There are not many phrases that offend me more than ‘pigs in blankets’. The correct name for this dish is, of course, kilted sausages. In fact, the bacon-wrapped cocktail sausage has many incorrect names: the Irish go with kilted soldiers while the Germans call them Bernese sausages. The Americans for some reason wrap hotdogs in croissant pastry and call them saucisson en croûte, as though they’re some kind of European delicacy, à la Escoffier.
Careful though, sometimes these deviations in name mask a greater sin. One Christmas, my posh nan promised ‘devils riding horseback’. I was thrilled for what I assumed must be the Nigella-fied version. Instead, she served baked prunes stuffed with almonds and wrapped in a sliver of bacon.
Preparing kilted sausages is the only part of my family’s Christmas lunch that I am allowed anywhere near. My method is simple: buy as many chipolatas and rashers of streaky bacon as supermarket etiquette allows, use the back of a blunt knife to stretch out the bacon to make it go further, wrap, cook… and enjoy. Then comes the traditional fridge raid on Christmas Day evening. My recommendation: cold roast potatoes, a pickled walnut, some smoked cheese and a leftover kilted sausage that has sat just long enough in the fridge that the exterior fat is beginning to turn white. It is a quartet without equal.
Like many of our favourite foods, no one can agree on where the kilted sausage came from. Asia can stake a claim – the first evidence of a bacon-like dish dates to 1500 bc China, where they were also wrapping fish in various other meats.
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