Keep your hands off my rusty cannonballs

As an Essex school outlaws Scotch eggs, life-long devotee QUENTIN LETTS says ...

AT THE Elms prep school, near Malvern, in the Seventies, we were often given Scotch eggs for lunch. Once a week or so, the school’s lovely cook, Mrs Brazier, would walk into the dining room holding trays of round, brownish blobs of savoury delight. Cue widespread glee from scores of short-trousered guzzlers as we boys put up the shout of ‘RUSTY CANNONBALLS!’

We actually had a real (and rusting) cannonball on the school premises, which was allegedly a relic of the Battle of Worcester (1651), but did not mind that it bore sparse resemblance to those lunchtime roundels.

Gosh, they were good: an outer coating of crunchy, coppery-coloured breadcrumbs and an inner wheel, so to speak, of peppery sausage meat.

In the middle of it all, like some hidden eye, was the reward, the buried treasure: the satisfying, golden consolation of a hard-boiled egg, faintly wrinkly and weepy round its outer edges.

Add a blob of HP Sauce, a small application of Branston and, bingo, we lunch-goers started to comprehend the possibilities of Heaven on Earth.

Just thinking about those school lunches of 40 years ago makes me hungry. There were seldom many leftovers on the days Mrs Brazier gave us rusty cannonballs, and ever since then I have been an enthusiast of Scotch eggs.

What clever devices they are, with their balance of food groups yet their simplicity. They are portable, comparatively easy to cook and fun.

They are a perfect size for a child’s lunch, can take all sorts of encouragement (or none) from sauces and mustards and they give you a satisfying hit of flavours and textures. Yummity yum!

SCOTCH eggs, however, may soon be a pleasure denied to British school children following an outbreak of nanny state-ism in Colchester, Essex. For the Cherry Tree primary school has outlawed them. So is this an example of post-referendum anti- Scottish sentiment from Essex man?

Actually, no. The school has taken it upon itself to make its pupils’ lunchboxes ‘ more healthy’, and it has designated Scotch eggs as a form of junk food.

A school spokesman told newspaper reporters that the anti- egg move was part of ‘ our healthy lunchbox policy’ (they have policies for everything these days) and that it was taken ‘following feedback from parents’.

Feedback? Is that quite the word? The Cherry Tree’s swingeing edict strikes me as unBritish, bossy and mirthless.

It is enough to make you reach for a carton of those rather good mini Scotch eggs you find at the snazzier supermarkets and ping them — hard — at the Cherry Tree primary school’s staff room.

The history of Scotch eggs is disputed. Some say they were invented in the 18th century by London grocers Fortnum & Mason as travelling snacks for coach passengers.

Others, however, say they were devised by Scottish farmers who kept pigs and chickens.

To make a Scotch egg you need eggs (more than one), pummelled pork and breadcrumbs. If you’re of a fancy persuasion, you can add chives and parsley to the meat.

Scotch eggs have become quite trendy in recent years, particularly in gastro-pubs, which have been reclaiming our culinary heritage. You would rarely encounter them a quarter of a century ago, but these days it is hard to move in some trendy South London pubs without being offered a mouthful of designer cannonball.

Of course, you can make them yourself. Having assembled your ingredients, boil an egg until it is hard-ish, then remove the shell. Roll it in flour, coat it in the meat and dip in beaten egg before rolling in breadcrumbs. Deep-fry it for a few minutes until it is rusty- col- oured on all sides. Let the little beauty cool for a bit before serving (or throwing — ‘hey, catch!’) to your children. Now just watch them devour the things. You will soon be pestered to make more.

Far from banning them, we should praise rusty cannonballs. It can often be hard to persuade children to eat eggs, but they leap at a Scotch egg.

Joyless busybodies say that our children are too fat nowadays, and that Scotch eggs should be avoided because they have been deep-fried and because they are too salty, or fatty, or bready.

Oh, fiddlesticks! I suspect that the real objection of these fanatics is to the sheer joy Scotch eggs inspire.

Their revival has been terrific news and some supermarkets have become so good at making them that when you cut open the cannonballs, the eggs are still gooey. It’s like finding a molten core at the centre of the Earth in a Jules Verne story.

And, although I do not want to turn Freudian on you, is there not something psychologically satisfying about fighting your way past defences to find an egg? Ooh, matron!

The gastro-gauleiters at Cherry Tree primary school should stop being so unpatriotic. Scotch eggs are British and we should be proud of them. They also have the merit of being delicious, and make jolly good missiles for buzzing across a school dining room.

And if common sense does not return, let someone please prosecute that Essex primary school for being anti-Scottish. Racism!