Originally Posted by
Steve
I pronounce it the latter, that scone is gone. However, due to my London accent it's much more like saying Cone with an S in front.
American dinner biscuit is to my knowledge a more savoury and dry affair. Scones, are by nature very sweet and terribly (read delightfully) butter rich cakes. How does one differentiate between a cake and a biscuit? Well biscuits when fresh are crisp and crumbly, when they go stale they become rather soggy textured. They don't taste as crisp which leaves you disappointed. A cake on the other hand is soft and becomes hard when stale much like bread. This leaves you fearing for the safety of your teeth as you bite in to them and most certainly highly disappointed. Scones belong at afternoon tea, not in your supper, now we'll forget your transgressions and if you're lucky, introduce you to the delights of afternoon tea in the future.
They should be eaten with clotted cream (preferably, though very stiff double cream will do in a pinch. Whip it properly boy, don't you dare use any aerosol trout) and some jam. Eating them plain (don't ask me how people do plain, due to their quite heavy, crumbly texture they have the ability to act like a Cream Cracker to your mouth leaving behind the same cemented shut feeling on your teeth due to crumbs mixed with saliva bonding to all available surfaces). Alternatively, it is known to see them served spread with butter however, it is not the traditional way of consuming these cakes due to the already high butter content. The answer to the other debate (jam or cream first) is thus:
The jam should always be applied first. No arguments, it's like putting the toilet paper on the holder; there is a right way and a wrong way. Cream first is simply put bloody wrong. Here's why:
If you put the cream on first then much like the toilet paper being so it tears off from the back you don't actually have a good clean estimate of how much you have or need when it comes to applying the jam (or wiping your arse to continue the analogy) you end up having to put far more on than required (or tear more off) because you have a surface to spread it on which has far more give and slip (or you just can't smurfing see the thing). This leaves you dissatisfied with both an uneven covering of jam and an overly sweet experience dripping in sugar (or a blocked drain in your toilet which no one wants to break up for fear of the trout being still there)
If however, you do it right, you apply the Jam first (or hang your toilet paper so the tear perforations are on the front of the roll) you can apply the right amount of Jam to ensure maximum coverage and minimum overdoing it. You can then pile a generous helping of clotted cream on top using the adhesive quality of the jam to aid you in the process of applying it. (This is akin to being able to determine exactly how many pieces of toilet paper is enough by cleanly counting in your head). This leads to great satisfaction for the consumer and a relief that they have done things right (they're also not scrabbling for the end of the toilet roll, it is after all in plain view).
Ladies and gentleman. When it takes a man from Finchley to put you all bloody straight on Scones, you know one thing: You're simply not very classy.