Curing in Cumbria: Woodall’s Charcuterie

With no refrigeration or way of keeping pork fresh for more than a couple of weeks, preserving was vital for any rural family who didn’t want to starve over the winter. This meant salting the meat to create sausages and bacon as we know them today, but this would still only keep the pork edible for a few extra weeks – more was needed to keep farmers going until spring.

‘People think we have no tradition or history of making charcuterie in this country, but in fact it was commonplace – you just have to go back far enough in time to find it,’ says Colin. ‘The pigs were very large and fat when they were killed, so the hams were these huge, salted things that would be hung from the kitchen ceiling, and a piece would be cut off and cooked as needed. As the months went by, what remained of these hunks of meat would become drier and drier until it was too dry and tough to eat cooked. The only thing left to do was to shave off small pieces and eat the meat in little slivers, in the same way we’d eat Parma ham today. The same thing happened with bacon and sausages – at first, they’d be cooked as normal, then cooks would start boiling the meat to rehydrate it, and eventually they’d resemble something like pancetta or salami.’

The way Colin describes this tradition of producing air-dried meats makes it sound commonplace – so why wasn’t Britain as well known for these products as continental countries? ‘In the middle of the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution came about very quickly and people moved en masse from the countryside into towns to start working at the factories,’ he explains. ‘This meant many rural traditions were lost in the UK which continued to thrive in mainland Europe, where that exodus from country to city wasn’t quite as sudden.’ In fact, the recipes and techniques were almost lost entirely – at one point, Woodall’s was the only company that continued to produce charcuterie in the UK as the industrial revolution engulfed the nation.

There was a reason Cumbria was a hotspot for British charcuterie back in the eighteenth century – the legendary Cumberland sausage. It was made then in the same way we see it now; in a single, long coil with heavily spiced meat and no rusk or other ingredients to bulk it out. This meant it was one of the only British sausages that could become fully air-dried without spoiling. ‘The large amount of salt and spices in the meat would act as a cure while it was hung over the winter,’ explains Colin, ‘and rusk – which would quickly turn sour – wasn’t included, so it could be hung indefinitely. Finally, because it was always made into one long sausage instead of a row of links, everything would dry evenly.’

Cumberland (a traditional county which is now part of Cumbria) was home to several ingredients which, while not uniquely Cumbrian, were almost exclusive to the area. In the middle of the eighteenth century, Whitehaven – which is just up the road from Woodall’s – was one of the biggest ports in the UK, so any exotic spices being imported into the country would arrive in Cumberland before anywhere else. This gave birth to things like rum butter and Grasmere gingerbread, but also the Cumberland sausage, which made the most of spices like black and white pepper, mace, pimento and cayenne. These are all ingredients Colin continues to use in his recipes, some of which he has collected from other parts of the UK.

‘The recipe for our Royale Ham actually comes from Suffolk, which was where my grandmother lived,’ he says. ‘It was first documented in 1843 and contains things like beer, treacle, vinegar and brown sugar in the cure. It’s a totally unique product and you won’t find charcuterie like it anywhere else in the world.’