Is It Cream First or Jam First? Mary Berry Knows The Answer...

Want to start an argument during afternoon tea? Ask a group of people whether they put clotted cream or jam on their scone first and just sit back and watch the carnage unfold. It’s probably the most British thing in the world to have very strong opinions about something as quaint and inoffensive as cream tea but ask any self-respecting Brit of a certain age about the order they slather their scones and you’re inevitably going to get a rather impassioned response.

Personally, I couldn’t give a shit. As long as my scone has an ample amount of clotted cream and strawberry jam plopped on top of it in some way, shape, or form, I’m not fussed. The order in which you pat those onto a scone means very little to me. But it means a lot to a frankly astonishing number of people – plus, the chance to rank high on search for anyone Googling "jam or cream first?" was too tempting to pass up – so I thought I’d try and get to the bottom of it. How? Why, by asking Mary Berry, of course. Because I figured if anyone had the definitive answer to that question it’d be her.

According to research, what’s widely known as the “Devon method” is putting your clotted cream on first and covering that up with jam whereas the “Cornish method” involves spreading your scone with strawberry jam and then topping that layer with clotted cream. Mary Berry was born in Bath which would, one assumes, make her the perfect neutral in this argument – an ideal test case for which is the superior method, free from any geographical bias.

With that in mind, I got to work trying to get in touch with everyone’s favourite Dame. As a broken-brained millennial, the first step I made at contacting Mary involved trying to send a DM to an account which, after reading its rather explicit bio, I very quickly realised did not actually belong to Mary Berry. Not that that mattered much because fake Mary didn’t reply anyway.

After that calamity, I figured that if I couldn’t get a hold of Mary Berry, I’d simply try and get someone just as good. Ruby Bhogal was a contestant and finalist on The Great British Bake Off in 2018 and has a regular baking segment on This Morning. She's a big deal. So much of a big deal that I couldn't actually get a response from Ruby for this feature but I did hear back from her agent, Hannah, who was extremely passionate about the subject. "I grew up in Devon," writes Hannah, "so this is a VERY serious subject for me. Of course, it is cream first. Jam first is wrong. Just wrong." That settles it, I guess.

I figured that was all well and good and I even wrote up a draft of this very feature that was Mary Berry-less, telling myself that “that was the point” and that it was “funny” to read an article where I tried and failed to get some scone advice from Mary Berry. And, reader, I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for my meddling conscience. I filed my copy for the article at the end of the day but I spent that whole night tossing and turning in bed. I couldn’t sleep easy knowing that I’d robbed you of potentially finding out, once and for all, what order you should anoint a scone in. So, with a new fire in my belly, I decided to really kick things into high gear. By which I mean that I emailed Mary Berry’s literary agent and really politely asked if she could find out from Mary whether she puts jam or cream on her scones first.

After that, all I had to do was bide my time. Or so I thought. A day passed and there were still no signs of movement from Mary’s camp. I began to check my email inbox prodigiously, tending to it as a schoolboy tends to his Nokia when he’s waiting for a response from his crush. My palms were in a constant state of sweat and my heart nearly leapt out of my chest every time a new press release came crashing onto my screen. I became a different person. My flat mates described me as “distant”, “off”, and “too obsessed with something that doesn’t really matter”. My girlfriend was convinced that I'd started having an affair. She didn't know I'd become infatuated by an 88-year-old television presenter. Despite all their best concerns, I couldn’t stop fretting. I knew that if I didn't pull this off I would have let you, the reader, down and that the next time you ate a scone you’d have absolutely no idea whether to put the cream or jam on first. You’d be lost at sea and it was my job – nay, my duty – to make sure that you knew what Mary Berry had to say on that matter.

Then, the next day, an excruciating 48 hours after I sent that email to Mary Berry’s literary agents, an email landed in my inbox. An email packed to the brim with all the answers I’d been looking, hoping, and praying for. An email so rich with sense and logic that I couldn't help but weep tears of clarity as I read through it.

Mary Berry says, "it depends if I’m in Devon or Cornwall as to whether it is cream or jam first!”

There you have it, folks. The definitive answer you've all been waiting for: it depends.