The strange chip shop phenomena continue. Following my uncanny pavlovian experience of a couple of weeks ago, New York Brian messaged me asking if I was ever planning to make ‘saveloy’ Word of the Week. I replied that Saveloyhad already been Word of the Week, way back in 2017, to which he shot back, “What about Sausage in Batter?”
I refused to rise, pointing out quite calmly that not only is ‘sausage in batter’ three words but it is the work of the devil. I never go near sausage in batter. I’ll do cod, I’ll do a pie, I’ll do a saveloy, I’ll do a pickle onion, I’ll even do a pickled egg if pushed, but sausage in batter? It’s just so unhealthy.
Not that I’m averse to batter. Au contraire! I love batter. That simple mélange of flour, milk, water and salt, deep-fried to a golden crisp, is up there with the wheel as one of humankind’s greatest achievements. So I conceded to a third of Brian’s request and resolved to delve into the sticky business of batter.
It’s interesting how something so violent as battery could evolve into something as refined as cricket or the crispy coating on your cod. At the root of it all lies an ancient onomatopoeic sort of grunt that sounded something like ‘bat’, meaning to thump (usually someone else and primarily over the head). The Romans crafted this into ‘battuere’ (to beat) and the French into ‘batteur’ (beater). Meanwhile, all the other languages across Europe played with the ‘bat’ sound to express their love of thumping other people over the head.
Out of all this emerged the bat (a club for thumping people over the head, later for playing cricket, baseball and table tennis), and hence batter, as in the gender-neutral noun that has replaced ‘batsman’; batter, as in the milky mixture that gives deep-fat frying its good name (from the beating of the mixture); and batter, as in to beat repeatedly. On the surface, three very different things, yet all linked by the violent business of battery.
The battery, meanwhile, as in the thing that powers your hand-held devices, takes its name from the collection of heavy artillery guns, which were called a battery because they rained blows repeatedly on other people’s heads. The electrical battery is a collection of power cells all working together.
None of this, I should point out, has anything to do with the small flying beastie. That bat takes its name from an Old Norse term which is too difficult to pronounce here but which means ‘leather flapper’ – a pretty good description really. The old leather flapper on willow – bat on bat.
So after all this research to appease Brian and to emphasise the point that sausage in batter is just not right, imagine my horror when I returned to the chip shop the following Wednesday night to find they were closing and all they had left was a small portion of chips and, you guessed it, two sausages in batter.
Now hunger can have a powerful effect on a person’s principles. Groucho Marx put it well: “Those are my principles and if you don’t like them, I have others.” So I weighed up the situation for fully three seconds before capitulating. But listen, Brian, this doesn’t mean you’ve won.
