the times | Thursday August 20 2020 2GT 7
the table
Waitrose, No1, espresso roasted,
250g, £4.
Fuller, more expansive flavours with
a longer lasting caffeine hit. 4/White medium sliced bread
M&S, Supersoft 800g, 65p
Thin, brittle, very dry after toasting,
sucks saliva out of the taste buds. 1/Waitrose, 800g, £
Fluffier and fatter, with that sinful
white-bread pappiness. 4/Lamb loin chops
M&S, organic, £9.90 for 550g
Drier and denser meat texture than
Waitrose’s despite having more fat.
Decent umami flavour. 3/Waitrose, Welsh, £4.14 for 230g
Plump, succulent, bold flavours of
blood, fat and grass. 4/Chocolate eclairs
M&S, two for £1.
Generous phallic fancies of choux
pastry engorged with thick cream and
slathered with dark chocolate. The
eclair-snob’s idea of perfection. 5/Waitrose, Essential, Belgian
chocolate, four for £1.
Indifferent, beige pastry and bland
cream with a skid mark of light brown
chocolate. Disappointing. 1/Muesli
M&S, Luxury eight fruit, nut and
seed, 600g, £
A bit meh, but with good chewy
texture from dates, raisins and apricots
and an appreciable undertone of
toasted coconut and nutty pecan. 3/Waitrose, Essential, fruit and nut
muesli 1kg, £2.
Admittedly a fraction of the price, but
commits the cardinal sin of dustiness,
offset by sharp acid bursts from pink
raspberries and redcurrants. 2/Blue d’Affinois cheese
M&S, 170g, £3.
Lovely, oozingly creamy cheese with
only occasional blue marbling and a
nutty rind. 4/Waitrose, No1, 180g, £4.
Riper, more pungent, with a waxier,
thicker rind. But still good. 3/Milk chocolate biscuits
M&S, Extremely Chocolatey square
biscuits, 125g, £1.
These look cheap, but the balance of
coating and biscuit is good and the
chocolate has a delicate, creamy
sweetness. 3/Waitrose, butter biscuits, 125g, £1.
These look dark and classy, but they
are tooth-achingly super-sweet and
the biscuit base is pappy. 1/Pinot Grigio
M&S, Classics, 75cl, £
This is 0.5 per cent higher proof than
the Waitrose offering and has an
astringent, chemical taste. 1/Waitrose, 75cl, £5.
Pale green with a hint of sweetness,
this is unremarkable but eminently
drinkable plonk. 3/Fresh raspberries
M&S, Sapphire, 150g, £
Dark red with a subtle sweetness. 5/Waitrose, juicy and fragrant, 220g, £
Pinkish and acidic. 3/Waitrose, Essential, 2x180g, £
Coppery, damp, clumpy slices — kind
of a guilty pleasure. 3/Unsmoked bacon rashers
M&S, 10 rashers, 300g, £
Thick cut without too much fat, good
brassy flavour and consistency. 4/Waitrose, Essential, 10 rashers
300g, £2.
Papery slices that shrivel under the
grill. Nice salty flavour, but greasy. 2/Vanilla soft scoop ice cream
M&S, 815g, £1.
Fluffy and mousse-like; eggy-yellow
colour; tastes of good custard with
strong vanilla hit. 3/Waitrose, Essential 2 litres, £
Sweeter, paler, more insipid. 2/Olive oil
M&S, light in colour, 500ml, £2.
Inoffensive, pale, low-viscosity oil with
a hint of grassiness. 3/Waitrose, Essential, 500ml, £2.
As above. 3/Ground coffee
M&S, organic premium Sumatra
Mandheling, 227g, £3.
Flat, thin, burnt aftertaste, like it’s
been sitting in a percolator jug for
days. Really quite nasty. 1/good?
Nick Curtis
and his wife,
Ann HunterAMIT LENNON FOR THE TIMES, HAIR AND MAKE-UP LUCIE PEMBERTON; GETTY IMAGES; REUTERSIt’s boom time for scented
candles Hilary Rose is addicted
vast church for a wedding. Still, faced
with medieval mustiness, Meghan
called for Diptyque’s Baies, not Glade
Vanilla Blossom.
According to one candle brand,
Earl of East, we want our homes to
smell of the experiences we missed
during lockdown. It created a Scents
of Normality range of three candles:
the Cinema, the Local and the
Festival. Another brand, Loaf, sells
a candle called Country Boozer.
