Stir it up and simmer gently

Today: a complete cookery short story ...

Humphrey Wharton was the doyen of British weekly cookery writers. He had a weekly page in a lush weekend supplement. He had an artist who drew romantic, Mediterranean, lulled-by-the-orange-scented-breeze illustrations for his food page. He had several books out under his name, two of which were actually written by him, and he had high hopes of having a television series soon, though he was not sure if he would be any good on TV. Still, that did not seem to have deterred the other cooks he had seen on the box.

Meanwhile, like all cookery writers, he had a cookery column to write. The weekly deadline threatened. He sighed. He drew his battered old wordprocessor towards him and started writing.

"Well, this is the time of the year when the new cabaglione are coming on the market, and they are at their very best just now, at their youngest and freshest, with that lovely creamy texture that tends to get a bit leathery later on, so I'm going to give you one or two ways of dealing with this delightful visitor to our shores. In its own country, of course, there are umpteen ways of cooking cabaglione ..."

It is at this point that the average cookery writer pauses for reflection, and Humphrey Wharton was no exception. He slumped over his chair and glared miserably at his reference library. That is because the cookery writer has been this way many times before. He or she has rolled out the red carpet for courgettes, for mussels, for broad beans, for spring lamb, for everything, the last time, and the time before. And the time before. Each time they had to think up new recipes for courgette and broad bean and brussels sprout - yes, even the humble brussel sprout has its own small welcoming committee, and its own devious recipes.

This, Humphrey Wharton was well aware of. He was so well aware of it that he had an opening paragraph already stored up in his wordprocessor to start one of these celebratory articles. Do you remember what it was? Here is a little reminder, to set your taste buds jangling and your memory cells shuddering:

"Well, this is the time of the year when the new cabaglione are coming on the market, and they are at their very best just now, at their youngest and freshest, with that lovely creamy texture that tends to get a bit leathery later on, so I'm going to give you one or two ways of dealing with this delightful newcomer to our shores. In its own country, of course, there are umpteen ways of cooking cabaglione."

Cabaglione, of course, was a made-up word. There was no such thing. Humphrey had made it up just to insert in this opening paragraph, so that he could then replace it by the real thing he was writing about. He liked the word cabaglione. It sounded a bit like zabaglione. It sounded vaguely like cabbage. It sounded vaguely authentic - a lot better than sounding specifically authentic.

Humphrey Wharton drew a calendar towards him on which were marked various things that might or might not be coming into season, and noted that fennel was at its best in Italy at the moment. Very well, he would write about fennel. He dug out two or three good recipes for fennel, changed them slightly to avoid plagiarism suits, threw them into the cookery column, added a swirl of adjectives and served it all piping hot down the line to his newspaper and thought no more of it.

Until the day after it appeared, when readers started ringing the newspaper and asking where they could get hold of this wonder new vegetable called "cabaglione". And the newspaper started ringing up Humphrey Wharton. And Humphrey Wharton realised with horror that he had forgotten to change the word "cabaglione" to "fennel" throughout his article. Thereby creating a demand for a foodstuff that did not exist.

Luckily, food wholesalers are not unimaginative. When they started getting requests for an Italian vegetable called "cabaglione" which they had never heard of, they decided to satisfy demand by renaming a previously slow-moving Italian salad vegetable, which they had given up any hope of shifting, as "cabaglione" and which they now found, thanks to Humphrey, went like a bomb.

There was a small cheque in the post for Humphrey Wharton soon after from a grateful wholesale vegetable trade. They also suggested one or two other failing vegetables he might like to boost. Soon after that, Humphrey Wharton was writing more about fictional vegetables than real ones. But considering that most of his recipes had always been fairly fictitious, this was, perhaps, only logical.