M&S Hand Cooked Cumberland Sausage

Hmmnn... sausage flavour crisps with no vestige of sausage in. And suitable for vegetarians. Does this sound right? Well, no. Of course it doesn't.

Traditional Cumberland sausages are long and coiled into a spiral. I read they have been made in Cumbria for 500 years. Unlike most British sausages which are flavoured with herbs, Cumberland sausages are flavoured with pepper and nutmeg (possibly due to the historic import of spices at Whitehaven in Cumbria says Wikipedia). They have Protected Geographical Indication status under European Commission rules. Like Parma ham for example. Perhaps that's why M&S have called these crisps Cumberland Sausage flavour and omitted the 'traditional'.  And, er, omitted the pig.

So here we have another very good hand cooked crisp. Quite large, good crunch, usual golden colour with a sprinkling of parsley. And flavoured with onions, garlic, white pepper, cardamom, mace, nutmeg, cloves, paprika, cinnamon and ginger.

Sounds really spicy doesn't it? Not really. In fact, in some mysterious way they really do taste of sausage. Cumberland sausage I suppose. They smell good too. I think they'd work well at a party with a selection of other crisps.

Not too sure about the packaging. It shows pepper corns, parsley and something that looks like sage. Why I wonder? There's no sage here. Strange. But I still like the hand stencilled look of the hand cooked range.