IN the wonderful world of the internet, chitterlings – once a south Durham delicacy of dubious delights – are known as “pork poo tubes”.
Which is just about what they are: made from the pig’s intestine, which is indeed a tube which leads from the pig’s stomach to its rear end. Memories 517 a fortnight ago was chattering about chitterlings, about how they needed to be thoroughly washed out and boiled before being consumed, about how they stank to high heaven.
"My mam bought them in pipe form from Zisslers’ butchers in Darlington occasionally for dad,” says Mark Cooper. “We three children watched almost baulking while he devoured them!”
Indeed, Dave McGuire, planning manager at Sport England but once of the planning department at Darlington and Middlesbrough councils, says chitterlings used to have an unsavoury place in planning law. It evolved in the 1940s and ranked uses of buildings on a scale of unpleasantness.
“Such were the varieties of Britain’s post war noxious industries that there were eight industrial use classes (B1-B8),” says Dave, who started planning work in 1990. “The preparation of chitterlings is mentioned in special industrial use class B7, along with a whole raft of unsavoury industrial practices.”
Those unsavoury practices include “boiling blood, nettlings or soap” (what are nettlings?), “boiling, burning, grinding or steaming bones, boiling or cleaning tripe, breeding maggots from putrescible animal matter, curing fish”.
The trouble with chitterlings is the old faeces that are trapped in the poo tube and need to be removed before they are fit for suitable consumption.
THE last of Zisslers’ shops closed in 1998 after 128 years of butchery, and with it went the last of the chitterling makers.
Chris Cobbett returned to south Durham from the Army in 1987, and says: “I would often make Zisslers a stop of choice for their pork and stuffing sandwiches. I loved the old world charm of the interior as much as the excellent cooked meats they purveyed. It was on a par with Gregory’s in Bishop Auckland and Greggs Brothers pork dips!”
While serving in Wiltshire, Chris was shown around an abattoir by a slaughterman. “He was incredibly proud that he processed the chitterlings from intestines by washing them through several times with a hosepipe and then passed them through an industrial wringer to thoroughly expel their former contents,” he says.
“He hung the cleaned intestines on drying racks to drip dry and, after some time, folded the hanks into trays and oven cooked them for sale in the shop.
“Apparently the art was then to slice the cooked chitterlings from the tray and fry them with onions in butter for tea or supper.
“I tried them once but never again. They were like rubberised macaroni slices.”
IT is good to mention Gregory’s, in Newgate Street, Bishop Auckland, because only a month or so ago, its premises was given Grade II listing because, with their tiling, they are such a traditional “family butchers”.
Gregory’s was established in about 1850 and had moved to 103 Newgate Street by 1881. Around 1895, the colourful tiling was added as the shop was converted so it had a pork business on the left and a beef business on the right.
In the yard out the back was a slaughterhouse and a boiling house to make tallow for candles and soap (which part of the planning regulations did this comply with?).
Gregory’s still trades, but it is now a bakery and delicatessen.
SUE BENNETT was one of many people to remember Zisslers. “I can remember hearing the pigs being killed behind the Skinnergate shop which backed onto Raby Terrace,” she says.
The first shop that Magdalena and George Zissler established having eloped from Germany was in Bondgate in 1871 and it had a slaughterhouse in the yard behind it. They had four sons – George, Frederick, Henry and Albert – and between them they developed at least four shops: two in Bondgate, one in Skinnergate and one in Northgate.
“They had another one opposite North Road shops, which did a roaring trade from 12 till one,” says Fred Peacock in Shildon. There must have been miles of chitterlings consumed when the thousands of railwaymen in the shops stopped for lunch.
“It was run single-handed by a lovely woman called Mrs Clarkson.
“It closed in 1966 when the shops shut.”
THIS joyful jaunt into the world of offal started with “savoury ducks”, which are tasty balls made with minced pork and beef leftovers. Once it was a Thursday evening treat to go to the “family butchers” on the street corner with a bowl to get hot, fresh ducks smothered in gravy.
Duck-making is now a dying art, but Chris recommends Linsley’s “family butcher” in Church Street, Shildon. He says: “Their savoury duck, thick onion gravy and big, fat, marrow fat peas is a Saturday treat for me.”
Gill Wootten points out that Alderson’s “family butcher” in Cockerton still makes savoury ducks, while John Newbold says, without fear of contradiction, that the tastiest ducks are to be found in Stockton’s Castlegate Centre.
GILL grew up in the Fens, on the edge of East Anglia. “Being given chitterlings was a bit like being given “beestings” (or bislings as we called them down there) if a friend’s cow had calved,” she says. “These, the first milk after calving, made a very rich custard.”
In fact, beestings – or colostrum – is, in terms of cow’s milk, regarded as being extremely special…
JOHN NEWBOLD is a connoisseur of offal-based dishes. He recalls his grandfather slaughtering his allotment pig in the early 1950s.
“The chitterlings were taken home and my grandmother cooked them, and it turned out they were for a neighbour, Walter Punt,” says John. “He came round and I watched him scoff the plateful.”
John continues: “I used to travel to Darlington just to buy saveloys from Zisslers in Bondgate and I can honestly say I ate most of them on the way home. They were absolutely delicious.
“The saveloys you buy today are just sausagemeat with a smoked skin. They’re rubbish!
“I have been all over trying to find a substitute for Zisslers’ saveloys and the nearest to them were from Newboulds the butchers, though still nowhere as good as Zisslers.
“At the time of writing, I have six saveloys in the fridge. I usually eat one per day, but these ones are edible, that is how I would describe them.”
Saveloys are a bright red sausage that has been boiled, dried and smoked, and so is sold ready-to-eat.
Some sources say that saveloys get their name from the Savoy region of south-east France where they may originate; other sources say that get their name from the Italian word “cervellato”, or “pig’s brains”, because that is what they were originally made from.
Modern saveloys no longer contain brain; they are still boiled, smoked and spiced, but now they are just made from pork trimmings or offcuts – which may be why, to John at least, they’ve lost their piquancy.
AND finally, carlins: the dried pigeon peas that are served on Carlin Sunday (the fifth Sunday in Lent) with vinegar and perhaps a dash of rum.
“The carlin tradition is still alive and well in the Hopetown Working Mens’ Club,” reporters John Carter in Darlington. “The carlins are put on the bar every Carlin Sunday.
“I don’t touch them myself because they look like rabbit droppings.”
Very wise. Any more on offal? Any thoughts on saveloys, chitterlings or penny ducks, and what were pork dips? And any more old time butchers we should be looking at? Please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk
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