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The Food Programme

Mouthwatering Mutton

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4976 Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2014

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mutton tastier than lamb - why we should all demand to eat older meat. Dan Saladino uncovers the mystery of why we no longer eat mutton, despite it being a favoured meat of the Victorians. He hears about the efforts of Bob Kennard, author of a new book, Much Ado About Mutton, who's campaigning for good quality mutton to return to our menus.

Chefs Fergus Henderson and Cyrus Todiwala are both lyrical on the virtues of mutton and give tips on the best way to cook it. And Dan visits the Thomas family sheep farm deep in the Welsh hills to understand why our lack of interest in mutton has changed their way of life.

The programme also hears of a mutton story from America, the Moonlite BBQ in Kentucky, a destination restaurant that draws people from all over the US in search of their slow cooked mutton. It was also a destination for artisan mutton producer Tony Davies who travelled to the restaurant to see if you could provide an answer to mutton's woes in the UK. As he explains in the programme, he arrived at a dramatic conclusion.

Presented by Dan Saladino and produced in Bristol by Emma Weatherill.

Photo image copyright - Bob Kennard. The audio of the Moonlite BBQ restaurant kindly provided by Mark Dolan of www.bbqpilgrim.com and the American Southern Foodways Alliance www.southernfoodways.org.

Transcript

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0:00.0

You don't need us to tell you there's a general election coming.

0:04.6

So what does it mean for you?

0:06.4

Every day on newscast we dissect the big talking points,

0:10.1

the ones that you want to know more about.

0:12.3

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0:16.8

And with help from some of the best BBC journalists,

0:19.4

we'll untangle the stories that matter to you.

0:23.0

Join me, Laura Kunsberg, Adam Fleming, Chris Mason and Patty O'Connell for our daily

0:28.3

podcast.

0:29.3

Newscast, listen on BBC Sounds.

0:32.0

Man is a small grown up. Listen on BBC Science.

0:35.0

Man, there's a small grown-up mouthful. Has...

0:37.0

Hmm, I got a complexity that Lamb is missing.

0:40.0

This week, we're explaining how a flavor disappeared, how a national dish vanished from most of our lives.

0:47.0

The taste was really quite beguiling. It gets you a tinter petrol strange enough which is odd.

0:54.4

It's quite weird how it can turn a petri tinged to sort of culinary delight.

1:00.5

That petrol tinged delight was for most of Britain a century ago a familiar and treasured feature of the table.

1:07.0

Now a forgotten food. In its heyday it was celebrated by English kings and relished by American presidents. This is the

1:15.3

extraordinary story of mutton. It's a calm bit beast and a little bonding leg of

1:21.0

lamb which is a different thing. small kind of stately I think.

1:26.2

Chef Fergus Henderson champion of nose to tail eating and of course mutton.

1:31.9

Boiled leg of mutton and caper sauce, a revelation.

...

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