Pudding 'n Souse on Saturday

Saturday was the only day that the well loved delicacy of 'puddin 'n souse' was available.

Animals were slaughtered on Friday for sale by the many butchers around Bridgetown and country villages. The Sunday roast joint was bought freshly then and refrigerated or kept in ice boxes until the housewife was ready to roast it. There were other parts of cows, pigs, sheep and goats that were not popular and so were sold cheaply - the offal - except the intestines and blood of the pig. Pudding 'n souse was made from these. Predictably, the pudding casing was the intestine of the pig, the black pudding was coloured by the pig's blood and the souse was created from the head and feet.

By the age of eight I was responsible enough to be given the job of walking the length of King Street to the corner shop where the conditions were considered to be 'clean'. I am not sure how this was established except that the food seldom caused tummy upsets.

After lunch on Saturday and after the dishes had all been washed up and put away, the grownups went to bed for a customary nap. Children are usually difficult to keep quiet and rest, so I was sent off around 2:00 pm in charge of my sister, Wendy, to buy the Bajan delicacy for the 4:00 pm meal.

Mummy would give me a basket containing a couple of empty Pyrex dishes with lids and a kitchen towel to cover them. I was also given just enough money for the order which was written on a little note to give to the creator of the delicacy.

I was sent off with the weekly instructions of "Walk at the side of the road", "Watch out for the traffic", "Hold your sister's hand", "Come straight back home", "Don't drop the money", "Don't drop the basket", "Hold the basket carefully", "Don't run", "Don't let them give you too much bone" and so on - a litany of don'ts.

While on my way along King Street I could hear radios playing in the houses as I passed. Most homes subscribed to the closed circuit Redifusion. The Saturday afternoon scheduled program was music by saxophonist, Ace Cannon. The gravelly sounds of his popular tunes serenaded me on my way to buy Pudding 'n Souse; to this day I think of that walk along King Street whenever I hear his style of saxophone music.

Along the way I passed the Daily Meal school on the left, the entrance to King's Village on the right. The house on the corner of the village entrance had a huge acky tree and on the other corner was an unsightly rubbish dump where the villagers disposed of their household refuse. Stray dogs always hung around the dump for lean pickings, scattering the stuff in a wide, messy circle. Plastic was not in use then, so the debris was not only smelly, but open for all to see. The poor villagers' rubbish contained no plastic or wood, but mostly rotting vegetable matter, paper and rags.

A few houses along on the left lived the Guy family who had children from older to younger than me. Barbara and Michael were my playmates. David and Joan were many years older and Peter was too young to be any fun. A hopeful stare at their windows seldom generated their presence to wave to. They may have been having an enforced rest.

Along a little further, on the right, lived Granny's dressmaker, Miss Douglas, in a tall wooden house. In fact, nearly all of the houses were of wooden construction with jalousie windows and doors like ours. The 'ground sills' were of limestone.

Moving on down the street we passed Miss Carter's house on the left and Manning's house a little further on. He was a carpenter/joiner who did the odd repair job for Daddy. Miss Carter was the family laundress who collected the dirty linen and took it away, returning it washed, starched and ironed, rolled up or folded on a large wooden tray balanced upon her head. On the left we crossed a small street which led over to Chapman Street parallel to King Street. Beyond this I did not know the occupants of the houses which got smaller and poorer in appearance as I moved down to my destination. Yet Ace Cannon's sultry notes could be heard from their radios.

On arriving at the end of King Street and the shop on the right, I tightly held on to my sister's hand and the basket and crossed the street on the run. The shop side entrance door was open and about 12 inches up from the ground with a large limestone block as a step. There was no flooring inside. It must have rotted away or been eaten by termites or wood worms, so to enter one had to mount the stone block, step over the threshold onto another block and down onto the earthen floor where there were tables with clean cloths covering large pots and dishes of black and white puddings and the souse. It was dark with the only light coming from the door and a couple of small windows. Coal pots were the means of gently boiling the coils of pudding which were apt to burst if treated roughly, either by hand or rapidly boiling water.

The purchase made, change sometimes collected, I started back home with sister and food. Most Saturday afternoon meals were accompanied by a hot drink of chocolate. The real stuff from St Vincent. It was made from the rolls of locally processed chocolate beans to which Mummy added milk and sugar. It was sweet and tasty unlike anything bought today in tins or blocks. Floating on the top would be the golden cocoa fat, said to prevent scarring if applied to the skin. I seem to remember that there would be a stick of cinnamon brewed with the cocoa. Every member of the family enjoyed this exceedingly rich and nutritious food drink.

Some weeks Mummy would make the white pudding herself, in a pyrex dish, without the benefit of the intestine casing. It would be slowly cooked in a bain marie. Arguably delicious, but somehow it lacked the flavour imparted by the real thing - pig's intestines.

