Toast and dripping
When I was a boy in the Fifties we had a lot of bread and dripping. We called it Bread and Scrape. On high days and holidays for a special treat we had dripping on toast. No, that’s a joke. I’m not going to be like the Yorkshiremen in that Monty Python sketch and say I lived in a cardboard box or a hole in the ground.
But we didn’t have central heating and our mum scraped the ice off the inside of the windows on cold winter’s mornings so we needed the fat to shiver ourselves warm. You ate a lot more fat then but didn’t put on weight. That’s why there are so many lardarses today; they eat the wrong kind of fat and sit in front of the telly all day in warm rooms.
I have never lost my love for dripping and always save it after a roast. You can still buy it at some butchers and along with the Bee Stings at Lily’s Pork Stores in Hillsborough but the best is made yourself. Turkey dripping on toast is my Boxing Day (and several days after) breakfast. This weekend the family came round and we had roast chicken. Whatever fats and juices didn’t go in the gravy went in the dripping pot.
I’ve just had some toast and dripping and analysed what I was eating and how it felt. I like to spread the dripping fat on first then cover it with bits of jelly, not pressed into the toast. Then it is liberally sprinkled with freshly ground pepper and sea salt. In the old days it was just cooking salt and ground pepper but my tastes have gone lah-de-dah since.
First comes the crunch of the warm toast against your teeth, followed by the squidginess of the jelly which brushes your gums before melting on your tongue. Now comes that wonderful mouthfeel of fat suffusing your tastebuds, the savouriness of salt and the spiciness of pepper. All this in a single mouthful of toast and dripping.
Isn’t food grand?
Another helping from Martin Dawes 
Hello there, we LOVE this image and have featured it in an article on our site. Please get in touch for more details – editorial.homemade@gravityroad.com. Thanks!
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Well that is a surprise. However I cannot find it on your site. Can you send me a direct link? And will you be posting a connecting link to my site?
Regards
Martin Dawes
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I just had enjoyed toast with dripping made from roasting italian sausages, when the “bread and scrape” phrase popped into my mind. I had to look it up to see what derivation it had.
Google mosty finds bread with sparse butter or marge, so I was delighted to read your entry half way down the first page.
It was a week-end treat for us, digging under the fat layer of the dripping pot, to get at the jelly and delicious brown paste and fighting for the crispy bits!
You brought back some lovely memories with frost inside the glass. I used to warm pennies on the hearth and press them against my bedroom window so that I could look out!
… Roger
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It was bread and scratch in my youth. My grandad only got bread and lard for packup during the end of the week ( no ‘bottoms’ in lard) but Mon to Wed it was proper dripping. On a stranger note, a man called Walt used to go in my local about 30 odd years since and he swore the key to keeping thisen regular was toast and dripping and a pint pot of tea…which he used to take to the carsie with him every morning. The dripping had to be thickly spread though, he reckoned, ‘ ah like to feel t’greyus run dahn me chin’ he would tell us over a pint. Strange chap.
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My Grandma, a formidable woman – in the English and French sense of the word – adored her bread and dripping. She was taken prisoner of war in Hong Kong for 3 yrs 8 months and on return (skeletal) loved roasts like shoulder of lamb so guess her dripping wd be lamb. In our time on The Star, Martin, the canteen had great slaps of roast with dripping for the printers first thing, do you remember?
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