Shop worker awarded 40 sausage rolls for 40 years of service

Thanks very much for that!

Hmm. Mace. That may be the magic ingredient. It isn’t used much in the States. I do wonder about the cayenne. Surely that is a recent (last 30 years or so) addition to the traditional spice mix?

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I’m not sure but some Scottish and Northern English dishes can be surprisingly fiery. Both my grannies used chilli powders for various things in their cooking and they were of a generation that thought vegetables should be boiled for at least an afternoon. My gut says the chilli is probably a 19th century innovation but I’m not a cookery historian.

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Those unit conversions are driving me nutty. Apparently there is 6 g/tsp or 1 g/tsp or anything in between
Stressed Out Reaction GIF by SpongeBob SquarePants

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Different spices have different densities? It doesn’t seem unreasonable.

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The teaspoons a volume measurement isn’t it so the conversation will vary based on the density of the material in question. I however usually eyeball it, it doesn’t need to be exact.

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Do a tour of butchers’ sausages. Every butcher seems to have their own ‘mix’ for their own sausages, alongside all the usual standard flavours of sausage.

My gut tells me a lot of ‘fiery’ stuff in this context is likely to be an excess of black pepper, in the sausage context. Possibly other spices too. But chilli in sausages/sausagemeat is not especially common.

Ah - more topics that will always cause an argument. :wink:
A good sausage roll needs no sauce at all. But, as you say, there are some where it may be, shall we say… expedient.

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Yeah. Add a rough puff pastry dough around that and make sure to knead the meat for long enough (while keeping it cold) to achieve a tacky, sausage like consistency, and you have a perfect sausage roll!

This is the pastry I used last time I spontaneously made sausage rolls with leftover minced meat. I don’t particularly like Paul Hollywood but there’s no denying he’s a great baker.

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Mace is used in basically all German charcuterie (i.e. deli meats) recipes, but nowhere else anymore in the country’s cuisine. I imagine it is similar in other European countries

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Italy the same, it’s nutmeg otherwise…

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It’s a caper!

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It looks a bit like a Cumberland sausage mix.

No-one does proper Cumberland sausage outside Cumbria :frowning_face:. It should be at least as thick as bratwurst and not in links.

A delicious reward, but am I the only one thinking they’re trying to off this poor guy with a culinary coronary catastrophe?

It very well could be, I found it on the internet some five years ago and liked the taste. I’m not sure exactly where it’s from. It was a website run by a Pole with sausage recipes from around the world.

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Any idea why not? Maybe this needs exploring? I volunteer to lead the tour.

Because sausages are a very ancient and traditional food in UK, and chillis are a much more recent arrival? There are many traditional varieties of sausage and you could find a more recent one with chilli in if you wanted, fairly easily.

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I would guess it is partly class-based, sausages were historically (broadly) for the lower/middle classes. Although chilli arrived in Britain as plants in the 16th century, they were decorative plants until almost 19th century and likely out of the economic scope of people making and eating sausages (even when they knew about chilli as a spice).
If they wanted more kick from their sausages they would eat them with mustard or horseradish, both cheaper than chilli would have been.

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