I know, I know I have been remiss in keeping the blog up. However, I've just agreed to blog for the Perfect Pint website. And here's my first go. It's on a subject dear to my heart.
For me it was love at first bite – the hard skin the melting
fat, the saltiness. And above all the certain knowledge that the scratching was
doing me no good at all.
If there is a world centre of scratchings it has to be the
Black Country. Every pub worth its, err, salt has a range of crunchy porky snacks.
I still remember standing at the bar at the Bull and Bladder in Brierley Hill
thinking I had died and gone to heaven with a choice or three brands of
scratchings and three varieties of pork crunch (scratching’s inferior
cousin). And if you are lucky the pub
might offer home-cooked scratchings. On a rare warm day in July I enjoyed a packet
sitting in the garden of the White Lion in Bridgnorth. Wonderful!
You might think that drinkers have been breaking their teeth
on scratchings for centuries. Surprisingly, however, they don’t seem to have
appeared behind the bar counter until the 1970s.
In June 1977, the Sunday
Times Prufrock Column reported on “an unlikely product with a distinctly
unpalatable name that has become the latest delicacy in pub grub.” Their
journalist interviewed John Vizko of Birmingham’s V&T Products who said “We
can’t make enough. It has definitely got some people addicted.” Vizko proudly
mentioned a lady in Eastbourne “who was clamouring to have scratchings sold in
the town.”
But not everybody liked them (and the world is definitely
split between fans and haters). A drinker told the Prufrock column they were:
“unappetising.. fatty… a poor companion for a pint of real ale. Awful.”
And scratchings really don’t have a good reputation. One can
sort of see why.
But their image is being buffed up with help from trendy food
writers Tom Parker Bowles, Matthew Fort and Rupert Ponsonby who have launched
their own brand of Mr Trotter pork scratchings. Oops, they insist that they
selling pork crackling made from the pampered skin of superior British pigs
(most scratchings come from pigs reared in Denmark).
Personally I find them slightly unpleasant, rather cloying on
the palate. Which is perhaps just as well as Mr Trotter’s crackling is sold at
frighteningly high prices at Fortnum and Mason, Chatsworth House, and several
gastropubs.
But perhaps they ignore the whole point. Scratchings are best
in local pubs accompanied by a pint of local ale.
