A Tale of Three Tins

1. Oxo. 1930s.

This tin of my grandfather's once contained six cubes. It was retrieved from his tool store. where it held thumb tacks. The Oxo cubes were a standby of my grandmother's who sprinkled them into gravy -- and sometimes into hot milk for her five children. I quote from the tin.

Children love OXO or OXO with milk and thrive on it.
OXO provides delicious soups and gravies in a few minutes and enriches all meat dishes.
OXO -- The Cook's best friend.
And my favourite tip on the back: An OXO cube crumbled into a glass of hot milk renders the milk more assimilable.

2. Burdall's Gravy Salt. 1930s.
ADDING FLAVOUR to the Joint
PIQUANCY to the Gravy
ZEST to the Meal.
Insist on having BURDALL'S GRAVY SALT, which is one of the purest and most useful foods ever invented by man.
The tin contains shoe tacks of a centimetre long. When grandfather was not shooting rabbits (no questions asked), managing estate gardens or his own, he made and mended shoes and boots.

3. A Large Biscuit tin of my great grandmother. Circa 1920. For the provenance of which we must look to A Handful of Broken Biscuits one last time. The tin is marked D Bassett of Portland Street, Sheffield and here is why this rusty, ruby red tin --and its former contents-- are so significant.

Eating biscuits: such a simple thing to remember, but John would never forget his grandma or that quiet shadowed room. The pictures of his soldier uncles on the mantelpiece, the dark green velvety cloth that covered the table, and the two of them sitting there eating cream wafers. The biscuit tin, red and gold, intrigued him. Spin wheels beneath three small windows in the lid showed the months of the year and the date in the month and, bit by bit, on Sunday afternoons at Grandma's knee, John learned the calendar. There, in that sanctuary, he learned it. Grandma left the tin to John when she died and if memory dimmed with the passing of twenty, thirty, forty years, he had but to take the tin in his hand and the flood gates would open, and those Sunday afternoons would be with him again.

So it isn't just the food, it's the receptacle, too. That's why the big red calendar biscuit tin --permanently left on July the 31st, my wedding day-- is on the shelf, kept company by its two smaller neighbours. And doesn't the description above put you in mind of a certain madeleine?