The Scotch egg is a delicious staple of British pub food. Traditionally, it consists of a hard boiled egg wrapped in sausage crumbs, then deep fried. One source traces it back to Eighteenth Century London (sorry, Scotland) where it was a traveler's snack for sale in Piccadilly.
The humble Scotch egg has inspired a lot of creativity in kitchens around the world. For example, pictured above is Jessie Oleson's sweet version made with Cadbury Creme Eggs. We featured it last year. It's one of 11 unusual takes on Scotch eggs.
If you want to know all about Scotch eggs, then you should consult Forever Eggsploring. It's David J. Constable's website devoted to finding "the very best Scotch egg in the land." Constable exhaustively researches all things related to Scotch eggs.
It's through his site that I learned about how Fortnum & Mason, a British food company, produced the largest Scotch egg in the world. Its chefs used an ostrich egg as the core. They wrapped 5.5 kg of sausage meat around it. Then the chefs deep fried and baked the assembly. When it was done, their 6.95 kg Scotch egg won a Guinness World Record.
Tom, the manufacturer of Big Butz BBQ Sauce, created what he calls the Bacon Cone Scotch Egg Sundae. He candied bacon, then baked it a lattice around a cone form. Then he served two large Scotch eggs inside as though they were scoops of ice cream in a cone.
Speaking of which, if you love bacon, then you may enjoy Pitmaster X's bacon-wrapped Scotch eggs. He wrapped them in pork sausage and bacon. Then he smoked them on a wet cedar plank.
Scotch eggs, like pizza, are a party food. So let's combine them. Here's a Scotch egg and mushroom pizza photographed by Flickr member broncoturteii.
Haggis is the heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep ground up and boiled in its stomach. Since there's a lot of ground meat inside, why not use it as packing material for Scotch eggs? Here's a recipe from the Good Food Channel that shows you how.
You can make Scotch eggs with just about any kind of egg. Some people make them with duck eggs. Pictured above are some that Travis Awalt made with quail eggs.
Some vegetarians are comfortable eating eggs, but not other forms of meat. If you agree, then you may enjoy these Scotch eggs by Lisa. She used beets instead of sausage as the outer layer.
Vegan Scotch eggs might seem like an impossibility, but Micah Ludeke thought of them as a challenge. He created his completely meat-free Scotch eggs with beer caramelized mushrooms, silken tofu, vegan sausage, goddess dressing, and biscuit dough.
Lisa Lavery made this unique Scotch egg with kabocha, a squash also known as Japanese pumpkin. She also used miso and panko, a type of Japanese breadcrumbs.
Let's have some dessert, shall we? There's no sausage here--and probably little egg. This is a chocolate Scotch egg produced by the chocolatier Artisan du Chocolat. Scotch egg scholar David J. Constable reviewed it:
The egg white is vanilla ganache, the yolk is passion fruit ganache which is sweet and heavenly and the pork is spongy chocolate marshmallow with dots of puffed rice for crunch. The marshmallow has a rubbery consistency rather than soft and melting and is disappointing in comparison with the accomplishment of the egg, which is smooth and creamy like a truffle confection. The outside is grated chocolate for that rough breadcrumb appearance. It’s quite an assembly.