Faggot (food)

Faggot

Faggots, gravy, mashed potatoes and marrowfat processed peas
Course	Main dish
Place of origin	England
Serving temperature	Hot
Main ingredients	pig's heart, liver, fatty belly meat or bacon

Faggots are a traditional dish in the UK, especially South and Mid Wales and the Midlands of England. It is made from meat off-cuts and offal, especially pork. A faggot is traditionally made from pig's heart, liver and fatty belly meat or bacon minced together, with herbs added for flavouring and sometimes bread crumbs.

Faggots originated as a traditional cheap food of ordinary country people in Western England, particularly west Wiltshire and the West Midlands. Their popularity spread from there, especially to South Wales in the mid-nineteenth century, when many agricultural workers left the land to work in the rapidly expanding industry and mines of that area. Faggots are also known as "ducks" in the Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Lancashire, often as "Savoury Ducks". The first use of the term in print was in the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser of Saturday 3 June 1843, a news report of a gluttonous man who ate twenty of them.

The first use in print cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is in 1851, from Henry Mayhew, where he describes a dish identical to the modern product with chopped liver and lights in an outer wrapper of caul. This was in London.

Commonly, the faggot consists of minced pork liver and heart, wrapped in bacon, with onion and breadcrumbs. Often, the faggot is cooked in a crock with gravy and served with peas and mashed potato. The mixture is shaped by hand into small balls, wrapped with caul fat (the omentum membrane from the pig's abdomen), and baked. Faggots may also be made with beef.

Another variation of faggot is pig's fry wrapped in pig's caul: the pig's fry and boiled onions are minced (ground) together, then mixed with breadcrumbs or cold boiled potatoes, seasoned with sage, mixed herbs and pepper, all beaten together and then wrapped in small pieces of caul to form a ball. They are then baked in the oven and are usually served cold.