When supermarket cheddar is more than just cheese

Before lockdown, there was no shopping list. We used to nip off to the shops when supplies got low. It was a peaceful, contemplative act.

Now, with only a single family member allowed in most stores, a list is compiled by a system of open outcry, not unlike a stock exchange. Each member of the family yells their bid and I counter with a reason why I won’t be buying a bulk case of Magnum Minis or Picpoul-in-a-box. Last time, though, a bid from my teenage daughter gave me pause: “Get a couple of blocks of cheddar . . . and maybe get some cheese as well . . . ”

You could, of course, attribute this to adolescent weirdness and no one could blame you, but I really understood. The commodity block cheddar we buy at the supermarket has become a sort of category all of its own.

From its shape we can see that it is cut by a machine, not the honest hand of an artisan. It has a pleasant, sweet smell with none of the feral undertones of the more rustic product. It is often brightly branded or even given a number denoting its “strength”, both of which speak of preternatural consistency.

It slices nicely into a sandwich, grates smoothly and melts on to a piece of toast in ways that can elicit a sigh of pleasure in all but the most fastidious. Commodity cheddar is a superb product, a crowd-pleasing and versatile dietary wax . . . and therefore entirely different from any of the rich variety of exciting “cheese”.

These products have been honed by generations of mass opinion into something almost inexplicably right and pleasing

In my twenties I lived in the US, working in kitchens in the steaming hot South. I grew to love the first can of ice-cold beer at the end of a sweaty shift.

This was fizzy stuff, with simple, easy flavours, and utterly refreshing. It didn’t taste like it had a high alcohol content and it was regarded almost as a soft drink, sold in unlicensed premises in counties where real “liquor” was sometimes hard to come by. When the temperature outside was in the nineties, the humidity damn near 100 per cent and you’d spent eight hours cleaning shrimp in a room without air conditioning, a can of Budweiser grabbed from the fridge — and ideally drunk while standing in the shower — restored the will to live.

Of course, in the UK, decades later, I am surrounded by “real beer”. Sensitively crafted, artisanal products, full of organic ingredients, premium hops, hops . . . more hops . . . in a kind of arms race of beardy authenticity. I was told this stuff was wonderful but it made my face shrivel. All I really wanted was a simple tin of crap beer: a fizzy “beverage”, brewed from rice, sweetened with malt and sold for a few cents in a gas station. In fact, the fluid my body cried out for was so entirely unique we shouldn’t even call it beer.

There are some products, brands or “types” of food that have survived decades, even centuries, with a high level of public approval. They have usually been adapted over the years, but things such as Marmite or the Big Mac, if you analyse them by any culinary or aesthetic standard, are, well, frankly repellent.

Yet you can’t deny that they have been honed by generations of mass opinion — the ultimate focus group — into something almost inexplicably right and pleasing. A single substance that can simultaneously exist in two different states? We all know where that sort of thinking leads in physics but, if you care about food and have opinions about it, that level of cognitive dissonance can make your brain leak out of your nose. 

Which is why I make this modest proposal. There’s a Latin term, sui generis, which is used in science, law, the arts and criticism in subtly different ways, but always denoting something that is unique and “of itself”. A culinary version would be closest to the philosophical usage, meaning an entity that is neither part of a broader concept nor reducible to smaller ones.

I believe that in a world where food is loved and appreciated like an artwork and also manufactured like widgets, the idea of sui generis foods is important. It’s what happens when a mass-manufactured version of a product is evolved through consumer tastes to be something both wonderful and entirely “other”. 

If we accept the idea that a product can be sui generis, we remove the need for coy and queasy workarounds like “indulgence” or “guilty pleasure”, because we no longer need to judge, say, supermarket cheddar by the standards of cheese or Budweiser by the standards of beer. We can take them by “their own truth” and liberate them to be their magnificent selves.

Follow Tim on Twitter @TimHayward and email him at tim.hayward@ft.com

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