Читать книгу The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 13, No. 358, February 28, 1829 - Various - Страница 8

COLLOP MONDAY

Collop Monday is the day before Shrove Tuesday, and in many parts is made a day of great feasting on account of the approaching Lent. It is so called, because it was the last day allowed for eating animal food before Lent; and our ancestors cut up their fresh meat into collops, or steaks, for salting or hanging up until Lent was over; and even now in many places it is still a custom to have eggs and collops, or slices of bacon, for dinner on this day.

In Westmoreland, and particularly at Brough, where I have witnessed it many times, the good people kill a great many pigs about a week or two previous to Lent, which have been carefully fattened up for the occasion. The good housewife is busily occupied in salting the flitches and hams to hang up in the "pantry," and in cutting the fattest parts of the pig for collops on this day. The most luscious cuts are baked in a pot in an oven, and the fat poured out into a bladder, as it runs out of the meat, for hog's-lard. When all the lard has been drained off, the remains (which are called cracklings, being then baked quite crisp) resemble the crackling on a leg of pork, are eaten with potatoes, and from the quantity of salt previously added to them, to preserve the lard, are unpalatable to many mouths. The rough farmers' men, however, devour them as a savoury dish, and every time "lard" is being made, cracklings are served up for the servants' dinner. Indeed, even the more respectable classes partake of this dish.

PIG-FRY—This is a Collop Monday dish, and is a necessary appendage to "cracklings." It consists of the fattest parts of the entrails of the pig, broiled in an oven. Numerous herbs, spices, &c. are added to it; and upon the whole, it is a more sightly "course" at table than fat cracklings. Sometimes the good wife indulges her house with a pancake, as an assurance that she has not forgotten to provide for Shrove Tuesday. The servants are also treated with "a drop of something good" on this occasion; and are allowed (if they have nothing of importance to require their immediate attention) to spend the afternoon in conviviality.

AVVER BREAD.—During Lent, in the same county, a great quantity of bread, called avver bread, is made. It is of oats, leavened and kneaded into a large, thin, round cake, which is placed upon a "girdle"17 over the fire. The bread is about the thickness of a "lady's" slice of bread and butter.

I am totally unable to give a definition of the word avver, and should feel much gratified by any correspondent's elucidation. I think P.T.W. may possibly assist me on this point; and if so, I shall be much obliged. There is an evident corruption in it. I have sometimes thought that avver means oaten, although I have no other authority than from knowing the strange pronunciation given to other words.

W.H.H.

17

Rutherglen, in Lanarkshire, has also long been celebrated for baking sour cakes—See vol. X. MIRROR, p 316.—I am of opinion these cakes are of precisely the same make and origin as those to which the writer alludes under the above name of "sour cakes," which I presume he must have forgotten the name of. I should have mentioned, that when these cakes (for they are frequently called avver cakes) are baked, the fire must be of wood; they never bake them over any other fire. These cakes are of a remarkably strong, sour taste. I should further note, that the girdle is attached to a "crane" affixed in the chimney.