Originality and olive oil

Reading the New Yorker the other day, I came across the following line (subscription required) from chef Heston Blumenthal (renowned for using the lab techniques of food science for luxury catering rather than mass production). Blumenthal was writing about growing up in the gastronomic wilderness of 1970s Britain:

…a time when olive oil was available in Britain only at the chemist’s - for putting in your ears rather than in a pan.

The phrase sounded rather familiar…

Had I read it in the Guardian?

For most of the 20th century in Britain, olive oil was something you bought in the chemist and then stuffed in your ears with cotton wool. Guardian, 2002

Or was it the Independent?

Writing at a time when the only olive oil you could get came from Boots and was intended for softening ear wax, [cookery writer Elizabeth David] inveighed against post-war British cuisine… Independent, 2000

There seemed to be an Elizabeth David connection. But it wasn’t the Sunday Herald…

In those days olive oil was hardly fashionable. In Britain it was unknown except as a medicine, sold in small pharmaceutical bottles for treating bunged-up ears. Sunday Herald, 1999

Or the Irish Times:

When I was a girl, olive oil was for putting in your ears and you got it from the chemist. Irish Times, 1999

The New Yorker itself wasn’t new to the idea…

Before Elizabeth David … olive oil could be found only at the pharmacy. New Yorker, 1998

And still it seemed to pre-date this in the London Times:

Time was when olive oil in Britain was only sold at chemists, and used for cleaning children’s ears. The Times, 1995

There are many more examples, take this website Q & A, from a British chef:

Q: Do you think food in the UK has changed for the better since the days of Duck with Orange and huge helpings of Black Forest Gateau?

A: The UK has improved tremendously since the late 70s and 80s, not so long ago we could only buy Olive oil from the chemist, mainly to stick in your ear…

You could at least blame Wikipedia. Its entry on Elizabeth David was altered on 20 January, 2006 to note that:

Many of the ingredients were unknown when the books were first published, and David had to suggest looking for oil in pharmacies where it was sold for treating earache.

My point?

Our technological ability to discover the repetition of these tropes serves to illustrate the frailty of an individual writer’s memory, the feebleness of editorial controls and the overwhelming valuelessness of purely “literary” writing.

That’s all.

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