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
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
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
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