour, undeserving of its reputation. ‘You don’t say ham, you say Spam,’ went the old 1980s jingle. That may be a little optimistic. How about ‘Spam, it may not be ham. But it’s not as bad as you think.’
