Peculiar food pairings: sausage and marmalade plait

In the first of a new series on weird (but wonderful) food pairings, food blogger Danny Kingston explains why we should all be eating sausages with marmalade, and suggests a recipe to try.

One of the great things about food is its unfailing ability to get on with itself. Now that might sound slightly daft, trivial or vacuous even; but think about it – when it comes to food, how many happy marriages can you think of? Bacon and eggs: bang, there’s one. Cheese and cauliflower: kerching, there’s another. Mango and chilli? Well, perhaps we are starting to go beyond the pale there, but combined together as a salsa and served with barbecued fish… that’s one hell of a party.

So in terms of simple affability and the vast universe of ingredients out there, it really is nice to know that food in general is a friendly and gregarious creature, open to all suggestions.

Duck à la Banana? Octopus haggis?

I have to say though, what really interests me when it comes to cooking at home is the unusual, the strange, and the bizarre. The pairings that on face value really shouldn’t get on. Couplings and combinations born out of necessity after raids on half-empty fridges. Surprises that fall from the cupboard shelf and mismatched meals created after defrosting that mysterious unlabelled bag, found at the bottom of the freezer. I don’t make a habit of watching Four Weddings and a Funeral, but when I do, I must admit I’m always intrigued by the idea of 'Duck à la Banana’, the recipe that Simon Callow’s character takes to his grave.

Successes to date include octopus and haggis; Bury black pudding and broad beans; and chicken breast stuffed with a spicy peanut satay sauce, for an Eastern twist on Chicken Kiev. OK, it did look a bit wrong when we cut into it. Watching yellowy-beige ooze out of an orange-crumbed dome isn’t the most enticing of prospects, but it did taste good. Albeit in a very weird way.

The Thousand Island mistake

There have of course been complete disasters. I have ruined a perfectly good lamb roast before by applying a liberal dressing of home-made Thousand Island sauce. That train of thought came from my student days, when we used to pile into a kebab shop after a night on the binge. From memory, the slivers of greasy doner meat, carved from that elephant’s leg of horror, always tasted so much better when some seafood gloop was slopped into my pitta. It was a false memory though, and my family still haven’t forgiven me for that one.

But onwards and upwards, and I have taken it upon myself to start cataloguing some of the more successful ideas and recipes here on lovefood.com. 

Sausage and marmalade plait

This first recipe, which I hope will become part of a series of adventure and experimentation, is an innocuous one based upon the humble sausage plait. As a bigger and better brother of the sausage roll, there is plenty of scope for tomfoolery. In this case, however, I have kept things simple, adding just a scant dash of marmalade to the mix.

This pairing is already out there, in the shape of sticky marmalade-coated sausages, a favourite on Bonfire Night. But I always felt that it was a bit of waste to baste bangers in this preserve; the sugar always burns too quickly. Running a fine line of bitter citrus through sweet pork and encasing it in flaky puff pastry works much better in my opinion. Try it, and before you know it, you’ll be making unusual concoctions of your own.

I would be interested to hear about the successes, as well as the failures, so please leave a Comment in the box below!

My sausage and marmalade plait recipe

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