According to Malone, “everyone
lights a candle now, don’t they? If
you’re a young single guy with people
coming for dinner you don’t want
your flat to smell stuffy.”
Pilkington recommends burning
candles in the hall, if you live in
a house, because the fragrance
travels upwards to scent other floors.
Nobody is sure who started this
trend. Malone says she’d like to think
she played a part, but no more, while
Pilkington thinks it began with
French houses such as Diptyque in
the 1980s. Today, Malone says, stores
would be more than happy just to sell
her candles and forget the rest of the
range. “Candles are almost a
business in itself, but I don’t want
to start segmenting it. Burning
our candles is a status thing.”
Yet she’s not averse to burning
Diptyque. She is given one every
Christmas, although it’s a brave
friend who gives Malone a scented
candle. What does she say to
people who say you’re just
encouraging fools to burn money?
She argues that it’s no different
from buying a glass of wine or
a box of chocolates.
“For ten people who feel like that,
there’s a million who don’t. People
vote with their feet. And you don’t
have to buy candles.”
Then there’s the snob factor. All
candle brands are not created equal;
quite the opposite. I am a fully paid-
up candle snob who is only interested
in four brands: the British ones
Ormonde Jayne and Jo Loves, and
the French ones Diptyque and
Cire Trudon. What’s the
difference between these and
the cheaper brands? Cheaper
brands contain lower
percentages of expensive oils
and won’t burn evenly. An
expensive candle will look
magnificent and scent the
entire room even when it isn’t
lit. A cheap candle will just
sit on the mantelpiece
reproaching you.
For the less classy there’s
Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop. It
flogs candles called This
Smells Like My Vagina,
which is hilarious or
vulgar depending on
whether you live in
Notting Hill. Or how
about Fornasetti’s
two-wick candle at
£550? It comes “in a
ceramic vessel with a
mystical zodiac pattern”.
If you’re going to set fire
to half a grand, you
might as well ponder
which star sign you were
born under as you do so.T
he news that sales of
scented candles have
rocketed during lockdown
comes as no surprise to
Jo Malone. “We’ve been
at home 24/7,” says the British
perfumer, whose home when we
speak on a filthy day is scented with
a candle called Log Fires. “We’ve
not just been living at home, but
working and eating there. Candles
are the new accessory, and the
way our home smells is important.
There’s now a candle for everyone.
I do a collaboration with Zara, and
the sales graph for candles during
lockdown shot off the edge of
the page.”
Like them or loathe them, scented
candles are sold in every shop, from
Sainsbury’s to Selfridges. Malone
sold her first, self-named brand (the
Duchess of Cambridge is a fan of the
Orange Blossom) to Estée Lauder in
1999 and went on to found a new
company, Jo Loves.
Jo Loves candles cost £55; they sell
all over the world, and there is a
bijou flagship store in Belgravia.
Malone’s Zara candles cost £15.
Yet for every person who, like
me, thinks home is where the
expensive scented candle is,
there’s another who thinks they
are a waste of money and have
dubious effects on air quality,
although I tend to put such
people in the same category as
vegan teetotallers: better avoided.
Malone played a pivotal role in
popularising candles and turning
home fragrance into something
more than Febreze — the UK
candle market has been estimated
to be worth £1.9 billion. So did
Linda Pilkington, the founder
of the boutique British brand
Ormonde Jayne. She started 20
years ago with exquisitely scented,
beautifully packaged candles after
a chance meeting led to a contract to
supply candles to a Chanel boutique
on Old Bond Street. Lockdown sales
have been extraordinary.
“Sales of candles have
increased exponentially,
phenomenally,” Pilkington
says. “Our online sales are up
65 per cent on like-for-like
sales last year and our website
is seeing enormous trade.
We’re all thinking about what
we can do to make our homes
more welcoming. Candles give
a nice romantic ambience.”
At Selfridges candle sales
have gone up 54 per cent since
March, and Diptyque’s Baies
scent sold out three times in
April. This could have been
helped by the Duchess of
Sussex using Diptyque’s
£130 Baies scent diffuser
at her wedding at St
George’s Chapel.
It is described in the
blurb as “infused with
fruity undertones of
berries and currant leaves”,
but Meghan may not have
read the small print, which
says it is ideal for perfuming
small spaces over several
months as opposed to, say, aA Diptyque
candle.
Below:
Gwyneth
Paltrow, the
Duchess
of Sussex
and the
Duchess of
Cambridge