“What’s a sausage roll?”
“Depends how many dice it’s using.”
Groan all you like, but that first question isn’t always a joke.
There are people in this world who don’t know or understand what a sausage roll is. This revelation has apparently signalled the apocalypse in the UK’s mass media and given the Aussies the giggles.
The sausage roll is something we Brits take for granted, a bit like After Eights and Earl Grey teabags. They’re just… there. Feels like they always have been.
Greggs managed to get an entire TV series off the back of their best-selling pastry snack. Forget the steak bake. Ignore the iced bun. Cast all yearnings for the Christmassy turkey and cranberry bake from your mind. Sausage rolls bring in £100 MILLION a year for the company ON THEIR OWN. I think it’s safe to say we’re in love with the things.
What makes this story even more bizarre is that the New York Times printed a sausage roll recipe as a traditional idea for Boxing Day. As if we’ve got anything except dregs of turkey left over by that point. The article includes the golden (brown and crispy) line:
“Though the concept of sausage wrapped in pastry exists in every cuisine in one way or another, the British have claimed sausage rolls as their own.”
We’re treating sausage in pastry as a CONCEPT now. As something we had to lay claim to, as if it’s new or alien to us in the first place. Then there’s this outright falsehood:
“In Britain, sausage rolls make an appearance on Christmas Eve, on Christmas Day or on Dec. 26, Boxing Day…”
Yeah, right. There’s no way we’d limit ourselves to only eating sausage rolls on three days of the year. Have you looked around you recently? ‘Tis the season for stuffing your face. Even I’m starting to look like a goose destined for the oven.
And the biggest insult of all, to me, was equating sausage rolls with ‘pigs in blankets’. Sorry. Sorry, what. Those blankets you speak of are bits of delicious bacon. I won’t accept any pastry-wrapped usurpers. How dare anyone suggest I replace my double helping of pig with some buttery puff.
But I don’t know how much longer I can argue this point. To be honest, at this point I’ve looked at and typed out the word ‘sausage’ so many times that it appears to have lost all meaning. Which does give me a small insight into the confusion Americans must have felt. I think I’ll go out to Greggs and calm down.
