We had been back in England for just one day and I was desperate to find out more about Andouillettes, so, I did what any educated Brit would do, I consulted Google. Unsurprisingly, the top result was Wikipedia, a good place to start I thought, here is their definition:
Andouillette (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃dujɛt]) is a coarse-grained sausage made with pork (or occasionally veal), intestines or chitterlings, pepper, wine, onions, and seasonings. Tripe, which is the stomach lining of a cow, is sometimes an ingredient in the filler of an andouillette, but it is not the casing or the key to its manufacture. True andouillette will be an oblong tube. If made with the small intestine, it is a plump sausage generally about 25 mm in diameter but often it is much larger, possibly 7–10 cm in diameter, and stronger in scent when the colon is used. True andouillette is rarely seen outside France and has a strong, distinctive odour related to its intestinal origins and components. Although sometimes repellant to the uninitiated, this aspect of andouillette is prized by its devotees.
It would appear that Lyon is the true home of the Andouillette and in 1970 a group of food writers formed the Association Amicale des Amateurs d’Andouillette Authentique (AAAAA) ‘The Friendly Club of Lovers of Authentic Andouillette’. They take the Andouillette very seriously indeed and even award certificates (Diplôme) to the lucky few who are skilled enough to create an Andouillette worthy of the AAAAA rating. But what makes an exceptionally good Andouillette? The French parliamentarian Edouard Herriot and Mayor of Lyon once said, talking about the “Andouillette de Troyes”; “Politics is like an andouillette – it should smell a little like shit, but not too much.”
Hang on a minute, the Andouillette I had enjoyed and praised just days earlier hadn’t smelled of shit, had it? Has my sense of smell completely disappeared, I mean, I know what shit smells like!? Apparently, this is one of the key factors that judges look for before awarding a Diploma. I was furious! Had I been duped? I needed to find out what other people were saying. I ran a quick Google search for ‘Andouillette Blog’, the search returned over 100,000 results, I began to delve deeper.
By now I’m outraged, it would appear that every blogger in the world has eaten a shit riddled sausage other than me! Many had ordered this delicacy in error and claimed it had ruined their holiday. Each blog had spurned a plethora of enraged and disgusted comments, people claiming their spouse had to move to another table because of the odour, one gentleman proclaimed that it had caused his breath to smell like a pig’s arsehole for at least a week and his good lady couldn’t bring herself to go anywhere near him, diners baulked, heaved and choked their way through no more than a few mouthfuls before admitting defeat. I have since read Rick Stein’s memoir, ‘Under a mackerel sky’, he includes his own encounter. Bearing in mind, he has just gushed about his youth where he witnessed pigs being slaughtered and butchered and remembered with fervour the wonders of offal:
“A few years ago at Brasserie Bofinger in Paris, my lifelong friend Johnny Walter and I both ordered andouillettes, the speciality of the house. Realising we were both English, the waiter laughed. ‘I think maybe you don’t like these,’ he said. ‘It’s French speciality. No for English. Maybe you like Choucroute Alsacienne instead.’
‘We absolutely want the andouillettes,’ I said.
He shrugged, as they do, and blew a little from the corner of his mouth and shortly returned with two plates of stumpy sausages which I can only describe as honking, in the sense of a strong blaring smell. They were very powerful – the same order of unsettling aroma as ripe Camembert but also sharp tasting in their intestinal taint. To the uninitiated they smelt of pig shit, but not to me. These were the intestines of my youth, albeit with a little extra maturity.
I can’t honestly say I totally enjoyed them, but I was definitely not going to leave them unfinished.”
Not everyone loathed andouillettes though, I stumbled across a post titled ‘Andouillettes for Idiots’ by The Idiot Gardener. Here was a man after my own heart, he was hooked and had been eating them for years! Here’s what he has to say on the matter:
“People seem to have a love/hate thing with Andouillettes. Me? I love them. I’ve been eating them for years, both in England and in France. It was inevitable that one day I’d have a go at making them. During the recent trip to Lyon I had what I would argue was the best Andouillette ever, at Cafe Comptoir Abel. Their Andouillette Bercy was succulent, with layers of flavour, and just the perfect degree of bite. It also had a variety of textures. The challenge was on!
If you Google (other search engines are available) Andouillette, you get two types of posts. You either get recipes to cook Andouillettes (not to make them), or you get a hell of a lot of people (mostly Americans, and I know the majority doesn’t really get the offal thing) decrying them and claiming that they taste of shit. Now, I’m sure that someone, somewhere, might have an Andouillette that tastes of shit, but I’ve never had one, ever, that remotely tastes or smells of shit.
People claim they can taste the shit from the rectums in the sausage. Odd that, because rectum isn’t an ingredient for Andouillettes. However, because some folks believe it is, they taste it. They tell others, and they taste it too. It’s like Chinese Whispers – well, Chinese Shitpipes I suppose.
It’s odd that if they eat a typical pork sausage, they don’t taste shit, but the casing is the same as the stuff as is in Andouillettes. When they eat a hot dog, or a burger, or a pie they don’t taste shit, even though rectums are actually ground up to fill the meat quota for such products.
So, enough talk about shit. I’ll hear no more of it.”
He then goes on to explain how he attempted to make his own, now there’s an idea! Right, I’m off to the butchers…