Scotch Egg! Scotch Egg!
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 976 Ratings
🗓️ 15 November 2015
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Scotch eggs may conjure memories of Summer picnics, school dinners or even Alan Partridge but the humble bar snack has been elevated to a culinary canvas on which chefs can make their own mark and feature on the menus of some of the UK's top restaurants. Food writer Joe Warwick invites you to the madness and mayhem of the Scotch Egg Challenge at which chefs and retailers compete with traditional and unconventional recipes for the glory of the title of winner. But with Thai, Peruvian and vegetarian versions on offer how far can you go before it's no longer a scotch egg? What are the key essentials and when have you gone too far?
Joe digs into the history of this bundle of glory, hears from chefs as they prepare for the big night and finds out why a pub can get packed to the rafters by people clamouring to try a piece of scotch egg heaven.
Presented by Joe Warwick Produced in Bristol by Anne-Marie Bullock
iPlayer photo by Laurie Fletcher.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello I'm Sheila Dylan and welcome to this BBC download of the Food Program. |
| 0:06.0 | For information on the BBC's terms and conditions of use, visit |
| 0:09.6 | www. |
| 0:10.9 | BBC.co. UK slash Radio 4. www So often on the food program we focus on a dish or ingredient which seems simple but |
| 0:24.7 | tells an unexpected or revealing story. |
| 0:28.1 | You might have heard here are pork scratchings and cabab tales. Well today we're giving food writer Joe Warwick half an hour |
| 0:36.1 | to tell you about a dish he's always taken very seriously, the Scotch egg. You may remember it as a bland, uninteresting little fried package of protein, |
| 0:46.4 | but as Joe reveals, the Scotch egg has moved on. |
| 0:49.6 | Ladies and gentlemen, |
| 0:53.0 | welcome to the Scratch Egg Challenge 2015. |
| 0:57.0 | Aoor please! |
| 1:00.0 | So this evening, we've got 21 A's, nine of which are traditional and 12 which are unconventional. The can't be anyone listening that hasn't had a disappointing experience with a Scotch egg. |
| 1:23.2 | You probably picked it up from the chiller cabinet |
| 1:25.6 | in a convenience store, supermarket, or a petrol station forecourt. |
| 1:30.0 | More than likely it was covered in what they call breadcrums but tasted more like sawdust. |
| 1:35.1 | The death rattle of the egg moving around inside its disappointing sausage meat of some description |
| 1:40.0 | coating. coding. |
| 1:50.0 | It's become the brunt of a joke. It's become the brunt of jokes from Big Keith in the office biting into one after a particularly tedious and slightly creepy speech, |
| 1:57.0 | to Alan Partridge's digestive struggles. |
| 2:00.0 | You smell my breath? |
| 2:02.0 | Oh, it smells a bit like gas? |
| 2:04.0 | You know what that is, don't you? |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.