Sausages!

[Straz]

The other day my wife created a tasty dish of local pork sausages, mash, cabbage and gravy.
While I was enjoying this delicious and hearty feast, I cast my mind back 50 years or so to the type of sausages we were served at CH in the early 1970s.
I may be wrong, but I'm pretty certain that they were beef rather than pork sausages.
I remember that as a squit it took me some time to get used to the taste of them, but after a while I thought they were terrific, so much so that when I went home in the holidays, I found "normal" pork snorkers a tad dull.
I appreciate that it's not the most earth-shattering of subjects to discuss on this forum, but can someone confirm that the sausages we had at CH in the early 70s were beef? And, if they were, why did we get beef, rather than pork?

[MrEd]

I went to CH almost a decade after you and I do remember the sausages not being quite the same as your standard 1970s fare. They mainly appeared in a Toad-in-the-hole creation with some darkish brown batter with the odd sausage buried in there if you were lucky (and if that is luck, you can keep it). Free-standing (never mind free-range) sausages were an occasional item AFAICR. I don't recall whether we thought that they were beef. I do remember seriously wondering if we had horse meat in some dishes, a slightly sweet meat was used. This was long before Tesco found its imaginative food chains.

And in a rather oblique side-track, if you are a sausage aficionado, you might consider the (northern) Portuguese alheira sausage, made from anything-but-pork (usually chicken but sometimes beef). It was a part of the cuisine of the crypto-Jews who stayed on after the expulsion of non-believers, and apparently they made sausages to show that they were good Christians who ate pork, but it was a ruse.

[Jabod2]

I recall the sausages - I suspect boiled rather than grilled (no browning) and nicknamed 'pregnant mice'. They were actually nice, and I agree, unique. The peeled tinned tomatoes that went with it had an even more distastefull alliterative nickname referring to monkeys...

[scrub]

And, if they were, why did we get beef, rather than pork?

I think the answer to any "why" when it came to the food at CH was (and probably still is) because they were cheaper. I remember that there was a group of us who had the catering budget broken down for us (can't remember why) and the amount per kid, per day, was shockingly low.

Can't say I remember the sausages from my time, the fried bread though, don't think I'll ever forget that.

[SandysJ]

I enjoyed the sausages in the early 70s. Think they were probably steamed rather than grilled.
I did actually like the peeled plum tomatoes and when the rest of the table were rejecting them, someone noticed I was quite happily piling my plate with them; so they started collecting from other tables and I set a record of 81 for breakfast!

[loringa]

I enjoyed the sausages in the early 70s. Think they were probably steamed rather than grilled.
I did actually like the peeled plum tomatoes and when the rest of the table were rejecting them, someone noticed I was quite happily piling my plate with them; so they started collecting from other tables and I set a record of 81 for breakfast!

Sausages and tinned tomatoes - known as 'train smash' though not necessarily so at CH.

I think the sausages were pretty standard pork sausages - we used to get them for scout camps etc and I don't recall them being any different from any other sausage - proper bangers - full of bread! One of the better things on the menu at the particular nadir of catering that was CH in the 1970s!

[Straz]

I enjoyed the sausages in the early 70s. Think they were probably steamed rather than grilled.
I did actually like the peeled plum tomatoes and when the rest of the table were rejecting them, someone noticed I was quite happily piling my plate with them; so they started collecting from other tables and I set a record of 81 for breakfast!

Crikey! 81 peeled plum tomatoes for breakfast! Truly this is the stuff of legends!
And please keep the sausage stories going. It's greatly brightening up my day.

[Straz]

I recall the sausages - I suspect boiled rather than grilled (no browning) and nicknamed 'pregnant mice'. They were actually nice, and I agree, unique. The peeled tinned tomatoes that went with it had an even more distastefull alliterative nickname referring to monkeys...

It hadn't occurred to me that the sausages might have been boiled rather than grilled during the 1970s. You may well be right. And having been boiled, the sausages were probably further steamed in those large hostess trollies that were distributed around dining hall, which turned everything - including toast - into a pap. Mmmmm. Nice...

[MrEd]

I recall the sausages - I suspect boiled rather than grilled (no browning) and nicknamed 'pregnant mice'. They were actually nice, and I agree, unique. The peeled tinned tomatoes that went with it had an even more distastefull alliterative nickname referring to monkeys...

Further to my previous post, that comment has now stirred a memory, yes, the oddly pasty-looking sausages that clearly had never been near a grill, I had banished this from the culinary (budgetary miracle) horror story of CH catering. Tinned tomatoes, never touched them. As for steamed, I fear that is imputing too much sophistication to the daily miracle (Armageddon?) of the loaves and fishes that the catering staff performed.