Friday, 26 July 2013

Seventeen century mutton and oyster sausages

Our culinary history is a fascinating subject and in food terms, a gold (or graphene) mine.

A few years ago, my friend, the world renowned food historian Ivan Day, and I decided that we would make an old surf and turf recipe - Mutton and Oyster sausages. 

The recipe, if that's how ewe would describe it, was in an accounts book of the kitchen in a Cumbrian Big house which was only able to tell us the kitchen purchases (the ingredients) and had no measurements or methodology. Ivan was able to extrapolate from the existing knowledge of future versions of this recipe so that we could make them. 

We used the best quality Herdwick mutton, the freshest Colchester oysters and some spices that I had never heard of like long peppers

It was the most amazing sausage I have ever tasted, and I have tasted a few sausages during my thirty seven years in butchery. The problem as ever with things like this, is that they were made to be consumed on the day and have no shelf life .....it’s a shame, as I am sure given a chance, that they'd be venerated in our high end Michelin star eateries across the world.

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