The souse is not a beautiful dish and cannot be eaten without the sounds of sucking as every delicious drop of flavour is pulled out of every little metacarpal of the swine's trotters. It is certainly not a meal for the English, well mannered, meal table! Eating souse in the Caribbean is governed by a completely different set of good table manners. Vive la difference!

From the website http://www.best-barbados-vacation-packages.com/barbados-food.html

I copied this recipe for the traditional Pudding and Souse

• Intestines of a pig
• Salt
• Half limejuice and half water
• 2lbs. sweet potato
• Thyme
• Red pepper
• Sweet marjoram
• 4tbs. margarine
• Salt to taste

• 1 tbsp. sugar
• 2 minced shallotts
• dash of clove powder
• 1 pig’s head
• 11/2 cups water
• ½ tsp. salt
• ½ cup limejuice
• 1 onion, chipped
• 2 cucumbers, chipped
• Red peppers, sliced
• Parsley

Black Pudding

Thoroughly clean the intestine (turning skins inside out) with soap and water and then with salt water. Then soak in salt water and lime solution for an hour. Grate sweet potatoes in a bowl and add thyme, red pepper, sweet marjoram, margarine, salt to taste, sugar, minced shallots and a dash of clove powder. Add water to these ingredients to make mixture of a loose consistency

Fill the skins (do not pack tightly) with mixture, tie at each end and cook slowly on a rack over boiling water until potato is cooked and skins are firm. Before serving, cut in lengths and fry in oil.

Souse

Divide a pigs head into two parts, remove the brain, and boil the head in salted water until the flesh begins to leave the bones. Plunge it into cool salted water immediately to make the flesh crisp, and allow it to cool.

Then cut off the meat in slices and drop it into a large bowl of pickle made from salt water, limejuice, chipped cucumber, a few red peppers sliced. Let it sit for several hours. Garnish with parsley

Sanderson's Gap

On Whitepark Road, directly across from the top end of King Street, an old lady lived in a grand house, surrounded by gardens and with in and out driveways. The house had a ground floor, upper floor and a basement. The upstairs floor had sash windows with beautifully flared hoods to keep out the sun and rain, but still let in the air and light. Wide, ceramic tiled steps curved up to the front door. None of this interested me in the 1940s. Instead, the extensive grounds contained sturdy shrubs with branches strong enough to support small children. There were gardens and orchards, neglected then, but once well manicured. Hollows and mounds were places to hide and run around.

Mummy, Aunt Jean or the maid, Thelma, would take me across the busy road to play at "Sanderson's gap". Miss Sanderson was a spinster, the remaining one of two sisters, living in the Victorian mansion on her own. Her staff consisted of a grumpy watchman by the name of Martin and various servants who cleaned, cooked and took care of the inside and outside. Martin also kept cows in the grounds.

Lawns, fruit trees and shady trees with strong branches were our playground toys. There was no lawn or secret place to explore at 'Mayville'. Just a single, tall coconut tree. I was always happy to be given permission to go to 'Sanderson's gap' to play and try, always, to avoid being growled at by Martin, who disliked visiting children from helping themselves to the fruit. Barbados cherries and guavas were my favourites, picked and devoured when he was away.

Only once did I enter the house. It was with my mother who called on bed ridden Miss Sanderson. An aproned and capped maid let us in the front door to a gloomy interior, full of heavy, dark Victorian style furniture. We were led up the mahogany staircase to an airy and light filled bedroom where Miss Sanderson lay. All I remember about her is that she was old and white but happy to chat with Mummy. She must have been ill at the time.

Before the visit I was warned to sit still and "Don't touch anything". And "Remember your Ps and Qs". The curiosity I possessed as a child remains with me today, so the warnings and instructions were well deserved. I was able to look out through the open upstairs window to 'my' playground below. I felt like a bird sitting in a tall tree. Thereafter I wanted to live in an 'upstairs' house, but was never that lucky as a child.

That was the only time that I can remember seeing Miss Sanderson. I expect that when she passed away the property changed hands, but not before it fell into disrepair and the grounds became overgrown. Today, it has been restored and added to as a commercial office building.

Note:

A search on the internet brought up a digitize copy of a British magazine from the 1920s with a contribution of ten British pounds by one Miss Muriel C B Sanderson of Unionville, Whitepark, Barbados, BWI. She was quoted, "We are pleased to see the progress the Fund is making, and although it has still a long way to go, yet we feel sure that it will not be so very long before the required sum is obtained". The magazine is Overseas, the monthly journal of the Overseas Club & Patriotic League and dated Vol V No59 December 1920.

My father also remembers that one of the Sanderson sisters was named Ethel.