Traditional Family Recipes: British Faggots

Okay, okay, before the giggle police emerge and start pointing their fingers of shame at me, I assure you the term “faggot” does go way back to eighteenth century Britain. In fact, the term can be traced back further to the tenth century in Tuscany. A faggot in Britain had two meanings. One, it was a unit measurement for bundles of wood or steel bars which stopped being used in the late nineteenth century. One faggot, or bundle, of wooden sticks or planks measured two feet deep by three feet long and the same unit for steel bars measured two feet deep and one foot long. But the term faggot also referred to a very popular British dish consisting of pork, breadcrumbs and spices for flavouring then formed into a meatball and baked. It has always traditionally been served with gravy, mashed potatoes and peas. This edition of Historic Family Recipes looks at one such recipe for traditional pork faggots submitted by Mark Westholme from Devonshire, England.

Mark Westholme is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at the University of Leeds and currently is a sessional English instructor at the University of Toronto. His grandfather, Robert, was the last generation of the family to run a family butcher shop in Devon which opened in 1752. Like most butchers, Robert had a lot of end pieces and scrap meats left over. But nothing went to waste, and these left over bits found their way into other products. The most common type of “leftover” scraps were the end bits off larger cuts of meat and the offal, or organ meats. There are many in today’s society who are turned off by offal meats for either cultural or religious reasons. Yet there are some items such as pâtés, which are pastes made from liver and/or kidneys, which are considered delicacies and trendy party foods. In eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain, all parts of the animals were used and not put to waste. One of the most common ways to use leftover pork offal was to make “little bundles” of pork liver mixed with other pork scraps. Hence the term faggot became popular to refer to these little bundles.

Photo Credit: Laura Waldie

Faggots are a dish found more commonly in the southern regions of England than in the north. They probably have their roots in Tuscany where bundles of pork liver (fegatelli) with herbs were roasted over a spit as early as the tenth century. In England and south Wales, they were traditionally made with liver, kidney or heart meat. In recent years, other cuts of discarded meats such as belly fat and bacon rashers are being included to enhance the flavour more suited for the modern palate. Once the organ meat had been ground up into a rough paste, fillers were added such as stale breadcrumbs, garden grown herbs for seasoning and rolled up, by hand, into little meatball shapes. To keep these little meatballs from drying out during the cooking process, a thin layer of caul fat was wrapped around them. Caul fat is the very thin lining of the stomach from a pig, cow, goat or sheep.

Photo Credit: The Butcher's Block

Traditionally, caul fat has been used as casings for sausages and it is has become quite popular again in high end cuisine. The use of caul fat, however, has never lost popularity in the United Kingdom and many traditional recipes still call for it to be used. Most butcher shops in England will sell caul fat if you ask. But I have had trouble finding it here in my part of southern Ontario. You do normally have to go to a stand-alone, specialty butcher rather than your grocery store butcher counters to find caul fat.

Below, is a very traditional recipe for British faggots that have been used in Mark Westholme’s family for generations and are a Christmas tradition to make with left over pork meat.

            You will need:

• 4oz pork shoulder, roughly chopped
• 4 oz pig’s liver, roughly chopped
• 4 oz fatty belly pork, roughly chopped
• 4 oz pork sausage scraps
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs
• 1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
• 1 tsp fennel seeds
• 1 tsp allspice
• 2 tbsp chopped parsley or 1 tbsp dried parsley
• 2 sage leaves, finely chopped or 1/2 tsp dried sage
• Salt and Pepper
• 1 sheet of caul fat

~ Mince all the roughly chopped meats. For best results use a meat grinder or a food processor.

~ Place the minced up meat into a large bowl. Add the breadcrumbs, onion, herbs, spices and a pinch of salt and pepper. Mix thoroughly. Add more breadcrumbs as required if you like a drier consistency.

~ Divide the mixture into 8 and shape into balls.

~ Wrap each ball in a piece of caul fat. Note: If you cannot find caul fat, you can cut off the fatty part from bacon rashers and use those. But make sure that either the caul or bacon completely covers the faggots.  It will seal as it cooks and helps hold the faggots together, plus adds moisture.

~ Place the faggots onto a baking sheet and bake in a 350F oven for 50 – 60 minutes. Serve hot with onion gravy, mashed potatoes and peas. Serves 4 people.

Faggot recipes actually saw a resurgence in Britain during the Second World War as a good way of using up left over meats during the rationing years. Their popularity declined again after the 1950s, with a few pockets in the south and in Wales still utilising regional versions of the dish. There are a couple of British supermarket chains, mainly Somerfiled and Sainsbury’s, that sell frozen faggots packed in gravy. But believe me, they taste nothing like the real homemade thing! I have to admit, I had a wave of dread come over me when this was served to me the first time, but it is an excellent dish and I’ve had it several times since. And there you have a traditional British dish that has been used by generations of butchers in one family from Devonshire, England. Try putting your own spin on the ingredients to see what flavour combinations you can come up with! Thanks for the recipe, Mark, and thanks for bringing back some great memories of England!

Culinary History England, family recipes, Leeds