Summer Soap, Part 4: Baking with Margaret - a recipe for disaster

This year's summer soap, The Lost Recipe, is a summer mystery with a romantic subplot and an underlying theme of food - and involves a search for a long-lost recipe. It was written by Emma Tirlot from the MA in Creative Writing Programme at UCC. Catch up with previous episodes at echolive.ie. In the fourth episode, Claire and Mrs Kelly try in vain to bake the original buns

Episode 4: Extremely Bland Currant Brioche

“So we’re making brioche.” I stare at the handwritten recipe Mrs Kelly pushed towards me across the wide table.

She huffs, “This has nothing to do with a brioche.”

She slowly rises to her feet and heads towards the counter where I’d dropped the groceries picked up on my way from Cork. Her Kinsale property is even larger than her house in the city, but the kitchen, with its mantel and dark wood cabinets, reminds me of gran’s house.

“We’re making the treacle today.” She says.

“Is there treacle in the recipe?” I ask.

She lifts her shoulders. “You tell me, Claire.”

Mrs Kelly’s memory of the taste is anything but useful. Sweet, but not too sweet? What am I supposed to do with that?

“I was thinking we could try different rising agents,” I suggest when she lifts a dark bottle from the grocery bag, “they could slightly affect the acidity of the dough.”

“Apple cider vinegar. That’s clever, Claire.” She admits.

“Maybe… but from what you tell me, it sounds like the missing ingredient would be more of a sweetening agent. If it’s just one ingredient we’re missing...”

“I was 12 the last time I had them, we can never be so sure.”

I shake my head. This is a headache. Once we get everything out of the bags, Mrs Kelly peers at the ingredients, lined up on the counter.

“Aprons are in there.” She points to a cabinet near the sink.

******

After soaking into a bowl of tea, the currants are back to their plump form. I add them to four different versions of the dough and begin folding them. Mrs Kelly stands next to me, watchful. Facing the counter, baking away, it almost feels like it’s gran by my side. Except gran would hum and sing and even dance when we baked together.

“Stop!” I nearly jump at her raspy exclamation, “that’s too much, the currants are folded enough, you’ll make the dough too dense.”

******

It’s well into the afternoon when Mrs Kelly and I finally sit down before the four batches of currant buns. Four attempts, each of them carefully recorded into my notebook.

She tears the first bun apart - the one with the apple cider vinegar - while I serve the tea. Her face is anything but encouraging. Well, at least I know she’ll be honest.

I try the bun and immediately wash it down with tea while Mrs Kelly shakes her head. It tastes like a stale brioche. An extremely bland currant brioche. The silence grows heavier after each sampling. We both know we’re nowhere close.

******

I retreat into the veranda at the back of the house, overlooking the perfect lawn. The rain batters the bay windows. I bet there is a nice sunset just about now at gran’s house. I could do with a teleportation superpower to get out of here for a moment; a snap of my fingers, perhaps. I sigh, closing my eyes. Mrs Kelly enters the veranda and sits across from me. Palms over her cane, she watches the rain forming curtains outside.

After a quiet moment, she says, “you’re awfully quiet today.”

“That weather makes me tired.” My attempt at cheerfulness in my voice falls flat.

She narrows her eyes at me. “Then get ready to be very tired for the next week or so.” The knock of her cane against the floor startles me. “What is going on, Claire?”

I blow out a breath. “This all feels... unsolvable.”

“You know we still have a lot of time for this,” she assures me.

“We always say this until we run out. Then what? I just don’t know how I’m supposed to figure this out.”

I hate that this recipe echoes my own cookbook struggles. It’s like the universe is mocking my lack of inspiration. It’s exhausting to wonder without anything coming out of it. I wish I could ask my gran. She would know. I wish I could have certainty right now, a place to just move on and be productive and get all this behind and just... Move on. Tears tug at the corners of my eyes and I wipe them swiftly, remembering that I am, in fact, at work.

“I’m sorry Mrs Kelly,” I mumble.

“Enough of this ‘Mrs Kelly’, call me Margaret.” She narrows her eyes at me. “It’s not just about the recipe, is it?”

I sigh. “I’m supposed to turn in an entire cookbook by the end of the year.”

She holds my gaze.

“I have nothing so far,” my admission is a whisper. I pause, knowing damn well that I shouldn’t have admitted that to her. “It’s like, without her... I don’t know how to do it.”

I blink away the tears crowding my eyes. “I don’t know what to do.”

“One step at a time, Claire.”

“Easy for you to say, you always knew where to step. I can’t even solve the recipe. Not a single step in the right direction.”

“Is that your impression of my career?” She asks.

“It’s everyone’s impression. Besides,” I argue, “you won’t tell me anything about it.”

Margaret leans against the back of her chair. She takes a long pause and sighs before saying: “I do have one or two boxes of old things from my aunt in the attic in Cork. I’ve gone through them a hundred times. No recipe, no clues. But perhaps I missed something.”

I frown. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier? That could even be relevant to the biography, if you’re willing to share a few things.”

Margaret’s fingers drum on her cane. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to share it.”

I nod silently. Of course. I’ll have to be more patient than that. Maybe if I get her to trust me enough…

I rub my eyes. “Sorry about that, I just... this house. It reminds me of gran’s a lot.”

“The house in the backdrop of your videos with her, is it?”

I nod. Gran and I, in matching aprons, laughing and baking away.

She huffs. “I see absolutely no resemblance. Your gran’s house was a small French farm.”

******

Fionn calls me back while I am on my way to Cork. I put him on speaker. After telling him about the baking failures of the week, I break the news about my breakthrough with Margaret.

“It took a lot of convincing, but my client has accepted that you help me look through her archive.”

“Margaret Kelly has accepted. Reeeally,” he says in disbelief.

My eyes widen. “I never told you it was Margaret Kelly.”

“Pretty obvious guess, considering Kelly’s Bakery’s history.”

Fionn shuffles things around on the other side of the line.

“Now that you say it,” I chuckle. “Fionn, my NDA is still... you know.”

“I won’t tell a soul,” he promises, “you don’t have to worry about that.”