I grew up in a market town in the middle of Lincolnshire. We had delicious potatoes ( I know - I picked them during the summer holidays), sweet strawberries (I know - they ripened for picking just before the potato main crop), and wonderful pork (I sometimes watched the pigs being slaughtered at the abattoir down the street). The local butcher, Mr Thornalley, had his own recipe for sausages; when they were fried, the skins would caramelise as the pork roasted within. Sadly, Mr Thornalley took his sausage recipe to the grave, but I shall never forget the peppery, crisp yet succulent sausages of my youth. Modern Lincolnshire sausages are like photocopies of his Mona Lisa.
Nowadays so many sausages are just mechanically recovered meat and rusk soused in water so that the meat steams instead of roasting as it cooks. Sadly, even premium brands are no guarantee of quality.
I fell out with my local butcher when I complained about his sausages. He markets his sausages with great pride. The skins kept bursting open as they were cooked and I said this was because he was filling them with more than 11% water. He didn't disagree. Often, when you buy sausages, you are buying sludge, bread and water.
