I thought it would be of interest to write this article about the famous and traditional English recipe with a weird name – “Toad In The Hole”. This is a recipe of Batter and Sausages baked in an oven. The origin of the name “Toad-in-the-Hole” is often disputed. Many suggestions are that the dish’s resemblance to a Toad sticking its head out of a hole provide’s the dish with its somewhat unusual name.

Nowadays this British dish typically consists of sausage cooked in batter, but in its earliest incarnations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (when it was usually called toad in a hole) various cuts of meat were used. Mrs. Beeton, for instance, used steak and kidney, and recipes recommending the finest fillet steak are to be found, but often enough toad in the hole was a repository for leftovers. Even today lamb chops are occasionally found lurking in batter, and sausage toad’ is the unappetizing colloquialism that distinguishes the orthodox version.

Toad in the hole…provokes historical questions of exceptional interest. What are the origins of the dish and how did it get its name? Enquiries are best commenced from two starting points. The first is that batter puddings (whether baked in the oven by themselves or cooked under the spit or jack in the drippings falling from a joint–in the latter case they could be classed as Yorkshire pudding) only began to be popular in the early part of the 18th century.

Jennifer Stead’s essay is the best reference for studying the complex historical questions regarding batter pudding and Yorkshire pudding.

The second is that the earliest recorded reference in print to toad in the hole occurs in a provincial glossary of 1787, quoted by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as saying: the dish called toad in a hole meat boiled in a crust.’ That gives the name, but the technique is different form that subsequently established…Mrs. Beeton (1861) describes the dish as homely but savoury

A wartime variation on the original uses pieces of Spam in place of sausages.

The recipe itself is rather simple. A pan is placed into the oven and heated for about 15 minutes while the batter is prepared. The sausages and batter are added and cooked for half an hour. With frozen sausages, the meat is placed into the dish while heated. It is normally accompanied by gravy (often onion gravy), vegetables, chips or mashes potato’s.

Recipe for Toad – In – The – Hole

Method:

This very objectionable title enables me to usher in to your special notice a dish possessing some claims to consideration, when prepared with care as follows: viz., —cut up about two pounds of tender steak or ox-kidney, or half of each, into rather thick collops about three inches in diameter; season with pepper and salt; fry them over a sharp fire, merely to brown them without their being done through; place the collops in neat order in a buttered pie-dish; detach the brown glaze from the bottom of the pan in which you have fried the beef, with gravy or water, and a little catsup, and pour the residue to the collops in the dish; then add a well-prepared batter for Yorkshire pudding, (see elsewhere on the recipe section -we have included Mrs Beetons recipe on the site instead as its better), gently poured upon the meat, bake for about an hour, and serve while quite hot. This excellent old English dish will occasionally prove a welcome addition to the dinner-table of paterfamilias.

by Charles Elme Francatelli (1805-1876)

My family tree has been traced back to the early Kings of England from the 7th Century AD. I am also a direct descendent of Sir Christopher Wren which has given me an interest in English History, English Sports, English Icons, English Discoveries and English Inventions which is great fun to research.

Please visit my Funny Animal Art Prints Collection @ http://www.fabprints.com

My other website is called Directory of British Icons: http://fabprints.webs.com

The Chinese call Britain The Island of Hero’s which I think sums up what we British are all about.

Copyright © 2010 Paul Hussey. All Rights Reserved.

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About the Author:
My family tree has been traced back to the early Kings of England from the 7th Century AD. I am also a direct descendent of Sir Christopher Wren both of which has given me an interest in English History, English Sports, English Icons, English Discoveries and English Inventions which is great fun to research and I call “An Englishman’s Favourite Bits Of England”. Please visit my Blogs page http://Bloggs.Resources.Com where I have listed all my articles to date.
Copyright © 2010 Paul Hussey. All Rights Reserved.
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