The nature vs nurture of food: 11 (No chilli, no flavour)

A friend from my teenage days came over on a three-month course, before being joined by his wife and going off to Europe on a 21-day 19-city tour.

    When they came back to London for their last three nights prior to flying back, they stayed in the empty flat of someone I knew at the time.

    On their first night, I bought fish and chips for eating in. There was a brand new, 340g size bottle of chilli sauce in the flat. They poured so much chilli sauce over the fish and chips that it was a sea of red on the plate.

    I left them to their own devices on the following two nights, then went to see them off. They told me that they had fish and chips again on their third and last evening in London, and that they'd replaced the chilli sauce because they'd polished off the whole of the previous bottle between the two of them in two sittings.

(London, 1985)