Jacob's Cream Crackers - 300g

The cream cracker is the workhorse of the British cheese board. It is not fancy and has never tried to be, yet it is somehow the first thing gone when the cheese comes out after Sunday lunch.

People in Canada search for it by name because the memory is very specific: that particular flake, that dry snap, the little holes, the way it shatters the moment you get confident with the butter knife. It is a precise memory, and only the precise cracker will do.

The 300g packet goes straight in the cupboard. Keep it somewhere cool and dry, fold the end over once it is open, and the crackers stay crisp. Butter and cheese is the classic, but they are just as good dunked in soup, under a bit of pâté or crumbled over a bowl of something on a cold night.

Jacob's is a name British shoppers know right across the cracker aisle. Cream crackers tend to go into the basket with the rest of the cheese board: a jar of pickle, a good chutney, and a block of the strongest Cheddar you can find.