“Does everyone,” the film critic Anne Billson asked on Twitter, “have an evil jar in their fridge?” To which surely the correct answer is: “Only one? Lightweight.” We have a whole fridge shelf dedicated to cursed jars, most much older than Billson’s best-before February 2021 rollmops. There’s a chutney from Christmas 2018, something dark and viscous in a honey jar that definitely isn’t honey and several pots of vegan pesto – a substance that inexplicably goes off quicker than mince left out in the sun – covered in some terrifying bloom. If the zombie series The Last of Us has taught us anything, it’s to fear anything fungal, so I’m not investigating further.
That’s just the tip of the evil jar iceberg. Having recently renovated our kitchen, we were left with three storage boxes stuffed with Satan’s condiments. The edible stuff has gone back in, and I use “edible” generously: raised in the kitchen of a man whose butter predated Brexit last time I looked, I take an extremely relaxed approach to best before dates. But that leaves us to confront the dregs, and the sticky, dusty truth about ourselves.
There are relics of ill-advised, never-repeated culinary adventures past: dusty maraschinos, hippie shop powders and some pickled ginger of unknown vintage that exhorts me to, “Start your Japanese adventure.” I am not insured for that, thanks. There were pots of cement-like ancient tahini I’m pretty sure were haunted until my spouse dealt with them, giving himself lasting sesame trauma. The real object of dread remains: a jar of kimchi. It’s not that old, but given the explosive potential of fermented cabbage, who wants to take the risk?
You learn a lot from the forgotten reaches of your cupboards, and none of it is good. I need to stop buying rhubarb jam like it’s bitcoin in 2017 and my husband should take a cold, hard look at his vinegar addiction: he discovered a stockpile of five identical unopened bottles of balsamic. I don’t know what post-apocalyptic future we think we’re preparing for, but it’s going to be tart and sour.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
