Parceling meat into pastry is a serious, time-honored craft in England. There are pasties, pies and Wellingtons, their myriad fillings tucked inside duvets of crisp puff pastry. But perhaps no creation is as beloved as the sausage roll. Unlike a pie, which is wet with gravy and requires a fork, a sausage roll can be neatly slipped into a pocket and eaten ad hoc. Made from a mix of minced pork, breadcrumbs, herbs and spices encased in deeply tanned pastry, it’s a suitable commuter breakfast, teatime snack or even pub dinner, when paired with a ramekin of hot mustard and a Guinness.
Apart from during and directly after World War II, when the British Ministry of Food reduced the required meat content of sausage from 80 percent to just 30 percent, the recipe for sausage rolls hasn’t varied much in the past century. The pastry, most often puff, is laminated, which requires a laborious folding and rolling process to combine the dough and butter. Herbs and spices, typically including fennel seeds, fleck the minced pork to temper its fattiness. But today’s English chefs have found ways to refresh the national favorite: At Farro in Bristol, the baker Bradley Tapp uses pork and wheat from the same nearby farm, milling his flour in-house. Others are experimenting with laminating their pastry with lard, for a nose-to-tail approach. At Layla Bakery in London’s Notting Hill, the pastry chef Colton Dinner fashions sausage rolls from scraps of croissant dough and, in January, he introduced a vegetarian haggis version for the Scottish celebration Burns Night.
Recent years have seen a broader uptick in vegetarian fillings. Hart’s Bakery in Bristol serves a plant-based sausage roll stuffed with pearl barley and mushroom, while Fortitude Bakehouse in London folds dough around spinach and feta. High street sausage roll purveyors are also following the trend. The vegan sausage roll at the fast-food bakery Greggs, which owes its deeply savory flavor to a mushroom-based paste, is so beloved that it contributed to a 58 percent increase in profits in 2019, the year it was introduced. At the bakery chain Gail’s, more pastries are now filled with spinach and feta than with pork each day.
While the pastries can be found from coast to coast, sausage rolls in the capital are both plentiful and varied — and their devotees are die-hard. Here, creative Londoners share their favorite spots.
The Ginger Pig, Borough Market
Recommended by: Cynthia Shanmugalingam, cookbook author and owner of the restaurant Rambutan
“This is the Rolls Royce of sausage rolls. The pastry is like a crispy cloud, all buttery flakiness, and the filling is an explosion of juicy, dense, delicious pork, with a little black pepper and herbs. I go to the Borough Market location when I need a pick-me-up — Isaac and his team of butchers are always very sweet, and a hefty sausage roll [will] get me through a bad day.”
Jolene, Stoke Newington
Recommended by: Fernando Jorge, jewelry designer
“Jolene does everything incredibly, including sausage rolls. The place is charming and casual, but they take their food seriously — every item on their ever-changing menu is worth trying. It’s also a good location for people watching.”
Gail’s, Hampstead
Recommended by: Joseph Denison Carey, chef
“The Gail’s sausage roll (eaten warm, obviously) is the best on the market, and I’ll really stand my ground on that. It’s always perfectly seasoned, and the consistency of the filling is ideal. It’s almost meatloafy: It has some structure to it. You need to bite through it, it doesn’t fall apart. I think because [Gail’s] is a chain, unlike the more boutique spots, it’s really consistent.”
Layla Bakery, Notting Hill
Recommended by: Angus Buchanan, creative director of Buchanan Studio
“The Buchanan Studio office is very close to Layla — we’ve been going there since it first opened. The sausage roll is something of an enigma, as it’s only available on the weekends and they don’t even always have it, but if they do, it’s the best! Insanely good pastry (as you would expect) and a seriously delicious spice balance.”
Greggs, Liverpool St. Train Station
Recommended by: Chet Lo, fashion designer
“They’re just good! Unpretentious and good. I save them for special occasions — normally when I’m traveling, as the one I go to is in the train station.”
The Marksman, Hackney
Recommended by: Alexis Burgess, director of Livingstone whisky and Burgess Studio
“The Marksman often has a sausage roll on the bar [menu] that I’m a big fan of. I think some pubs deliberately shy away from them because they’re so filling and, if you eat a whole one, you don’t need dinner — but I think it’s a shame. The ideal is a pub with a decent sausage roll and plenty of mustard.”
The Rex Deli, Mayfair
Recommended by: Alex Eagle, creative director of Alex Eagle Studio and T contributing editor
“There’s a little deli called Rex in Mayfair that makes delicious pies and pastries. They do a lovely sausage roll that is really spoiling with some mustard, and maybe a beer, on a Sunday afternoon.”
These interviews have been edited and condensed.
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