I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world.	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he's experimenting with federated platforms . He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance, and can found on the PlusPora diaspora pod. He hates cell-phones.

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Brown Stuff When I was much younger, perhaps eleven or twelve years of age, I arrived at school one day to find that submissions were due for the school cookbook. I had forgotten that we were supposed to have brought in 'our favorite recipe' for inclusion. I was, however, loathe to admit this, so instead I sat down with a 3x5 index card and wrote out a recipe for something which I called 'Brown Cake.' My reasoning was clear, as I recall; one could make white cakes and yellow cakes, and this cake would be brown, so the name was obvious. The name didn't say as much about the taste as one like 'chocolate' or 'vanilla' would, but, then again, neither does 'white cake' strongly suggest a flavor palate. Likewise, the almost ubiquitous UK condiment known as 'Brown Sauce' provides information about appearance, while being entirely lacking in information about flavour. This can cause some problems for visitors or recent arrivals, since, when asked if they would like brown sauce on their bacon butty, they may have no clue how to respond. (My usual response to questions like these is 'yes,' although I do sometimes spin my wheels at multiple choice versions where I am offered a choice from a variety of unknown sauces or condiments.) Knowing what brown sauce is, and being familiar with the flavour profile and usual usage, is part of the common cultural heritage. It is similar to the US usage of the word 'salsa,' in some ways. The word means 'sauce,' but is understood in the US to mean a Mexican style sauce with tomatoes, onions and peppers - any significant deviation from this requires modifiers such as 'roasted garlic,' 'pineapple,' mild or 'hot.' (Or, indeed, 'medium' although one would expect that to be the default.) For that matter, many people in the US think that 'tomato ketchup' is redundant, although other places understand that there are different kinds of catsup (as well as different spellings), such as 'mushroom catsup,' which are not necessarily tomato based. Given that complexity, there is a certain elegant simplicity to the name 'Brown Sauce.' Complexity lurks in the corner here as well, though. There are a wide variety of Brown Sauces available, ranging from the extremely posh to the work-a-day to the house brands, such as the one pictured on this page. There do seem to be some commonalities. HP and Sainsbury's both have vinegar, tomato, sweeteners, apple juice or paste, mustard, onion, dates, tamarind and salt. Compare that to a typical tomato ketchup and you will see some similarities; there are tomatoes, sweeteners, vinegar, salt and often onions. What you don't see in ketchup quite so often are things like mustard, dates or tamarind. It is no surprise, then, that Brown Sauce, in my experience, tends to be a little sweeter and little more complex than a typical tomato ketchup. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what you are intending to do with it. I don't think there's any great significance to any of this, though. It's just one of those little cultural differences that pop up from time to time, like where grocery stores tend to stock lemon juice. (The answer to that, by the way, is with the baking supplies.) And if anyone would like to try Brown Cake, I suspect my mother still has the recipe somewhere. Luddite'sLog, 30 November 2013 © 2013 Jeff Berry

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