Brain’s Faggots are to faggots what McDonalds is to a juicy prime beef burger. The real things are gorgeous.
The best ones are those made by “proper” butchers or those bought in the traditional faggot and pea shops that can be found in the Midlands and in Wales :-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blackcountry/features/2002/12/faggots.shtml
So do they only make them with offal, or do they ever get made with better cuts of pork?
I don’t think so. The idea behind them was to use the cheaper parts of the pig. Using “better” cuts of pork would result in a different taste altogether.
Huh, Huh, Huh You said ‘Pork’ and ‘Faggot’
Not as juvenile as me
Well then, this renders my thread kind of silly, since I had the notion that faggots may have transitioned from being made from offal to regular meat (especially if they sell it in your grocer’s freezer section). Oh well. At least I know now.
Ah, I knew I’d find this thread somewhere: I fancy a great big faggot 
In which Eve introduces the Dopers to the wonders of Mr. Brain’s Faggots (with guest appearances of spotted dick and toad-in-the-hole.
Why does this sound like a prank call on South Park?
Let’s take this upmarket, and quote from Benjamin Britten, an expert on the topic:
Oh! My heart will break in three,
To hear thy words I have pity;
As Thou wilt, Lord, so must it be,
To Thee I will be bayn. Lay down thy faggot, my own son dear.
Even after reading both of these quotes and understanding how this food came to be, I can still only think “only the English would take veal and try to make it taste like chicken.”
Mimicking chicken with unpleasant-sounding chicken parts is nothing new - what are chicken nuggets? As for veal, I can’t see any attribution of this to us.
I really don’t understand the “make veal taste like chicken” thing, either. Not only are chickens cheaper than pork or veal today (for what seems like perfectly logical reasons: A chicken eats less per pound of meat produced), but it’s also a lot easier to raise chickens in the city than pigs or (especially) cows.
That said, my grandmother used to make absolutely wonderful city chicken (far better than the real thing). I’ll have to ask my dad if he still has the recipe anywhere.
Easier to raise chickens if you’ve got the space, and the food (i.e. money) for it. In the cramped conditions of shitty parts of cities in the early 20th century, you’d probably be considered a public health risk.
Also, you’ve got massive rail networks bringing cattle in without difficulty, and it’s no problem to get hold of meat. What was ‘veal’ could easily have just been beef. If beef wasn’t a regular meal, the who’s going to complain that it sounds a bit like veal?
Actually, we’re talking about how the price of veal/pork/chicken were related in the US in the 1920-30s.
A typical newspaper ad for a grocery in the late 1920’s showed chickens at about 32-40 cents/pound. Veal at 16-20 cents. Pork at 18-25 cents.
From those ads: t-bone and porterhouse steaks were 20-25 cents. Sometimes lower.
These prices varied from state to state, and time to time. But chicken always seemed to be higher priced than most other meats. Beef was cheaper than pork. Veal was cheaper than beef.
This price disparity speaks directly to the changes in American agriculture in the last half of the 20th century.
Veal wasn’t always raised specifically for market. In the days when small family farms outnumbered “factory farms,” veal was a byproduct of the dairy industry - dairy farmers breeding their herds usually found themselves with a surplus of bulls which would often be slaughtered soon after weaning (it was expensive and inefficient to try to raise beef steers to a full market size while simultaneously maintaining a dairy herd.) Veal was mostly a seasonal meat, and usually very inexpensive because of this spring culling of the herds.
Meanwhile, chickens were ordinarily more expensive because small flocks of “free range” birds were common; most family farms had small flocks that were tended by the farmer’s wife who would often sell eggs for “pin money” (my grandmother usually maintained a flock of 25 or 30 chickens, mostly laying hens, who roamed around the farmyard at will.) In those days, chickens weren’t being raised in battery cages and weren’t being bred for fast development for the meat market. Laying hens were allowed to live until their egg production slowed down (at which time they were usually sold as “soup hens”) and cocks were sent to market as soon as they were big enough for the table. there were always fewer broilers/fryers than there were layers, and always more demand than supply.
Until raising chickens became intensive “factory agriculture” the way it is today, veal was more plentiful and less expensive than chicken, and that’s why recipes like “city chicken” were developed.
I guess it depends on what you mean by “the same food”, Moidalize. From the Butcher’s perspectives of the time they were both ways to make a little extra on cheap cuts, have zero waste, and fill a niche purpose. They are both really evolutions of sausage.